Page 63 of Penalty Kiss
"You sound like someone who's healing."
The kitchen feels too sharp, too crowded with everything we just threw at each other.
Cam exhales hard, bare chest rising and falling, then threads his fingers through mine. He tugs me toward the living room, boxer shorts slung low on his hips. My robe flares as I follow, the belt cinched tight against skin that still remembers his hands.
The couch sighs under our weight, cushions pulling us closer than pride should allow. For a moment we just breathe, my thigh brushing his, the heat of his skin bleeding through cotton.
"I don’t like fighting with you," he says finally, his voice rough.
"Then stop fighting," I whisper back.
He cups my face and kisses me deep—hungry, unapologetic, tasting like surrender and possession all at once. The robe slips at my shoulder; his hand steadies it, then me. My fingers grab the waistband of his shorts, pulling him closer, as if we could kiss the argument out of existence.
I was stroking him through his shorts when his phone buzzes on the coffee table. The screen lights with the photo of a beautiful Korean woman with warm eyes and Cam’s smile.
I pull back just enough to breathe, lips swollen, robe askew. "Your mom?"
He nods, reluctant, thumb still stroking my cheek. "She’ll want to meet you."
"Then answer it."
He swipes to accept, and suddenly I'm looking at Hana Wilder—elegant, concerned, and clearly running on maternal worry and caffeine.
"Cameron-ah," she says, switching effortlessly to Korean. Her voice is soft but carries the kind of warmth that could melt glaciers.
He responds in the same language, his voice gentling in a way that makes my heart squeeze. I don't understand the words,but I understand the love—the worry wrapped in affection, the questions cushioned with care.
She notices me in the frame and switches back to English. "And you must be Tara. I've heard so much about you."
"From Levi, I'm guessing," I say, acutely aware of my post-kiss hair and the robe I'm clutching.
"From my son's voice when he mentions you." Her smile is knowing. "It changes when he says your name."
Heat floods my cheeks. Cam shifts beside me, probably mortified that his mother is analyzing his vocal patterns for romantic attachment.
"Eomma," he says, a gentle warning.
"What? I'm just saying hello to the woman who's clearly making my son happy." She studies me through the screen with the shrewd gaze of a mother who's learned to read between lines. "Though I hear you're both dealing with some difficulties."
"Nothing I can't handle," Cam says.
"Together," I correct, meeting his eyes. "Nothing we can't handle together."
Hana's smile softens. "Good. Because he thinks he has to carry the world alone sometimes. His father's influence—all that Danish stoicism and clinical discipline. They forget that asking for help isn't the same as admitting defeat."
"My mom worries," Cam explains to me, and his fingers find mine on the cushion.. "She thinks my humor is just a bandage over a wound."
It's a raw confession, mirroring my own use of sharp wit as armor. The vulnerability in his voice makes me want to wrap him up and protect him from every doubt that's ever lived in his head.
"Sometimes it is," Hana says gently. "But that doesn't make it wrong. Healing happens differently for everyone."
After she hangs up with promises to visit soon and threats to cook enough food to feed half of Cedar Falls, Cam and I sit in comfortable silence.
"She's going to love you," he says eventually.
"How can you tell?"
"She didn't switch to full Korean, which is what she does when she disapproves of something. And she smiled with her eyes, not just her mouth."
