Page 76 of The Sweetest Return

Damn him.

Dre looked down for a second before continuing.

“AWU gave me people like that too. Coaches who moved me around until they figured out where I could help the team. Professors who made sure I understood eligibility was not the same thing as education. Friends who didn’t care how many yards I ran if I was being stupid.”

Malcolm nodded solemnly. “Important work.”

Dre laughed, then lowered his head for a moment.

“When I got hurt, I thought a lot about what survives after the thing everybody knows you for is gone. And I’m still figuring that out. I don’t have some perfect answer. But I know this much. What survives is what was real before the applause started.”

His eyes moved across the ballroom.

For one second, they found mine.

“Family. Friendship. Community. Work that feeds more than your ego. The people who knew you before the world decided what to call you.” He paused, and something in his face changed. “And sometimes, if you’re blessed and brave enough to tell the truth, you learn that a first love doesn’t always die just because life got too loud for two people to hear it.”

My chest went tight.

His gaze held mine a beat longer than it should have.

“Some love survives the noise. The distance. The years. It waits under everything you thought you lost until you’re grown enough to recognize it again.”

Then he looked back to the room.

“So thank you. For this award. For this school. For every coach, professor, teammate, friend, auntie, uncle, donor, classmate, and person who poured something into me before you had any proof it would come back. Thank you for giving a kid who thought he only had one dream enough room to find out he had more life than that.”

People rose again before he finished.

The applause came hard enough that Dre stepped away from the microphone and shook his head like he didn’t know what to do with that much love when he was not wearing pads.

I stood too.

My eyes were wet, my heart too full, my body still behaving without an ounce of decorum.

I wanted him.

Badly.

The tux and diamonds did not help. Neither did the beard, the voice, or the way he held that award like it still surprised him to be honored for anything that did not involve a scoreboard.

But it was him.

The man he had become. The way he loved his parents without embarrassment. The way he stood in front of a room that had once celebrated what his body could do and admitted he had been scared when it stopped doing it. The humor. The gratitude. The confidence without pretending he had built himself alone.

I had always been attracted to Dre.

This was different.

This was grown-woman lust tangled with admiration, history, tenderness, pride, and a hope I had no business naming in public.

Dre made his way back toward the table through applause, stopping twice for hugs he couldn’t avoid and once for an older woman who grabbed his face and said something that made him laugh. Mrs. Jones was crying openly now. Mr. Jones had one hand at her back, his own eyes suspiciously bright.

When Dre reached us, everyone at the table was still standing.

He hugged his mother first.

“My baby,” she whispered.