Chapter 6 – Damara
Chapter Six
Damara
Icould be pregnant. The last time I had a pregnancy scare, I was with the last boyfriend of mine that my sister Tamiya remembers. The trafficker. The one she thought led to my death at the hands of her husband, Gideon Blackwood.
The monster. I never exposed my sister to the reality of that toxic relationship, but I have physical and emotional scars that will never leave me completely.
Back then, I thought I would have done anything to escape the poverty I grew up in.
Now, I know that even a girl from the gutter, like me, has her limits.
And there’s really nobody you can trust except yourself. I definitely don’t trust this tall hunk of muscle and his claims that he didn’t drug me. The suspicion should be enough to make me stab him and try to escape, but… I’m tired of running from the law. I’ve been there, done that.
If I need to get out of here, I’ll find another way.
“We have orders,” Magnum says to me once he hangs up the phone.
“We? Once I call Tamiya, you can just send me home.”
His cheeks flush red with immediate anger that he doesn’t bother withholding in the slightest. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
“I need Plan B.”
“No.”
That’s it. Just no.
“That doesn’t make you seem innocent.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says calmly. “This could be my only chance to have a child. It wasn’t my choice either, so we’re in the same boat.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
I don’t think before I speak because all my reactivity swells to the surface at once.
My heart pumps like crazy and I instantly want to throw hands in his direction.
I know Magnum could throw me against the bar and beat my ass like it was nothing.
Talking to him like this might be enough to drive him crazy.
I don’t know him enough for… any of this.
“No,” Magnum says. “I’m completely sane. I’m a financially stable man with no children, more money than I know what to do with, and absolutely no interest in a serious relationship with a woman of any kind. I had given up on having a child, but I’ve found luck in the most surprising places.”
“And I guess your luck led you straight to an incubator.”
The smug smirk on Magnum’s face pisses me off almost more than his cavalier attitude towards the situation.
“What?” he asks. “Any woman would be lucky to carry my child, especially one like you.”
Fire burns beneath my skin. His statement could mean anything, but considering the current climate in America and the world for the past several hundred years, my assumption is that Magnum thinks it’s some gift to my womb because I’m black.
He senses the shift in my emotions, and instead of some kind of remorse, Magnum appears entertained.
“What the fuck do you mean by that?”
His smug ass attitude causes the words to fly out of my mouth. I get ready to flinch or run, depending on his reaction to that statement, but he continues to be unmoved by my backchat. He seems happy I asked, actually.
“You are a black woman in the middle of Oklahoma and entirely defenseless, or you wouldn’t have ended up drugged and impregnated by a strange man. Clearly, you have nobody looking after you, and since you haven’t mentioned work once, I’m guessing you don’t have a job either.”
“If I had a gun right now, I would point it right at your arrogant ass head.”
“Sorry for denying you the pleasure,” Magnum says, obviously not sorry about a damned thing. I’m physically powerless and getting read for filth by a white man doesn’t make this situation any better.
“I got away from one crazy white boy before. I’ll do it again.”
“I’m guessing that one wasn’t smart enough to get you pregnant and indebted to him.”
“How the hell am I indebted to you?”
“You will be,” he says. “When I find the person who drugged us and kill them for you. But first, Wyatt has a job… for us.”
“Great,” I tell him. “My bike is out front.”
He scoffs. “While I’m impressed that you can handle your way around a hog, you’re riding on the back of my bike. Not up for debate.”
“If you’re this much of a control freak, I can see why you’re single.”
“It’s much safer for you to ride with me,” he says sternly. “If I need to shoot, I’ll need you to step in and steer.”
I have several questions about the logistics here.
“You could always let me hold the gun,” I suggest innocently.
“Get your ass outside,” Magnum replies. “I need a Monster energy and a gas station beer to get me started.”
When we walk outside together under the blazing, desert sun, my past in Utah feels like a heavy weight around my neck.
The heat reminds me of all the bad things that happened out in the desert.
I got twisted up by a bad Mormon boy who promised me all the money in the world but ended up a fucked up sicko.
I had to change everything about myself to escape him, and if it weren’t for Gideon Blackwood, I might have had to come back and kill him myself.
Life has a funny way of working out, so even if I’m terrified by not heading straight towards the Plan B, I tell myself that life worked out before and it’ll work out again, even if I’m putting my fate in the hands of an insane redneck biker in an outlaw gang, who might have drugged me to get me pregnant.
On paper, he doesn’t sound great. But in person, I feel a strange sense of safety with Magnum, underneath the uncertainty that follows women who have been in bad relationships for the rest of their lives.
Magnum’s breakfast choices feel like a bigger risk than the drug situation by the time we ride to a gas station and he “fuels up”.
I have a half-ripe gas station banana and a protein bar – something that at least borders on food.
Magnum waits patiently for me to finish eating, but he doesn’t make conversation with me and he also doesn’t allow me to even linger near the pharmacy aisle.
No Plan B. And the more that I wake up, the more concerned I get about the future and the practical implications of allowing Magnum Sinclair to drag me on a journey across America.
I’m not unemployed though, I am on a very well defined break from running my daycare, which is much different.
Even if I don’t really want to go back to changing diapers and dealing with anxious moms all day, there’s still a difference.
Magnum drives us out to the Creek reservation.
Wyatt wants us to find Oske, and it stands to reason that she would be out here with her brothers, since it’s much closer to the club house than her other place.
When he pulls the bike outside the front of her trailer and chases off the dogs fighting over a random bone in the driveway, I sidle up to Magnum and ask what I’m sure must be on his mind.
“Do you think Oske drugged us?”
“Why would you say that?”
“The last thing I remember is sitting at the bar.”
Magnum scowls. “That’s not the last thing I remember.”
My ears burn hot. What? Maybe we should have actually talked about last night instead of this idiot dragging me off to the reservation in the middle of nowhere. There’s nothing out here and being out in the middle of nowhere freaks me out, ever since I left my ex.
“Wait, what?”
Magnum growls. “I don’t have time for a personal discussion right now. We need to find Oske and hopefully, we can be done with this so I can take you back to Santa Fe.”
He seems way too eager to take me back to Santa Fe. Maybe he’ll get tired of this game and realize when I’m actually pregnant that he doesn’t want to get a random black woman with pink hair pregnant.
“It’s not a personal discussion. We were victims of a crime.”
Magnum looks over his shoulder at me with absolute derision. “We aren’t victims of anything and I never want to hear you say that again.”
“Boy, that had better not be a confession…”
Magnum widens his stride to leave me behind, so I have to scuttle like a crab to catch up with his excessively tall ass.
If he weren’t so big, I would have definitely attempted to throw a punch.
Currently, I don’t want that smoke from Magnum.
I might consider suffocating him if we ever end up lying down anywhere near each other.
He knocks on the door and a lanky man with black hair in a loose braid, several tattoos on his skinny chest, and a deep, russet skin tone opens it. It only takes me a couple seconds to realize this is Oske’s brother.
“Where’s your sister?” Magnum asks, not bothering with a greeting or any politeness that someone else might find necessary.
“Uhhh… the club house? Is this a test?” he yawns like he just got out of bed. The scent of pungent marijuana smoke finally reaches me and Magnum, explaining his sluggish demeanor.
“Chitto, get on that bike and get a hold of Oske. Now.”
“She never came back last night,” he says. “I can call her.”
“Do that. Now.”