“Yeah,” he grunted. “Your stuff will cause you to have diabetes later in life, and mine won’t.”
I flipped him off. “I feel like I’m getting reprimanded every time you look at me when I put something into the cart.”
“That’s because you’re eating unhealthy. Your body needs proper nutrition to run at optimal performance. You’re feeding it junk,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m doing just fine. But, just to let you know, I have a sweet tooth. It’s something you’re going to have to get over. And if you give me that judgy look every single time I eat a Twinkie in your presence, I’m going to have to throat punch you.”
The chuckle that left him was sexy as hell.
I crossed my arms and glared at him.
“That was lazy,” Jonah muttered.
At first, I thought he was talking to me, but then I turned to find him staring at the woman that had been perusing the shelves behind me.
“What?” the woman hedged.
I could tell that she was embarrassed by the way her face was flushing with guilt.
“Walk your happy ass back to the cold section and put that back,” he ordered. “It doesn’t take much time or skill. You should be fine with the IQ you obviously bring to the table.”
My mouth thinned as I tried to hold the laughter at bay.
In the time that I’d been married to Jonah—a whole, blessed five days—I’d learned a lot about him.
One, he snored. Loudly.
Two, he was short with everyone and everything—even me in the mornings. But only in the mornings when he first woke up and didn’t have his coffee. Nine times out of ten, or the five out of seven days that I’d woken up next to him, he’d been in a bad mood until he’d either A, gotten his coffee or B, gotten his other fix—me.
Three, he was honestly one of the greatest men that I’d ever met in my life, and that was saying something because I’d grown up with some great ones.
The woman sneered and snatched up the meat that she’d tried to stick on the shelf with the candy and stomped away.
Jonah turned to start pushing our items closer to the cashier who was finally able to help us.
And when we got out to Jonah’s truck, I was chuckling softly to myself.
“You just say what you mean, don’t you?” I teased. “Am I going to have to learn how to protect myself?”
He scoffed and started to put the groceries into the backseat of the truck.
When everything was in, he turned the cart around and shoved it hard in the direction of the cart return.
It traveled all the way across the parking lot, into the cart return, and slammed hard into the poles that were made to contain the cart. The entire cart return clanged with the metal meeting metal with such force.
I snickered and rolled my eyes.
“You’ll never have to learn something like that,” he said. “Because I’ll always be there to protect you. But, I highly doubt that you’ve grown up with who you did without soaking up a few moves.”
That was truer than true. My father had made sure that we all knew how to protect ourselves and damn well at that.
I couldn’t count the number of times he’d put us in a choke hold and say, ‘Get out of it.’
At the time it’d been play. It’d been something fun he would do with us, and us girls would laugh and squeak and try to get out of it and never accomplish it. At least at first.
But then we’d gotten older.
We’d gotten smarter.
We’d also gotten more observant.
If he was able to get the drop on us—which was rare—then we knew exactly how to get out of it…and quick.
Quick enough that eventually he’d started to find new and inventive ways to try to trap us.
Tickling was his favorite form of torture, and since I hated torture, aka tickling, I was very careful to pay attention and be ready for anything.
And then the Army had happened.
I’d also taken quite a few self-defense classes and had trained for a year and a half in Jiu-Jitsu before I’d quit when I’d been stationed overseas.
“You’re right,” I admitted. “Dad taught us everything he knows.”
The drive to Jonah’s brother’s house was quiet and short.
After announcing that his mother was going to meet him there with the animals that she’d been watching for him, he hadn’t said another word as he’d driven through the quiet city streets.
I’d sat quietly as well, worried and overthinking things as I tried to think about how I was going to respond to the questions I knew were about to be thrown our way.
When we arrived, I was surprised to find that we were at a house not far from Jonah’s. Though, saying that, it was in a neighborhood and not with nearly the same amount of land that Jonah had.