“I’m fine.”
Biting her bottom lip, she shifted so that she could squint over his shoulder. “I’m not a hundred percent positive, but I’m pretty sure that you’re leaving behind a trail of blood.”
“I’m taking you home,” he bit out, somehow managing to sound even more determined and kind of freaking her out just a bit.
“Jason, that puppy could have really done some dam-”
“It wasn’t a puppy!” he snapped.
“It sounded like a puppy,” she said with a slight shrug.
“It wasn’t a puppy! It was a large, vicious man-eating dog and it could have killed me!”
“Umm, I think the kitten did the most damage,” she felt obligated to point out as they slowly made their way past the house on the corner.
“It wasn’t a kitten!”
“But that’s what Mrs. Briars called it,” she pointed out helpfully.
There was a slight pause before he said, “She lied. It was fucking huge.”
“And the post office worker who stopped to pull the kitten off your leg and called it the cutest kitten that he’d ever seen?” she asked, wondering why he had such a problem accepting the fact that he’d survived a baby animal attack.
“Fucking delusional,” he practically snarled as he tightened his grip around her and continued to hobble towards home, which brought up an interesting question.
“Umm, Jason?”
“Yeah?”
“Which house are we going to live in?”
After another slight pause he asked, “Is there food in your fridge?”
“It’s packed full,” she said, wondering what that had to do with anything.
“Then your house,” he said, making her lips twitch.
“I see,” she murmured thoughtfully as she laid her head against his chest. “Can I ask you something?”
“It wasn’t a kitten!” he snapped defensively.
“Not that,” she said, rolling her eyes in exasperation, because really, this was just getting sad. “I was wondering what you meant about a curse.”
“Oh.”
“Are you going to tell me about it?” she asked, squinting up at his handsome face.
“Are you going to laugh?” he asked after a slight hesitation.
“Of course not!” she said on an outraged gasp, insulted that he thought so little of her. “I would never laugh at anything you told me.”
“Fine,” he said, sighing heavily before he admitted, “I think we’re cursed.”
Chapter 11
“I’m sorry!”
“We’re not speaking,” he reminded her as he focused on the long walkway in front of them that would bring this nightmare to an end.
“I thought you were joking!”
“You can tell the judge that when I file for divorce,” he bit out, ignoring the way that all those damn scratches stung as he forced himself to keep moving. Vicious little bastards, he thought bitterly, half-thinking about going down to the pound and adopting a puppy and kitten of his own just so that they could avenge him.
“Are we really back to this again?” she asked in a tone that he didn’t much care for.
“We never left.”
“Fine, then I get all your Yankees memorabilia in the divorce.”
“Fine, then I get to put a sex clause in our divorce settlement,” he said absently even as he decided to add a cooking clause as well.
“A sex clause?” she asked, still sounding amused and giving him hope that the curse was almost at an end.
“Mmmhmm, a sex clause,” he said with a firm nod as he stumbled his way up the narrow walkway.
“And what exactly would be in this clause of yours?”
He paused to blink down at his beautiful wife. “Sex. Was I not clear about that?”
Her lips twitched as she cleared her throat, most likely to stop herself from laughing. “And, uh, what exactly are the details of this clause?”
“You have to provide me with incredible sex twice in the morning, once after work and three times at night,” he said, liking this idea the more that he thought about it.
Not that he was ever going to give her a divorce. He wasn’t fucking stupid after all. She was the best thing that ever happened to him and he was too fucking greedy to give that up.
“No bi-monthly BJ?” she asked, blinking innocently up at him.
“No,” he said, leaning down so that he could brush his lips against hers. “Those are daily.”
“And how exactly are we going to fit a daily BJ into your schedule?” she asked in a teasing whisper as she brushed her lips against his.
“Oh, I’d make the time,” he promised her with a wink as he came to a stop in front of her house.
He nearly sighed with relief when his eyes locked on that front door. Finally, this nightmare of a honeymoon was over. “Thank God,” he mumbled, shifting Haley in his arms as he walked up the two steps that would save them and-
“Do you have the keys?” Haley asked, earning an unwarranted glare as he carefully shifted her in his arms so that he could reach into his front pocket and-
Shoved his fingers through a large hole in his jeans where his front pocket should be.
“It’s never going to end,” he said on a resigned sigh as he tried to figure out what to do with Haley while he searched for his keys. He considered placing her down on the front step, but he didn’t like the idea of leaving her sitting on the front step in nothing but a dirty, torn blanket.
He considered breaking one of her windows so that he could get in, but with his luck he’d probably lose his arm in the process so he turned around and slowly headed towards the backyard.
“So…this curse,” she reminded him as she reached up to push her glasses back up her nose only to remember with an adorable frown that she wasn’t wearing her glasses and let her hand drop away seconds later.
Slowly exhaling and wishing that he’d never mentioned it, he carefully carried her around the house. “It’s not really a curse,” he explained as he tightened his hold around her and carefully stepped over the white picket fence that marked her property line.
“Then what is it?” Haley asked, shifting closer to him as he tried to balance all his weight and hers on his good leg.
“Well,” he said, pausing so that he could pop the pool gate open with elbow, “it appears that no Bradford can manage to give his wife a honeymoon without something seriously fucked up happening.”
“I see,” she said quietly, looking thoughtful even as she squinted up at him.
“While most families tell ghost stories around the campfire, my family seems to get a kick out of tormenting the next generation with dire warnings of things to come,” he explained with a shrug as he carried her started to carry her over to the lounge chair where he’d seriously fucked everything up only to think better of it and carry her over to the pool.
“And what kind of stories would they tell you exactly?” she asked as he carefully knelt down and placed her on the edge of the pool, moving quickly to grab the blanket out of the way.
“Put your feet in the water,” he murmured as he guided her injured foot into the cool water.