Page 238 of Daddy, Take Me Away
Confession?
I smile, texting her back. I’m beginning to feel like a priest.
Well, I’m going to need more than a Hail Mary, father. I’m stuck up on the cliff with a phone about to die and no flashlight to get back down.
My smile falls. You hurt? I curse, worry burning in my gut.
Does my pride count?
I don’t answer that, just text, I’m on the way.
After grabbing a couple of headband flashlights from the front desk, I start my climb, first tripping over her shoes—or I’m assuming they’re hers—tucked by the opening of the makeshift pathway.
I’ve never done the climb this late and I wish I wasn’t doing it now. The bugs are ridiculous, prehistoric-sized it seems, and fuck, even with the headlamp, it’s hard to see, but I manage to make the climb fairly quickly.
At the top, I turn my head in a sweep of the area. Zoë’s sitting on some rocks, looking embarrassed. Relief floods me.
“I swear I didn’t orchestrate this rescue to get your attention.” She rises from the rocks and heads straight to me, blocking my beam of light with her arm. I click the headlamp to its red night- vision setting so I don’t burn her retinas.
She’s a mess of disheveled clothes, tangled hair and more than a few smudges of dirt on her skin. And it doesn’t bother me one bit.
“Good,” I say with a frown, pulling her into a tight hug to reassure myself she’s okay. “Because the attention you would get wouldn't be pleasant.” I’m only partly teasing. The urge to turn her over my knee and spank her ass for doing this is strong. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking, I needed to get away from the lovebirds that keep following me and get a picture that doesn’t have the two of them kissing in it.”
“Ah.” I end our hug and double check her for injury, noting her bare feet.
“You can start lecturing me now.”
“I should, but I can’t really argue with your reasoning. I’ve just spent four hours of my life, learning everything there is to know about every department in this resort, including housekeeping and how they dispose of the biohazard material they find in rooms, just to avoid my exes.”
I don’t know why I confess this, but I feel a little less weighty when I do. Even in the low light I can see her grimace.
“Exes as in plural?”
“Ex-wife and ex-best friend.”
“Oh.” She cocks her head and I brace myself for questions about what happened.
“Biohazardous materials?”
Her question makes me laugh, both in amusement and relief. “Condoms and bodily fluids.”
“Oh. Ew.”
“Now we need to get out of here before we’re carried off by the mammoth mosquitoes.” I place a headlamp over her curls and point to her feet. “Can you walk like that?”
She gathers a breath and sighs. “I’m going to have to, because a piggyback ride isn’t going to work.”
I toe off my shoes and hand her my socks. “My shoes will only make the climb down more dangerous, but my socks might offer some protection, yeah?”
We head to the path opening, her in my socks, and me holding back the urge to once again spank her ass for this. But it’s definitely not my only urge.
The descent is horrible. A hundred times worse than going up. Maybe because it's darker or maybe because worry is no longer distracting me, only concern over her poor feet.
“I’m reconsidering jumping now,” she huffs after a particularly difficult stumble down a ninety-degree angle. I grab her hand, helping her down the next steep drop.
“Why didn’t you? Seems like something an adrenaline junkie might do.”
