Page 11 of Penalty Kiss
Recognition hits like a sledgehammer—table seven, wrong questions, cash payment, no name for his order. Not a traveling salesman. A hunter.
"Taralyn," he says between his panting, and my blood turns to ice water.
Not my name. My real name.
"Your father wants you home."
I kick him in the balls.
Chapter 3
Alley Heat
Cam
Cedar Falls at 10 PM is the kind of quiet that makes city boys like me paranoid. It's so peaceful it's almost aggressive.
My rented convertible purrs through Cedar Falls like it's apologizing for being too loud in a library.
Top down, the pine-scented mountain summer night air fill my lungs. It's a far cry from the diesel exhaust and honking chaos of downtown Houston. My concussion-rattled brain counts it as the first win I’ve had in weeks.
I grip the steering wheel and resist the urge to floor it just to feel the rush I was built for. Speed. Control. The rush of moving faster than my problems can follow.
Cognitive rest,I remind myself as I vaguely remember the lecture from my little brother, the trauma surgeon, about “respecting the healing process" like my brain is some delicate flower that needs to be watered with meditation and herbal tea.
That’s before he hit me with a knock-out punch of “Your brain is broken."
Brutal. Accurate. And exactly why I'm here instead of in Houston, pretending I can still think fast enough to track a power play without my neurons misfiring like a dial-up modem.
The thing is, I should be grateful. The doctors said full recovery is possible. I've got a place to heal, friends who give a damn, and enough money in the bank to take all the time I need.
Just the occasional dizziness. Fainting spells. Forgetfulness… and—what else? Hell. Exactly.
But gratitude feels a lot like surrender when you're used to being the guy who makes things happen.
I'm supposed to be the chaos engine, not the broken-down carnival ride parked in the corner.
The irony isn't lost on me. I built my reputation on chaos, on being the loud one, the magnetic force that pulled energy out of thin air and turned it into momentum. Now I'm here to learn how to be quiet. How to let my brain rest instead of pushing it until it screams.
A new message from Mom flashes on the car’s dashboard. She's been sending me Korean phrases all day—little anchors, she calls them. Things to hold onto when the fog rolls in.
Sarang-hae, I love you.
Simple. Direct. The kind of truth that cuts through the noise.
The GPS cheerfully announces my destination is ahead, and I spot the familiar silhouette of Sugar Mill Lofts rising against the dusky sky.
That's when I see her.
A woman jogging down the sidewalk, all flowing hair and determined rhythm. Even from a distance, I can tell she's got curves that would make a saint reconsider his vows. Her stride hooks me in—confident, purposeful, comfortable in her own skin. The kind of woman who'd probably laugh at a guy trying to impress her with car horsepower and hockey stats.
Intriguing.
Then I see him.
The shadow about twenty feet behind her, moving with the wrong kind of intention.
My concussion-addled brain might be running slow, but my instincts are still sharp as fresh steel. This isn't a coincidental jogging partner. I've seen enough predators on the ice to recognize the behavior.
