“Just because I’m a black woman doesn’t mean I want to end up with a thug. I want a soft life, Magnum.”
The more my body changes for the baby, the more what I want out of life changes too. I didn’t mind being on the run for as long as I was without a baby and without wanting a baby either. I don’t like to think about this baby in terms of wanting him or her. This baby just happened and I know what it’s like to feel unwanted, so I wouldn’t want to put that energy on this innocent little life.
I want this baby to feel secure in a way I never was. I want to be that stable, comfortable force – not screaming and hollering all the time because of how much life is grinding the shit out of me. I might not have any therapy, but I know how I wanted to be treated as a child.I wanted to be loved. The way Magnum lovesme. The way I’m too scared to accept right now because what if it all disappears once the baby comes?
“I suppose having a man twice your size wrapped around your finger cooking you breakfast isn’t enough.”
“You’re here now that it’s all hot sex and a pregnancy fetish but are you going to be out here cooking breakfast when the baby’s crying?”
“Where else would I be?” Magnum asks, looking up from his task of cracking eggs into a bowl with concern that touches my heart. He wants to be here. With me.
“Running around on that bike.”
Magnum chuckles. “Don’t you think I’m getting a little old for that?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. You could get on that bike and disappear any time you wanted.”
“I don’t want to,” Magnum says, his eyes filling with so much warmth that it hurts to withhold my feelings for him every second that I continued. “I’m right where I want to be, miss pink hair. Even if it’s all… unexpected.”
“You aren’t worried at all that I’m a gold digger coming after your money?”
He shakes his head.
“Nope. I don’t worry about that at all.”
Magnum whisks the eggs with cream and then pours the mixture into his skillet. The sizzle followed by the warm, buttery scent of scrambled eggs fills me with nostalgia for a childhood I never had but always dreamed of having. I could give my own child this feeling with Magnum… but I couldn’t forgive myself for betting on this man and having him leave our baby with the same abandonment issues I had as a kid.
“The only thing I worry about is loving a woman who won’t admit that she loves me, even if she sat there and let me tattoo my name on her ass.”
“Let you?”
Just when I let Magnum melt my heart a little bit, he gives me another brutal reminder that he’s a regular, Western, outlaw biker – and a white boy.
“I know you,” he says, completely ignoring the facts of the situation. “If you wanted a way out of there, you would have found it.”
He could be right. Am I just tired of being on the run and delusional about what that really means for me? Looking over at Magnum, my heart does that disturbing flutter again. I can’t love him. I can’t let myself be that vulnerable again, especially not with a man who I barely know despite his best efforts…
This could all be a front. Any woman who has been through it knows, the best predators hunt like crocodiles, lying in wait for years before they unleash their dangerous personalities.
But it also justfeelslike Magnum’s darkness is all out in the open. It’s all surrounding the outlaw biker club which feels more like family than a cluster of fucked up personalities connected by fast engines, binge drinking, and loyalty that defies reason.
“Telling you I love you won’t make everything between us perfect and magical.”
“I don’t care about perfect and magical, Damara. I care about what’s real… and you are very much real.”
“Even with hot pink hair?”
“Especially with hot pink hair,” Magnum says, his face cracking a smile and then relaxing into neutrality quickly. Iknowwhy even if he doesn’t say it out loud right there.
Ishouldsay it. Just tell him that I love him and release the pressure between us. So why don’t the words just fall out?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Zebulon
Ifucked up big time. No way tonight ends without my body in the ground. It’s too bad, really, but fitting considering how many men ended up on the wrong end of my gun or knife. I wonder what Doc would have said about my screw up. I think he would have told me that I bragged too much. He thought everybody needed to be like his eldest son, Gideon. Perfectly stoic. Biblical. Never indulging in too much of the vices that God put on this earth to tempt us men.
Deacon drags me out behind the casino by the arm and he’s quite bigger than me, even if I’m not the smallest of gentlemen. Also, I know which side my bread is buttered on and who butters it. Best not to piss off the man holding the pursestrings.
