Page 15 of Croc Food

What could a jock frat bro and a whimsi-goth possibly have in common?

He was so tall, played college basketball so he was super fit and athletic, had that artistically messy hair so dark it was almost black, and the cheekbones and gorgeous face of a model.

And he looked like a guy who was going places. The kind of guy who’d have a picture-perfect wife.

Not a girl from the bayou who had grown up driving swamp tours and maneuvering around crocodiles.

But he wanted me. Like crazy bad. And what was even crazier—we seemed to have so much in common. Both were real homebodies, wanted to start our own businesses someday, and loved role-play.

That had been my favorite thing—seeing my starched and proper husband relax and be silly.

But maybe we didn’t have as much in common as I thought if he wanted me to hide who I was.

“All right. Well, I was flying down here for Gran’s birthday.”

“But you would never leave me, right?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that yet, so I just looked at him.

“I came here for Gran’s birthday.”

“But you never would, right? Right? How come you aren’t answering the question?”

“I don’t know, Chad,” I said as my dad and brothers gathered as the bottom of the stairs. “Maybe we don’t have that much in common.”

“We have everything in common!”

Even though I had a guaranteed job at the swamp tour company, I’d had bigger dreams for myself. I wanted to do something big. Bigger than my tiny town of 270 people.

Something big, something where I could put my love of creativity and food together.

I didn’t know what that was yet, but I’d come to the big city to get a business major and met someone I thought was the love of my life.

That those words had come out of my loving husband’s mouth were shocking to me.

If he loved me, how could he have said such things?

I wasn’t leaving him at the moment.

I had poured so much love into him. Just because it bubbled out of me and I wanted to show it. And I thought he appreciated all the little things I did for him.

Well, those things and me obviously weren’t appreciated.

“I’m really sorry for what I said about the lunches,” Chad said. “And your hair. And the house. And everything else. Let’s just pretend I never said it. I must have been stricken with temporary insanity.”

“All right,” I said, smiling sweetly.

Instead of soothing him, my smile only made him twitch nervously.

“You forgive me, right? Everything’s going to go back to normal, right?”

“Normal, yes,” I said. “Yes, of course.”

But that was a damn lie.

Because if he wanted a sweet little submissive traditional wife like Mr. Van Buren was sooo enthusiastic about?

He was gonna get it.