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CHAPTER ONE Overly Loaded The first thing you notice about Devante Holloway is what he doesn't do. He doesn't scan the parking lot the way…

nervous men do. Doesn't stand outside his car adjusting himself in the window reflection, pretending to check his phone, performing arrival for an audience he invented. He steps out of that Dodge Charger, a hundred and eighty-seven thousand miles on it, engine ticking like it's counting down to something it ain't telling nobody about, and he just stands there. Planted. From the way his chocolate skin sat smooth and flawless over a frame that was built like somebody sculpted him out of marble and dipped him in dark cocoa butter, to the thick eyelashes that framed a set of deep brown eyes that made you forget what you were about to say before you even opened your mouth. His short haircut was lined up so precise you could set a ruler against his tape and it would lay flat, and those thick spinning waves looked like they had been brushed three hundred times that morning and were still holding every single rotation. Strong jawline. Teeth white enough to make a dentist jealous. And his facial features were so handsome that you had to look twice just to make sure he was real and not something somebody had photoshopped into the parking lot. And that was before you even got to the six-four frame that carried all of it. The August heat pressing down on Sandy Springs like God left the oven on and went to sleep, and this man standing in the middle of it like he personally decided to allow it. He threw the duffle bag over one shoulder and walked toward the field like he owned every blade of grass on it and was just letting everybody else borrow the space. The ankle monitor underneath his left sock caught the afternoon light for half a second when he reached back into the car. Green LED blinking steady, reminding the federal government that Devante Holloway was still inside their radius, still complying, still theirs for nine more months. He didn't seem bothered by it one bit. He just adjusted the duffle bag on his shoulder and headed toward the sounds of children screaming and whistles blowing like he had already been here a thousand times and the field just hadn't caught up yet. ★ ★ ★ The Sandy Springs Athletic Complex was loud in that way that only children could produce when nobody in charge had figured out how to actually be in charge. Twenty-something eight-year-olds were running every direction at once with their cleats tearing up the grass, somebody was always crying, and somebody else was always laughing way too hard at the one who was crying. Coach Mike saw Vante coming from across the field and damn near jogged over to meet him at the sideline. His polo shirt had completely surrendered to the sweat about forty minutes ago and his whistle was dangling from his neck like it had retired from active duty. "Man, I am glad to see you." Coach Mike wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and let out a breath that sounded like it came from the bottom of his soul. "These kids ain't listened to a single word I said since we started. Not one. I blew this whistle so many times my lips are numb." Vante set his duffle on the sideline bench and surveyed the chaos unfolding in front of him. He read the field the way he used to read a defense at nineteen years old at Florida State when NFL scouts were in the stands and a 4.38 forty-yard dash time had agents calling his grandmother's house at seven in the morning. Three kids in the back were running like the ground owed them something. Two more had footwork that just needed somebody to show it where to go. The rest were running on pure joy and no technique, which at eight years old was exactly where they were supposed to be. "I got 'em," Vante said, and then he walked onto that field with nothing but his hands and clapped them together twice. Sharp and heavy and final, the kind of sound that didn't ask for attention but snatched it out the air before anybody had a chance to decide if they wanted to give it up or not. Every single kid on that field stopped moving. Even the ones who had been running wild for forty-five straight minutes froze like somebody had hit pause on the whole operation. "Line up," Vante said, and his voice carried across that field in a way that let every child out there know that whoever had been running things before was clocked out, and the man standing in front of them right now was not the one to test. They lined up so fast you would have thought they had been practicing it all day. Coach Mike stood there with his mouth half open and the expression of a man who had just watched somebody do in two seconds what he couldn't accomplish in damn near an hour. He didn't say a single word. He just picked his water bottle up off the bench and stepped all the way back. ★ ★ ★ Porsha was sitting in her folding chair on the sideline with her Yeti cup that was low-key filled with strawberry Mimosa because Tuesday practice absolutely required it, and her laptop was propped open on her knees like she was handling business even though she had not looked at that screen in fifteen minutes. Porsha could see the whole field from her folding chair, and she had been doing what Porsha always did in new environments, which was cataloguing every person in sight, filing their faces and their energy into a mental database for later. And then he walked onto that field and her body made a decision her brain had absolutely no part of. Her thighs pressed together in that folding chair. Her stomach dropped the way it dropped when you go over a hill too fast and your body knows something before you do. Between her legs she felt a pulse so sudden and so exact that she shifted in her seat and crossed one leg hard over the other just to press against it because Lord have mercy what was that. She had her phone up like she was checking her calendar. The camera was already open. Deja leaned over from her own chair, squinting toward the field. "I see kids doing jumping jacks. What am I supposed to be..." She stopped talking mid-sentence because her eyes finally landed on the man leading the jumping jacks and the rest of her words just evaporated somewhere between her throat and her lips. "Mmhmm." Porsha took a slow sip from her Yeti. "Now you see what I'm talking about." "Who is that?" Deja asked it barely above a whisper like she was scared somebody might hear her looking. "New assistant coach. That is literally all I know about him and I already need to sit down even though I'm already sitting down." Porsha had her phone out now with the camera open, zooming in like she was on assignment for National Geographic documenting a rare and endangered species of fine-ass man. She tapped the shutter three times fast and checked the shots. The black compression shirt he had on was soaked through with sweat and hugging every ridge and cut of muscle across his chest and stomach like the fabric itself had caught feelings and was just trying to hold on as tight as it could. Blue-black tattoos covered his throat and disappeared underneath the collar. But the gray sweatpants were what had her questioning every single decision she had ever made in her entire adult life. They didn't hide a damn thing. Not one solitary thing that the Lord had blessed this man with. The print was right there on the left side, heavy and thick and pressing against that cotton like it had its own plans for the afternoon. Porsha zoomed in tighter and her eyes stretched so wide you could see the whites from across the parking lot. She lowered her voice to the register of a woman who had just witnessed something sacred. "That young nigga overly loaded with dick." Deja almost spit her water all over her own lap. "Porsha, we are at our children's football practice." "I said what I said and I stand behind every word. I'm a married woman with working eyes and right now these eyes are doing the Lord's work. Tell me I'm lying." "I'm not involved in this." Deja turned her whole body away but Porsha caught her looking right back at the field about four seconds later and they both knew the lie for what it was. "I need his name, his zodiac sign, his age, and his relationship status," Porsha said. "In that exact order." "What you need is Jesus." "Jesus is the one who sculpted that man's body so clearly Jesus wants me to appreciate the artwork." Porsha took another long pull from the Yeti and did not take her eyes off that field for one single second. Comment below if you want to read this entire book. Hit like, heart, smile, thumbs down, thumbs up. Talk to me. And share it on your page if you can. Lol. Text ColeHartSig to 833-617-0182

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