Canon (Klein Brothers 2)

With that assurance, we’d left her to it and were walking back to our house while Naomi filled us in on her daughter’s latest dramas.

“So, Shanti was discussing jobs with us. It’s hard to believe she graduates in just over a year, but—“

“Stop!” Jeremy shouted, pulling me back just as I was about to put my foot down and alerting me to the baby snake on the path.

Seeing the weird lump on its tail, I croaked, “Is that- Is that a rattlesnake?”

It didn’t look like the stereotypical rattlers, but the tail had the potential to turn into the one that made noises which scared the shit out of me. It also had a tear in its stomach I was pretty sure shouldn’t be there.

“Yeah. It looks like it’s been pecked by something.”

That’s when the idea hit me. Well, so long as Jeremy was okay with visiting it here until it was healed and ready to set free. My revenge on my husband for the dance and dropping me during it was now a two person job. I needed him to have my back until the snake healed enough for the plan to work fully.

Which I hoped was soon.

God, I hated snakes, but Canon hated them even more.

Two days later…

It happened almost like clockwork. My husband pulled into the garage just before midnight and walked right up to the terrarium placed next to the entrance to the kitchen.

It was the yelp that made me smile, but the deep scream followed by, “What the fuck is that?” was far from shoddy.

I wanted to dance and laugh, but dancing was what had gotten him into this, so I made sure to keep my expression blank as I waited for him to come running into the living room.

“There’s—“ he squeaked, pointing behind him. “Snake. Anaconda!”

“Oh, you mean Teddy? Nah, he’s a baby, so all he wants is love.”

“Teddy?” He whispered. “You called a Python Teddy?”

“Sure did, but he’s a baby rattlesnake. We found him the other day, and Jeremy had to glue his side back together because he’d been bitten by something. He’s better now—thank you, Jesus—but they need to be near sounds and scents that are familiar to them, or they go feral. Because we found him right outside the house, I figured he needed a new momma and daddy, and we’re just the right people for the job.”

I smiled sweetly and added, “Drew and York love him. In fact, they’re the ones who named him.”

He still argued Teddy’s stay with us—man, did he argue—but in the end, happy wife, happy life, and all that.

Canon had no clue that looking after Teddy was like having my nails pulled out for me. I deliberately wouldn’t go into the garage every morning until Jeremy had come to make sure he was still in his aquarium thingy.

Neither Drew nor York was scared of the little guy and listened to every bit of advice Jeremy gave them. I drew the line at either of them putting their hands in there, though. No, Jeremy knew what he was doing, and he knew all about antivenom and keeping calm if something happened. He could do the touching side of it all, which he did.

As soon as Jeremy confirmed Teddy was good to go and took him away somewhere safe that he could grow and terrorize other humans, I finally danced again. Him, Drew, and York took the tank somewhere safe and released him there.

I might not have liked the little guy, but I hoped he got to grow up to be a big rattlesnake, who didn’t bite people and had lots of non-biting babies with the love of his life. Maybe he’d even meet another male rattlesnake and they’d shake each other’s maracas? Whatever way it turned out for Teddy, I wished him nothing but the best—far away from me.

Now I was at the part of the ultimate revenge for the years of torture seeing that damned video of the dance at our wedding had caused me.

Here’s where Canon’s karma came into it—I didn’t tell him Teddy was gone. Instead, I brought the glass snake house thing inside and put it in the laundry room, with the lid left slightly open.

The next morning, when he went to dump his dirty clothes and saw it, he screamed like a little girl and ran out of the house. No, he didn’t leave us there with a snake potentially on the loose in our home. The boys had baseball practice early that morning, and I had an early client, so we’d left an hour before we usually did, so it was just him in there at the time, anyway.

After a panicked call, in which he said we were moving in with his parents until the snake had been caught, I hung up with a huge grin on my face.