Page 75 of The Falcon and the Foe

“I’m not going to use my son as an excuse to play hooky.”

“We have to deal with so much shit as single parents. Can’t we use it to our advantage once or twice?”

His argument lodged itself in my mind, wearing down my resistance.

“Why are you trying to be such a bad influence on me, huh?” I pecked him on the lips.

“It’s a beautiful fall day out. You’re here unexpectedly. This happened. We’re alive. Sometimes, life calls out for us to stray from the routine, and you have to seize the moment, like how you love to seize my ass.”

“I—uh.”

Cal rolled over and spanked himself.

My to-do list popped in my head and gauged that nothing needed to be done ASAP. I’d never taken the afternoon off. And as with having sex in a soundproof booth, there was a first for everything.

“Sure.”

Cal sat up and did a double-take. “Really?”

“Really. Let’s be truants.”

Cal cheered a cherubic fist in the air like we were actually ditching class. “Nice! What should we do? Do you want to grab a drink?”

Since this might be the only time I take the afternoon off, I wanted to make the most efficient use of these hours. “I have a better idea.”

23

CAL

Iexpected Russ’s idea for playing hooky to involve a drink somewhere. Maybe a baseball game. Not dangling from a cable in the middle of the woods.

Russ didn’t tell me he was taking us to a ziplining course until we were on the road—on the highway specifically, so I couldn’t jump out of a moving car. The sky was a radiant blue, nary a cloud to be found—gorgeous weather for plummeting to one’s death.

“You nervous?” Russ asked. We waited in line outside a partially dilapidated hut to be fitted for harnesses and helmets.

“A little. We’re only, y’know, dangling our bodies hundreds of feet off the ground and sliding across a clothesline.”

“We’re not that high. Airplanes are hundreds of feet off the ground.”

“Are they going to run into us?”

He tipped his head, refusing to humor my lack of spatial knowledge.

“We’re next.” He gave my ass a pat to move me forward, sending a blip of pleasure to my dick. I didn’t know how it still had the energy to get hard when we’d fooled around once more in the shower.

“You go first.”

“Fine.” He waltzed into the hut, where a zipline guide in a ratty T-shirt and cargo shorts waited in front of a wall of protective gear.

I had to chuckle as Russ stepped forward. He wore his button-down shirt tucked into a pair of my jeans, which were two sizes too big on him. Jeans were better for ziplining than khakis, he surmised. It was as if he were stuck in a body swap movie. Yet there was something weirdly intimate about seeing him in my clothes.

The guide fitted Russ for his harness, pulling the straps tight around his thighs. The harness made it very difficult not to stare at his crotch. The walnut-shaped helmet plopped on his head made him look like a dork—an adorable dork, but a dork all the same.

“How do I look?” Russ hooked his thumbs into his chest harness.

Cute. Extremely, unabashedly cute.

“You look secure.”

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