The Spiral Down (The Fall Up #2)(86)

He lifted my hand and gave it a tug until our rolling chairs collided; our mouths quickly followed. When we came up for air, he tipped his forehead to mind and said, “We need to call the school and let them know what happened. I won’t stand for him being bullied by some little shit who’s probably learning this crap from his homophobic parents.”

My eyebrows shot up in surprise, and I chewed on the inside of my cheek to stifle a laugh. “Did you just call a kid a little shit?”

“He put his hands on my son!” he defended.

I patted his leg. “All right. Calm down there, papa bear. We’ll hit up the principal first thing in the morning.”

“Good, but in the meantime, we need to get in there and teach them that you can’t cure ignorance with violence. They need to understand that love is love. Between a man and a woman, a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. And, babe, I know you consider yourself gay, but you know how I feel about labels. I sure as hell don’t want the boys growing up thinking it’s okay to cast them on others. This is our opportunity to teach them tolerance and acceptance.”

Yeah. I’d lucked out big time with Evan.

I smiled. “You’re incredible, you know that?”

He nodded, punctuating it with a kiss. “So you’ve mentioned.”

“Sooo…” I drawled. “Just so we’re clear, after we give the boys this talk and they go to sleep, we can still be gay in bed, right?”

He glared.

“It’s a valid question! This sexy, protective side of you is doing some seriously dirty things to me.”

Maintaining his stoic expression, he released me and stood from his chair.

I ogled his ass as he walked away.

Just before he rounded the corner, he paused and looked over his shoulder, his eyes filled with heat—the good kind. “If you hurry up and get your ass in the house and take my back on this, I’ll do some seriously dirty things to you tonight.”

I smiled impossibly wide and made a show of scrambling from my chair.

He laughed with wild abandon as I jogged in his direction. When I got close enough, he tossed his arm around my shoulders and kissed my temple.

“I love you.”

Smiling, I shoved my hand in his back pocket and gratuitously groped his ass. “I love you too.”





The End