Page 92 of The Sweetest Return

Her eyes shined.

“You were hurt,” she whispered.

“Yeah.” My voice came rougher than I expected. “And too proud to say it like that. So I made it sound like I was giving you room when part of me was trying not to beg.”

Her fingers tightened around the napkin.

“I was scared too,” she said quietly.

“I know that now.” I leaned forward, forearms on the table, my voice low enough to stay between us. “I didn’t then. All I saw was you leaving. Tiffany. New York. A future that didn’t have me standing close enough to touch you. And instead of telling you I wanted to figure it out, I tried to act like letting you go was love.”

Her eyes shined, but she did not look away.

“It was love,” she said. “Part of it.”

“Maybe. But it was pride too. Fear. Me thinking if I asked you to stay, I was asking you to choose less for yourself.” I swallowed, because even after all these years, the truth still had teeth. “And Imani, I never wanted to be the man you had to make yourself smaller to love.”

Her face shifted.

Something in her eyes broke open, quiet enough that anybody else might have missed it.

“I know,” she whispered.

I shook my head. “You shouldn’t have had to guess that.”

She looked down at her hands.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Her eyes lifted back to mine.

I held them, even with my chest tight and my pride trying to find somewhere to hide. “I’m sorry I let you leave thinking I was fine. I’m sorry I made peace sound easy when it was hurting me. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I wanted you to go to New York and still find a way back to me. Or let me find my way to you. I don’t know if we would’ve made it work back then, but I should’ve been honest enough to try with you instead of acting like loving you meant standing there and watching you walk away.”

Her mouth trembled.

“I thought you didn’t fight because you knew something I didn’t,” she said.

“What?”

“That I would become a problem. Or a burden. Or one more thing you had to carry while everybody was already putting so much on you.”

“Mani.”

“I know.” She blinked, and a tear slipped before she could stop it. “I know better now. But back then, I was so scared of disappearing into your life that I didn’t realize I was making you disappear from mine.”

The words hit hard enough to make me sit back.

She wiped beneath her eye quickly, almost irritated with herself for crying.

“I’m sorry too,” she said. “I’m sorry I made choices in my head before I let you into the fear. I’m sorry I acted like leaving clean would hurt less than staying messy. I wanted Tiffany. I wanted New York. I needed to know who I was without everybody already deciding I was going to be Andre Jones’s girl forever.”

“I know.”

“But I loved you.” Her voice cracked around it. “I loved you so much, Dre. And I’m sorry I let you think my dreams had no room for you in them.”

For a second, I could not speak.

The diner moved around us, dishes clattering, grease popping somewhere behind the counter, old R&B humming low overhead, but all of it felt far away.