REVENGE TASTES LIKE YOU [18+]

CHAPTER ONE

NELLIE

The Southern Belles hit the fifty-yard line on the same count, eighteen pairs of white boots landing hard enough against Legacy Field for Nellie to feel the impact travel through the balls of her feet and settle in her calves.

The Roaring Sound answered them from the stands.

Brass climbed over the stadium in a bright, triumphant wave while the drumline kept a rhythm so deep that it seemed to live beneath the turf. Freeman Stadium had been loud all night, but Montrose was up by ten with less than two minutes left, and everybody had started celebrating before the clock gave them permission. Purple rally towels spun above the student section. Alumni in antique-gold jackets stood shoulder to shoulder with students who had painted their faces for the game. Somebody near the front row had been waving a homemade sign with Nellie’s name on it since halftime, and the women of the Southern Belles had already laughed about the fact that whoever made it had somehow spelled Renellie correctly while getting Southern wrong.

Nellie did not have time to look for it now.

She drove through the next eight-count with her chin lifted and her shoulders relaxed, letting three years of muscle memory carry her through the turn. Her ponytail swept across the bare skin between her shoulder blades. The stones sewn into the royal-purple bodice of her uniform caught beneath the stadium lights when she changed levels, and the short fringe at her hips moved with every sharp snap of her body without hiding the strength it took to make the movement look easy.

She knew she was beautiful. That knowledge had never required anybody else’s permission.

What mattered on the field was control.

Nellie could feel when a formation was clean without turning her head. She could hear when one set of boots landed a fraction behind the others. She knew which of the younger Belles tended to rush when the crowd got loud and which ones tightened up when Director Davenport stood close enough to see every mistake. Captaincy had taught her how to perform while keeping part of her attention stretched across seventeen other women.

Zaria came out of the traveling turn slightly early.

Nellie caught the movement at the edge of her vision and changed the angle of her wrist as she transitioned into the next count. Zaria corrected before the mistake had time to spread through the line.

From the sideline, Director Simone Davenport gave no visible reaction beyond the slight narrowing of her eyes.

That was enough to tell Nellie they would be discussing it later.

The thought almost made her smile wider.

The music shifted. Nellie planted her right boot, rolled through the final sequence, and let the last pose settle through her entire body instead of merely arriving at it. Her lungs worked hard beneath the smile she held for the crowd. Heat gathered beneath the band of her uniform, and a bead of sweat traced the side of her neck as Freeman Stadium rose around them.

The noise belonged to all of them.

The football team had given Montrose a win worth celebrating. The band had spent four quarters making sure nobody forgot whose house they were sitting in. The Belles had done what they always did, taking the field and turning precision into spectacle without sacrificing either one. Around the stadium, purple and gold glowed against thousands of shades of brown skin, and the familiar mixture of grilled food, perfume, body spray, damp grass, and somebody’s cigar from the alumni section drifted through the cold October air.

Nellie loved this place most when it felt like this.

By the time the Belles cleared the field, the final seconds had disappeared from the clock and the Panthers were officially walking away with another win.

Imani Ford waited until they were inside the tunnel before she reached over and pinched Nellie lightly above the elbow.

Nellie turned toward her with one eyebrow raised. “What was that for?”

Imani’s mouth curved as she looked Nellie up and down. Sweat had softened the edges of her makeup, but she still somehow looked put together enough to take pictures. “Because you knew exactly what you were doing on that last count.”

“I was dancing the choreography.”

“Mm-hmm.” Imani dragged the sound out while reaching behind her head to adjust her ponytail. “And that little extra something you put on the end was in Simone’s choreography too?”

Nellie pressed her lips together, but the smile escaped anyway. “If Simone asks, yes.”

A laugh burst out of Imani before she could answer.

Behind them, Zaria Carter hurried to catch up, breathing harder than she wanted anybody to notice. “Captain, I fixed it.”

Nellie slowed enough to look at her. Zaria’s eyes were wide with the particular combination of adrenaline and worry that always showed up when she knew she had made a mistake in front of Simone.

“You did,” Nellie told her, keeping her voice even. “Next time, trust the count before you trust the crowd. You heard them getting loud and rushed because you wanted to hit it harder.”

Zaria nodded immediately. “I know. I felt it after I was already moving.”

“Then you know what to fix.”

The tension left Zaria’s shoulders. “Yes, ma’am.”

Imani waited until Zaria moved ahead of them before giving Nellie a sideways look. “Look at you being somebody’s mama.”

“Girl, shut up.”

“I’m just saying. Should I call you Captain or Auntie?”

Nellie reached for her, and Imani dodged away laughing before Nellie could smack her arm.

The locker room carried the familiar after-game chaos of women trying to get out of performance clothes while preserving enough of themselves for whatever came next. Music played from somebody’s speaker. Two freshmen stood in front of the mirror taking pictures before their makeup surrendered completely. Nia Holloway sat on the end of a bench with one leg stretched in front of her, calmly answering a FaceTime call while Zaria complained that she was starving.

Nellie had barely set down her bag when her phone vibrated inside it.

She pulled it free and found more notifications than she cared to count. VUE tags from people in the stands. The Belles group chat. A text from her mother. Three separate messages from Grandma Evelyn, including a picture of the television that proved only that somebody in Charlotte had watched the game.

💕Bryce:

“You did your thing tonight, Jaliyah.”

Nellie’s mouth softened before she could stop it.

A second message arrived while she was reading the first.

💕Bryce:

“Outside whenever y’all done. No rush.”

There were very few people in Atlanta who called her Jaliyah without making her cringe. At Montrose, she was Nellie so completely that professors used it, Simone used it, and half the campus probably thought it was her legal name.

Bryson had known her before any of that. He had known her at sixteen, before Montrose, before the Belles, before she had learned how to make a room full of people watch her without confusing their attention for authority over her.

Imani leaned over her shoulder, shameless as always. “That your husband?”

Nellie glanced at her and smiled. “You so dramatic.”

Imani grinned as she reached for a makeup wipe. “Seven years is common-law in my spirit. I don’t know what Georgia says.”

“Good thing nobody asked your spirit for legal counsel.”

That earned another laugh from Imani, and Nellie smiled as she turned back to her phone.

She typed, “You better be. My feet hurt. 🥺”

Bryson responded with a laughing emoji and a promise that he had food.

That was the thing about him. Bryson knew what she needed after games. He knew she would be hungry but too tired to decide where she wanted to stop. He knew she would complain about her feet and then refuse to take her boots off until they got home because she hated walking through parking lots in socks. He knew to turn the heat on before she got into the car because sweat cooled fast in late October.

When Nellie finally stepped outside, Bryson was leaning against the passenger side of his car with a takeout bag in one hand.

His smile widened when he saw her.

“There she go.”

Nellie felt her own smile answer automatically. Bryson looked good in the easy way he usually did, dressed in dark jeans, clean sneakers, and a Montrose sweatshirt beneath his jacket. His short curls were freshly tapered around the edges, and the faint beard along his jaw made him look older than the boy she still remembered picking her up for their first real date.

He lifted the takeout bag when she got close. “Before you start complaining, I already got your food.”

“You know me so well.”

“I better after seven years.”

Bryson bent and kissed her, warm and familiar, his free hand settling briefly at her waist. Nellie leaned into him on instinct. The kiss lasted only a few seconds before he pulled back and looked at her uniform.

“You looked good out there.”

“Good?” Nellie asked, letting playful offense sharpen her expression. “That’s all I get?”

Bryson laughed and opened the passenger door for her. “Here you go fishing.”

“I don’t have to fish. I saw the crowd.” She responded in agitation.

“Then why you asking me?”

Because his answer mattered in a different way.

Nellie did not say that. She rolled her eyes instead and climbed into the car.

By the time they reached Douglass Commons, she had eaten half her food from the container balanced on her lap and laughed hard enough at Bryson’s imitation of one of the referees that her stomach hurt. Nothing about being with him felt strained. There’s a comforting familarity.

They talked about the game, her classes, somebody from their old high school who had gotten engaged, and whether they were really old enough for people they knew to be announcing pregnancies on purpose.

Bryson still knew how to make her laugh until she snorted.

He still reached over at red lights and squeezed her knee.

He still felt like home in all the places that made the problems between them harder to name.

Their relationship had not become bad. Nellie almost wished it had. Bad would have given her something solid to fight.

Instead, there were nights like this, when Bryson remembered her order and listened while she complained about a professor and kissed her before opening the car door for her, and Nellie could almost convince herself that the other thing had grown too large in her head.

Almost.

Inside Douglass Commons, the apartment was quiet. Kiara’s bedroom door was closed, Milan was apparently out, and Imani had stayed behind with some of the Belles. Bryson followed Nellie into her room with the ease of somebody who had been welcome there too many times to count.

“I’m getting in the shower,” Nellie told him as she set her bag beside the dresser.

Bryson dropped onto the bed and reached for the remote. “Take your time.”

The hot water loosened muscles Nellie had been ignoring since halftime.

She stood beneath the spray until the last of the setting spray, sweat, and stadium air had washed from her skin. Afterward, she took her time with the rest of her routine. She moisturized while her skin was still warm, worked body oil over her legs and shoulders, and wrapped her hair before steam could undo what she wanted to preserve.

When she opened the drawer where she kept her sleep clothes, her hand paused.

The red set beneath an old Montrose T-shirt had been sitting there for months.

Nellie stared at it long enough to become irritated with herself.

She should not have needed a strategy to have sex with her own boyfriend.

The thought made her jaw tighten, but she pulled the lingerie from the drawer anyway.

She had stopped initiating as often sometime during junior year, although she could not have named the exact night it happened. There had been too many versions of Bryson being tired, having an early class, needing to finish something, or promising they would make up for it later. None of the excuses had been unreasonable by themselves. It was their accumulation that had taught her to leave him alone.

Tonight had felt different before they came home. She had been alive on that field. She still felt the energy beneath her skin, and Bryson had looked at her when she came out of the stadium with enough warmth in his face to make her wonder whether she had been protecting herself from a rejection that was not coming.

Nellie put on the set.

The red lace sat beautifully against her deep-brown skin, and the cut emphasized the body years of dance had shaped. Her waist drew inward above full hips. Her thighs were thick and strong. The softness at her ass and breasts existed beside muscle rather than instead of it.

She studied herself in the mirror while rubbing a small amount of gloss across her lips and unwrapping her hair.

Nothing in her reflection embarrassed her.

That made walking back into the bedroom easier.

Bryson was lying against the pillows with the television low and his phone in his hand. His attention lifted when the bathroom door opened.

His eyes moved over her.

Nellie watched his face carefully enough to hate herself for doing it.

His brows rose. A smile touched his mouth. “Wow, baby.”

She crossed the room slowly, letting the robe she had left open fall farther apart as she approached the bed. “What?”

“You know what.” Bryson set his phone against his chest. “You look good.”

Nellie climbed onto the mattress beside him and placed one hand against his shoulder. “I know.”

Bryson laughed softly, and she kissed him before he could turn the moment into a joke.

He kissed her back.

For several seconds, Nellie let herself settle into the familiarity of his mouth. She shifted closer until her thigh pressed against his, then slid her hand from his shoulder to the side of his neck. Bryson’s palm found her waist beneath the open robe.

Hope moved through her before she could stop it.

Nellie deepened the kiss and let her body make the question plain.

Bryson’s hand stopped moving.

His mouth softened against hers before he drew back just enough to look at her.

Nellie already knew.

The knowledge reached her before the words did, settling cold beneath skin that had been warm from the shower.

“Baby,” Bryson said quietly, rubbing his thumb once over her waist. His expression carried an apology that made her want to move away before he could finish. “I’m tired as hell. Can we rain check tonight?”

Nellie held his gaze for a moment.

Then she eased her hand from his neck and sat back on her heels. “Yeah. That’s fine.”

Bryson searched her face. “You sure?”

“I said it’s fine.”

Her voice came out smooth enough that she was grateful for it.

He sat up farther and caught her hand before she could climb off the bed. “Come here.”

Nellie let him pull her close because refusing would have made the moment larger than she wanted it to be.

Bryson kissed her forehead.

His lips stayed there for a second, warm against the skin above her brows, before he released her and settled back against the pillows. “I love you.”

Nellie looked down at him. The same man who had brought her food because he knew she would forget to eat had just kissed her forehead.

“I love you too,” she answered.

She meant it.

That was what made everything so much harder.

Nellie closed her robe before getting beneath the covers. Bryson turned off the television a few minutes later, plugged in his phone, and rolled onto his side with his back partially toward her.

His breathing eventually slowed.

Nellie remained awake.

The room was dark except for the thin strip of light coming beneath her bedroom door. Somewhere in the apartment, the refrigerator motor clicked on. A car passed outside Douglass Commons with music loud enough for the bass to reach the window before fading into the distance.

Beside her, Bryson slept without moving.

Nellie lay on her back with the sheet pulled to her waist and felt the lace against every place he had not touched. The straps remained exactly where she had adjusted them in the bathroom. The skin along her stomach still smelled faintly of the body oil she had rubbed in with him in mind. Even the gloss on her mouth had barely been disturbed.

She turned her head and looked at the outline of the man she had loved since she was sixteen.

Then Nellie faced the ceiling again, pressed her lips together, and stayed quiet.

She would not ask again.