It almost feels like a life that happened to a different woman, because I’m not the type of woman who would get caught up in that amount of mess today. I’ve seen where it leads.
A hole.
In the desert.
With large black ants eating out your eye sockets…
I know Magnum won’t let up until I confess the other two charges, but that doesn’t make it easy to tell him the truth. I wish it was easier for my feelings to come out of me, but I’m not exactly proud of my past.
“Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon,” I tell him. Hopefully, it’s obvious that I’m talking about the second charge. Magnum shrugs, which just infuriates me more. Does he seriously not think it’s a serious concern that the future mother of his child has that type of weapons charge?
“There has to be a good reason for that. You had plenty of time to assault me and I’ve never felt the need to involve the police.”
His instincts aren’t entirely wrong. I’ve had some rough experiences with men in the past and the situation that led to that warrant was with my vindictive ex-boyfriend. I don’t want anybody investigating what happened to him. Although, I know my ex-boyfriend from way back when isn’t anywhere near Texas.
“Why do you keep assuming the best of me, Magnum? I’m not some prissy good girl. Seriously. I didn’t have the life my sister Tamiya had.”
I ran away from home. Even if now I see that my mother was only trying her best, back then all I could see were her mistakes. I was young, angry, and had nobody to turn to. Older men saw my pain and I made the mistake of thinking their predatory ability to hone in on a young woman’s pain meant that they genuinely understood me and wanted to help.
Many women fall into the same trap that I did, but it doesn’t make me feel more whole now that I’m grown up with a youth checkered by pain and mistakes. Magnum shakes his head and draws closer to me, infuriating me more by kissing the top of my forehead.
A shiver travels straight through me. My thighs tighten together and try not to let Magnum’s display of affection sweep me up.
“I like that you’re a fucking wild thing,” he says in a deep, gravely voice that doesn’t make the situation between my thighs any easier to deal with. “You’re mine, and that’s what matters.”
He grabs my cheeks and kisses my forehead again. My lips ache with desire for Magnum that feels so painfully unfair. But so far, his responses are leading me to experience this strange craving for honesty that I’ve never felt before.
“Tell me the last one,” he says. “What did you do that was so bad?”
There’s a slight smile on Magnum’s face that tells me he’s weirdly impressed by my crimes. I didn’t expect him to accept me quite to that point, but I can’t complain about him not threatening to call the feds. I still have his baby inside me, so at the very least there’s that self-interest in keeping his bloodline from being born while I’m incarcerated.
“What happens to my secrets?”
“I already told you that I buried a body,” Magnum says, his expression growing more serious as he moves closer to me,intoxicating me with his heady masculine scent. “I’ve done some bad things too.”
He holds my hand and before I can stop myself, the pressure valve releases and I spill out my secrets to Magnum Sinclair.
“Child endangerment and smuggling of a minor… It was something like that or both of those things,” I tell him. “I got that charge when I was twenty-three, right before I got out of a relationship and escaped to Missouri for a while.”
“You’re more of an outlaw than half the damn club.”
He sounds neither angry nor thrilled about the situation. Knowing Magnum, he’s making some type of silent calculation in his head that I’ll only be privy to when he’s ready to share.
“I changed my life around as much as I could,” I say to Magnum, holding him in my gaze with as much intensity as he’s giving me. I have to own my past because it’s a part of me, not because I’m proud of all the fucked up situations I’ve been caught up in over the years. “I’ve left those bad decisions behind me only to end up here.”
“What if you were safe here?” Magnum says, his low voice sending another hopeful shiver straight through me. Can I afford to have hope in love at this stage?
“What? With you?”
“Yes,” he says. “Because I love you and none of the shit you said has changed my mind.”
I want him to mean it so badly that it hurts. Magnum leans forward and kisses me. If I can’t believe his words, maybe I can believe his kiss. I close my eyes and feel his lips. He’s so warm and delicious. The baby inside me does a little flip kick as we kiss.
“I love you, Damara,” Magnum whispers.
My heart pounds and even if the words feel right, it’s always going to scare me to confront how I feel so viscerally.
“I love you too, Magnum.”
