Canon (Klein Brothers 2)

However, yet again, because I was a wife now, I held back from hitting him with the bottle of champagne I was passed as I walked off the dance floor.

“Are you okay?” Dariah whispered as I reached where she was standing with Giselle and my other sisters. From the expressions on their faces, it’d been as bad as it’d felt.

“The measurement of being okay is relative,” I informed her as I took a swig straight from the champagne bottle. “However, I feel it’s safe just to say no and leave it at that.”

Gently pulling my hand toward her, Asia looked at it and winced. “You hit the ground pretty hard, but I’m sure I saw your finger bend backward.”

I didn’t tell her it was my other hand that’d taken the brunt, and I also didn’t dare to look at it myself. Injuries like that were like paper cuts—if you looked at them and acknowledged their presence, they became the most painful mishaps in the world.

Because this was my wedding day… ah, fuck it. Who was I kidding? Being married didn’t automatically mean I was mature. I’d give anything to let Damian attack him or to twat him with a gigantic dildo again. Hell, I’d even do it in front of all our guests, smiling for the cameras as I thwacked him with it.

Still, because I loved him, I sucked it up, and when the knife was passed to me to cut the cake… well, I used it for its intended purpose. Granted, he looked somewhat nervous every time it came within stabbing distance, which he damn well should have, but I held back.

And when I finally put it down so I could smash the cake into his face with a little bit more force than necessary—even though we’d sworn not to do the cake-in-face shit—he let it go, and smiled at me like I was the cutest thing in the world.

We left the reception earlier than intended, but mainly because of the pain I was in by that point. You know, I didn’t even threaten him verbally when I was sitting on the bed in the ER, with a doctor manipulating my ring finger back into place so they could splint it. Although, just before that, while they’d been cutting off my engagement and brand-spanking-new wedding ring off, I may have glared at him.

Once I was splinted, the nurse handed me back my rings with an apologetic smile.

“I’ll burn the video,” he mumbled as we walked back to the car, the chauffeur sitting like nothing was amiss in the limousine decorated with ‘just married’ paraphernalia in the parking lot.

“Like that one video is all that exists,” I scoffed, tugging on the sling that felt like it was choking me. Elevating my hand was a must for the swelling, but did it need to be pressed against my windpipe?

“I’ll get them all,” Canon promised as he opened the door for me.

Sliding into my seat, I fiddled with the adjustment thingy to extend the strap slightly on the sling. “The Townsends and your brothers were there. You’ll never erase it completely.”

Bless his heart, he tried to make it up to me. He had my rings repaired, and he put both the sling and the metal splint into the wedding memories box. Apparently, they held sentimental value to him. He even tried to get a clip of us successfully doing the lift during one of our practice sessions added into the video.

But every year, on our anniversary, he made sure he never had his back to me.

And with good reason. By the time I got revenge on him, it’d been fourteen years since the ‘incident,’ but I made sure it was a good one.

Until then, though, I enjoyed our lives together. Canon held me when we laughed, held me when I was sad, and celebrated with me when we got the call after we got approved for adoption two years later.

And knowing how safe I was with him, I asked him hold my hands above my head when we were having sex. The proof of how deep the trust and love could be between a man and a woman, that I’d been so confident I’d never have, was now ours.

Doing that would have meant nothing to some, but I saw it as proof of how perfect we were for each other.

He was my one.

CHAPTER 18

Canon

“Mr. Klein, I was hoping to get through to your wife, but she’s not answering her phone,” Mrs. Spring, the woman overseeing our adoption, said as I held the phone between my ear and shoulder and read over the menu for this week.

The new Kleins in New Orleans was doing well, but it meant I had to squeeze jobs like these in, instead of taking my time with them like we’d been able to previously.