I nodded. I got that. She hadn’t been expecting to find a ready-to-pop pregnant lady sleeping in Zohro’s bed. She was probably just trying to make plans and navigate liabilities.
“My official due date is only a couple of weeks away.”
She took out a comms tablet and made a note on it. In that little gap of conversation, I checked in with Baby Girl, feeling her prod against my hands.
“When did you arrive here? And how?”
“Just last night,” I explained. “I hired a civilian shuttle to bring me here and he dropped me in a random field because ofthe no-landing rules.” I gave a mirthless laugh. “Guess I know why those rules are there now.”
“Yes. It is a planet of incarcerated men, it’s true,” Tasha said. “Not just anyone can come and go as they please, unfortunately.”
“Does that mean… I won’t be allowed to stay here?”
Not that I was even sure I still wanted to, but…
Where else was I going to go?
“If you’re not married to one of the men here, then no,” Tasha said gently, her brown eyes kind but firm, “you will not be allowed to stay.”
“I just… I can’t believe he’s a murderer.” The word was bitter at the back of my throat. “He’s been good to me.”
Tasha smiled, and I thought I saw the sheen of tears in her eyes.
“He’s been good to me, too,” she said thickly. “He saved my husband’s life.”
“Really?”
“Yup.” She placed her chin atop her hand and looked out the window, as if looking into her own memories. “There was a structural collapse in a shed on another man’s property. A beam fell on Tenn. He was bleeding out, unconscious.” She brushed a tear away. “I’d never been that scared in my entire life.” Suddenly, she grinned. “But then there came Zohro, like a grumpy pink superhero, swaggering onto the scene and shouting orders at everyone.”
I laughed, but this time it was real.
“Yeah,” I said, smirking, “that certainly sounds like him. I’ve had my fair share of experience with Zohro’s bossiness already.”
“I think,” Tasha murmured, “that he gets bossy when it comes to those he cares about. Not that he’d probably want to admit it.”
“Maybe,” I replied noncommittally. But when I thought of all the times he’d been the most crabby and ordering me around…
They were all times when I was in danger, or he was worried about me getting hurt.
“Look, I’m not going to tell you what to do,” Tasha said. “If you want to go, we’ll get you on the first shuttle out of here. And if you don’t have somewhere to go, I can try to get you connected with some social services on Elora Station.”
“Like… Like a shelter?”
“Potentially, yes.”
I tried to imagine having Baby Girl in a shelter, on a space station I’d never been to before, with no family, no money, no friends. And it just felt so fuckingbleak. It was a completely different sensation to my excitement about coming to this planet.
“But before you make any decisions,” Tasha went on, “I’d love if you’d let me tell you a little about how things work around here. And maybe we can go from there?” She held out her hand, and her smile was so warm. “OK?”
After a second, I took her hand. “OK.”
I sat and listened as Tasha told me about Zohro and the other men here. How they’d all been convicted for their crimes in childhood and cut off from everything they’d known immediately afterward. How they raised cattle for the empire and were compensated for the beef they sold. How they were allowed quite a bit of freedom on the planet, including the new bride program, but that they could never leave.
And she told me about the other couples. How successful the marriages had been so far, despite a few hiccups in the beginning.
“But you know what?” she said. “It’s easier for me to let them tell you that. Oh, I could go on and on about how amazing my marriage is to Tenn. But he isn’t one of the convicts. And I have a feeling that’s what you’d really like to know.” She poked at her comms tablet’s screen. “Time to call the group chat.”
“Group chat?”
