Page 64 of The Sweetest Return

Tomorrow night, AWU would put me in front of a room full of people and give me the Crown Legacy Award.

Last year, Dr. Waverly had received it after four decades of teaching students who went on to run companies, classrooms, nonprofits, hospitals, and half the city’s quiet power. The year before that, it had gone to a judge who built a legal clinic on campus with her own money before she ever let the alumni board put her name on a plaque.

It was not some little thanks for being famous award.

That was why I had tried not to think too hard about it.

AWU could have honored me for football years ago. They had done that plenty. Jersey displays. Hall of fame talk. Videos where I ran through holes big enough to make old linemen lie and say they could still block like that. This was different.

This award said I had done something after the cheering stopped.

Built something.

Carried the school’s name well.

Made them proud in a way that had nothing to do with yards after contact.

AWU had always measured legacy a little differently. Who did your work feed? Who did it employ? Who had something useful because you had been here? A name on a building was nice. Leaving something people could actually use meant more.

I was grateful for that.

I was also uncomfortable as hell.

Then I thought about Imani being in that room when they called my name.

Of course this would be the year.

Every Crown Weekend I had come back, some part of me had looked for her. In lobbies. At receptions. In the background of group photos people posted after midnight. I stopped saying it out loud after a while because a man could only sound pathetic so many different ways before he needed to keep the rest to himself.

Now she was here. The year I was being honored. The year I was supposed to stand in front of people and talk about legacy like the woman who knew the young version of me would not be sitting somewhere close enough to hear every word.

That put pressure in places I could not name without becoming emotional.

Made the award feel less like a plaque and more like a mirror.

Made me want to get through the speech and find her afterward, because last night I had told her I needed to apologize and she had looked at me like she knew exactly where we could go to have that conversation.

The Nocturne.

Her suite.

Behind a door.

My jaw tightened again just thinking about it.

I turned on the shower and stepped under the hot water before my body could start arguing with me about what we were not doing before the gala.

It argued anyway.

Imani in purple silk last night, my name peeking from the tattoo over her heart. Imani on the Yard today, laughing at me like she still had access to places nobody else had reached. Imani sitting close enough for me to smell her, her thigh near mine, her eyes on my face like she could still tell when I was leaving things unsaid.

That woman had been in front of me less than twenty-four hours, and somehow Apex, the Forge, the businesses, the award, all of it had started moving around her instead of the other way around.

That could make a man stupid.

I knew better now. Wanting somebody did not mean I had earned access to her, an apology did not become forgiveness just because I meant it, and chemistry could make bad decisions feel spiritual if I let it.

But I also knew what I felt when her body shuddered under my hand at her back.