Page 132 of The Way Back Home

I brace both hands on his chest and start to move.

Rolling my hips in tight circles that make us both groan, finding the angle that sends sparks up my spine. Ryowoon’s hands grip my thighs, holding on, his eyes locked on my face with an expression that makes my stomach flip. I pick up the pace, lifting and dropping, and the sound of our bodies meeting fills the small room. His cock drags against the spot inside me that makes my vision swim and I cry out, bowing forward, my forehead dropping to his shoulder.

“Fuck,” he rasps, his hips snapping up to meet mine, the impact jolts through me so hard I bite down on his collarbone. He curses again, grabs my ass with both hands and pulls me down as he drives up and the rhythm turns ragged and desperate. I’m riding him and he’s fucking up into me and I can’t think, can’t breathe, can only feel the clenching heat building at the base of my spine.

His hand wraps around my cock, strokes in time with his thrusts, and I’m gone. I come with a stuttered shout, spilling over his fist and across his stomach, my body locking tight around him. Ryowoon groans and bucks up once, twice, and then I feel the hot flood of him inside me, the pulse and throb as he empties himself.

I collapse onto his chest. His arms come around me, crossing over my back, holding me against him. His heart pounds beneath my ear, fast and uneven, gradually slowing. My own matches it. His lips press against the top of my head.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he murmurs into my hair. “I’m done running.”

I close my eyes and hold on.

Two days later my mom arrives with lunch in a stack of containers that suggests she’s cooking for an army again. She sets them on the counter and looks around the store with wide eyes, turning in a slow circle.

“My goodness,” she breathes, touching one of the freshly painted shelves. “You two really did it.” She runs her fingertips along the edge, peers at the new lighting, the gleaming freezer cases, the polished counter. “Mrs. Nam wouldn’t recognize the place.”

“She’d find something to complain about,” I say, and my mom laughs because it’s true.

I watch Ryowoon through the back door as he hauls in the last of the inventory boxes from the truck, stacking them in the courtyard. Yuro orbits him, tail going, nose jammed into the corner of every box as it comes off the truck bed, sniffing furiously. Ryowoon nudges the dog away with his knee, muttering, and Yuro just circles back and shoves his nose into the next one. Ryowoon looks down at him, shakes his head, and I catch the corner of his mouth lifting before he bends to scratch behind Yuro’s ears.

“Mom,” I say. “Sit down a second.”

She looks at me. At my tone. She pulls a stool out from behind the counter and sits, folding her hands in her lap, knowing a conversation is coming and prepared to listen.

I sit across from her. Through the back door I can see Ryowoon stack the last box onto the pile, dust off his hands on his jeans. Yuro sits beside him, tongue out, looking up at him with open adoration.

“We’re keeping the store,” I say. “Both of us.”

My mom nods slowly. Her eyes move from me to the view of Ryowoon in the courtyard and back.

“I’m quitting my job in Seoul,” I tell her. “Selling my apartment.”

She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t gasp or clutch her chest or do any of the things I half braced for. She just looks at me with quiet, patient attention. She nods again.

“I thought that might be coming,” she says. The corner of her mouth curves, warm and a little sad and mostly knowing. “I think Mrs. Nam probably saw this exact outcome when she left it to you.”

The old schemer. I smile despite myself.

“Where are you going to live?” my mom asks. Her eyes sweep the small store, the narrow hallway that leads to the single room in the back. “I know you two are close, but it’ll be cramped here for both of you. You know you can always stay at the house.”

I shake my head. Take a breath. This is the part that matters more than the job or the apartment or the store.

“No,” I say. “I’m staying here. With Ryowoon.”

My mom raises her brows. “Both of you? In that little room?”

“Mom.” I hold her eyes. My pulse kicks up, but I keep my voice steady. “I love him.” I don’t look away or flinch, don’t try to sugarcoat it. “Have since I was a teenager. Maybe always have.”

She blinks. Her lips part, close. Her eyes search my face, and I watch her finally understanding. It looks more like watching dawn come up over the harbor, the way the grey thins and color seeps in gradually until the whole sky has changed.

“Oh,” she says softly. Then, with more weight, more certainty: “Oh. I see.”

She looks past me, through the back door, at Ryowoon in the courtyard lifting a box onto the shelf he built against the outer wall. Her gaze lingers there for a long moment and her face goes through a series of emotions. Surprise, recognition, a flickering reel of memories reshuffling themselves. The two boys who shared a bathtub. Who shared a bed whenever one of them was hurting. Who never went anywhere without the other for eighteen years.

Her eyes come back to mine, overbright. “That’s what happened,” she says quietly. “That summer. When you came back from school.” She’s fitting pieces together, rearranging them into the picture that was always underneath. “Something happened between you two.”

I nod. Can’t speak for a second.