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Back The Long and Winding Road
Chapters (31)
  1. The Long and Winding Road
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. Prologue: Or, Where Bear Answers the Door
  6. PAST
  7. 1. Where Bear Makes the Wrong Assumption
  8. 2. Where Bear Finds Out
  9. 3. Where Bear Makes a Decision
  10. 4. Where Bear Learns the Art of Breathing
  11. 5. Where Bear Has Bro-Time with Creed
  12. PRESENT
  13. 6. Where Bear Attends the Most Awkward Homecoming Ever
  14. 7. Where Bear Tells Tyson Everything
  15. 8. Where Bear Makes a Promise
  16. 9. Where Bear Goes to Lamaze Class
  17. 10. Where Bear Gets Advice About His Sex Life
  18. 11. Where Bear and Otter Role-Play at a Hotel Bar
  19. 12. Where Bear Faces the Reality of Married Life
  20. 13. Where Bear Sees Everything Change
  21. FUTURE
  22. 14. The Long and Winding Road
  23. Epilogue: Or, Otter’s Perspective, As It Were
  24. Coda
  25. No. Absolutely not. No way.
  26. More from TJ Klune
  27. Readers love the Bear, Otter, and the Kid Chronicles by TJ Klune
  28. About the Author
  29. By TJ Klune
  30. Visit Dreamspinner Press
  31. Copyright

Go on dates! We get tired, don’t we? We work long hours, we have to come home and take care of the kids. We make dinner, help with homework, get everyone ready for bed. And by the time we’re finished, we’re exhausted. But it helps to step away for a little while. To go back to when it was just the two of you, when you didn’t have those little bloodsuckers that want nothing more than to tear your sanity down piece by piece until you wonder what would happen if you left them at a fire station and then moved to Nebraska and lived under an assumed name while working in a cornfield. Dates are a good way to avoid having to do all of that. Go to the movies, or go to a quiet dinner. Or better yet, spice it up with a little role-playing! Pretend to be strangers who meet in a hotel bar and are cheating on their spouses with this person they just met. Trust me, you won’t regret it when you can’t keep your hands off your “one-night stand” while riding the elevator up to your hotel room.

***DON’T ACCIDENTALLY get so caught up in the role-play that you end up going up to the hotel room with the wrong person. Because that would be actually cheating, and cheating is a terrible thing, and anybody who actually cheats deserves to fall into a live volcano and melt in magma.

I slam the laptop shut.

“I’m not doing any of that,” I growl in the dark.

11. Where Bear and Otter Role-Play at a Hotel Bar

THIS IS the stupidest thing we’ve ever done.

No. I’m being serious.

This is the fucking stupidest thing we’ve ever done.

And yet, for some reason, I’m more turned on than I’ve been in a long time.

And we haven’t even done anything yet. He’s not even here.

I’m sitting at a bar in a fancy hotel on the boardwalk in Seafare. It’s only been a few days since Anna had basically told me that my marriage was falling apart, and I blame her entirely for the situation I’ve found myself in.

It probably hadn’t helped that when I’d told Otter about what I wanted to do, he’d stared at me for a long time without speaking. Then he’d leaned up, kissed me on the forehead, and told me that I really should stop listening to other people talking about our relationship. But then he’d given me a really fucking sloppy blowjob in the kitchen, and when I came on his neck after he jacked me off, he said he was going to role-play the shit out of this. I had stood there, knees weak, slumped against the wall, mind mostly mush, agreeing to whatever he wanted.