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“I know it’s not.” I set down my whisk. “Tell you what, why don’t you text your coach? Say you’re going a little stir-crazy and you want to go out. Ask him what’s safe for you, that still counts as rest.”
Spencer wandered off muttering, in search of his phone. When he came back, he was looking much brighter.
“Coach says a walk is fine, might be good for my leg. So, I was thinking…”
“Not a good sign.”
He poked out his tongue at me. “Yeah, yeah, shut up. I was thinking tomorrow, we’ll go for that walk. Around the zoo, maybe, or the aquarium if it’s rainy. We could do all the tourist stuff we’ve never done.”
I shook my head. “We’re not tourists. And that’s more than a walk.”
Spencer came up behind me and slipped his arms around my waist. “Why should the fun stuff be just for tourists? We’re the ones who live here. Shouldn’t we have fun too?”
I twisted around to plant a kiss on his cheek. “It’s still a whole lot of walking.”
“So we’ll take it slow.” He pushed my hair to one side to trail his lips down my neck. “We’ll see a few animals, then we’ll have a picnic. Then we’ll go do that, what’s his name, Walter White escape room.”
That got me chuckling. “Walter White escape room?”
“From Breaking Bad. Come on, it sounds corny.”
“And that’s supposed to convince me?”
“What, it’s not working?” Spencer puffed a soft breath at the shell of my ear. I melted against him, skin rough with gooseflesh.
“That’s working,” I said. “That’s working real nice.”
“Then, screw this strawberry bullshit. Let’s go to your bedroom.”
“No, that’s not fair.”
Spencer pressed a kiss to the crest of my shoulder. His tongue darted out to tease at my skin. I leaned into his touch, and in that moment I knew whatever Spencer wanted, Spencer would get. Kangaroos, crocodiles, cheesy-ass escape rooms. I’d do it all for him, all that and then some.
“Come on,” he said, and took me by the hand.
I let him lead me to my bedroom and to my bed.
Spencer’s day out dawned bright and perfect, the sun slanting in through the gaps in my curtains. We’d dozed off together in a spill of my pillows and woke up together with my hair in his face. Spencer brushed it off and kissed me on the nose.
“Leon up yet?”
I yawned. “I doubt it. He came in around five, so I’d say he’ll sleep late.”
“Good. I’ll just shower, then we can slip out.”
“Wait, are we really?—”
He wagged his finger. “You promised.”
I’d done no such thing, but I went along anyway. A day out sounded good after two stuck inside, and a whole day with Spencer? I wasn’t complaining. I got showered myself and picked out a cute outfit, and we made a whole joke of sneaking past Leon. But as it turned out, he wasn’t our problem.
We got to the zoo right around nine, and got out of the truck, and this goose strutted up. And I don’t know what its problem was — maybe it was a Red Wings fan — but it caught sight of Spencer and puffed itself up.
“Check out that goose,” he said.
“Why is it staring?”
It made a deep gronking sound and shook its tail side to side. Spencer reached out to it.
