Her laugh is cut off by the sound of footsteps in the hallway. “Cam, do you want me to make the waff—” My mom’s voicetrails off, and Maddy and I ease apart, but I know it’s too late. I consider what my mom just saw. Maddy’s hands on my face. My hands on her hips. Heads tipped close together. No way could any of that be considered friendly. My eyes meet Maddy’s, full of questions. She gives me a shrug and a little nod as if to say,We’re in it now.
And we sure are, because when I turn to my mom, her face is split with a massive grin, and I can’t help but laugh. “What do we have here?” she asks, looking between Maddy and me, the glee evident in her tone.
Chuckling, I glance between the two women. “Mom, this is Maddy. Maddy, the woman currently looking at you with something bordering on mania is my mom, Lisa.”
“It’s really nice to meet you,” Maddy says, holding out a hand to my mom, who ignores it, wrapping Maddy in a tight hug instead.
“Honey, my son was just looking at you like you are the last woman on earth, so I’m pretty sure the pleasure is all mine.”
Maddy laughs. “He does have a tendency to look at me that way.”
My mom’s face softens, and I know what she’s thinking without her having to say a word. It’s been a long time since I’ve looked at anyone this way. And it has. Because this is what I’ve been waiting for.
She is what I’ve been waiting for.
“I like it,” she says with a smile, and this time she does hold out her hand. “Lisa Lowry. I’m this one’s mom and responsible for only the best parts of him. Anything bad is something he picked up in the locker room.”
Maddy laughs again, and the way I went from a full-blown panic attack to watching the two most important women in my life meet and laugh together is giving me whiplash. “I’ve spent my entire life around athletes, so I know the deal. I’m Maddy Wright.”
“Oh, I know exactly who you are,” my mom says with a grin. “I love watching you on the sidelines of the games. You’re so badass and professional and handle those players like you’ve been doing it your entire life. So…team psychologist dating a player, huh? I bet that’s all kinds of complicated. I think it’s deliciously forbidden. Like the plot of a romance novel.”
“Jesus Christ, Mom,” I mutter.
Maddy shrugs again, glancing up at me. “I mean, she’s not wrong. You’re not wrong,” she says, turning back to my mom. “And it’s way more fun to think of it that way than to think of it as something that could tank my career before that career even really gets started.”
“It won’t,” my mom says immediately. “It absolutely will not tank your career. I know it must be impossibly hard being a woman in men’s professional sports, and how you have to work twice as hard to get the same respect a man gets for just phoning it in. But this?” She waves a hand between us. “This is right, and when it’s right, you find a way. You will both find a way. And if I have to kick any asses, you just let me know. I’ve been taking kickboxing classes for like twenty years, so it would be my moment to shine.”
“How do you know it’s right?” Maddy asks, looking at my mom thoughtfully.
My mom’s eyes soften. “Oh honey, Cam might have been looking at you like you’re the last woman on earth, but you were looking at him like you want to be the answer to every question he has. Like you want to hold onto all his broken pieces.”
When our eyes meet, Maddy’s swim with emotion. “I do,” she says quietly. “That’s exactly what I want.”
Throat tight, I say nothing, just lay a hand on her lower back, the warmth of her skin beneath her sweatshirt my anchor.
“Well then everything is going to be fine,” my mom says with a smile. “I’ll hold off Riley and give you two another couple minutes. Maddy, are you staying for waffles?”
Maddy looks up at me like she isn’t sure how to answer, so I handle it for her. “She’s definitely staying.”
“That’s what I like to hear. Ethan!” my mom calls as she walks back towards the kitchen. “Drop the stick and come set the table.”
“Finally!” Ethan’s voice is a little breathless as he pounds up the basement stairs. “I’ve been starving forhours.”
Maddy and I both laugh, and I turn her to face me, tilting her head up and taking her lips in a longer, slower kiss that has the dregs of my panic melting away. “So…that was my mom.”
She laughs, wrapping her arms around my waist. “I’m familiar with her kind. I’m sorry for just showing up here. I probably should have called first—I figured you would spend the day off with your kids, but then the storm started and I forgot about all of that.”
“No way.” I thread my fingers through her damp hair and press a kiss to her forehead. “I like that you showed up here. You can always show up here. This is where I want you to be.”
Stay forever, is what my brain says, but I manage to keep myself from actually speaking those words into the space between us.
“So…it’s not weird for you that your kids are about to see me in your kitchen?”
I shrug because I want to shout to the whole world that Maddy is mine, but I know we need to exercise a little restraint right now. But maybe that restraint is just for people who aren’t family. And Brian Simpson. “I think we both know Riley already kind of knows because she’s smarter and more intuitive than a thirteen-year-old girl has any right to be.”
Maddy laughs. “As a former intuitive, too-smart-for-her-own-good thirteen-year-old girl, I’d say you’re right about that.”
Running my thumbs along her cheeks, I lean in and kiss her again, so fucking happy she’s here. “Some of your friends and cousins know…and your parents. My mom, now, obviously. Ethan definitely not because ten-year-old boys don’t know anything about anything that isn’t sports or video games unless you shove itdirectly in their face, but I’m okay changing that today if you’re comfortable with it.”
