Page 102 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

Deacon ghosts upstairs with a bottle warmer and the soft step of a man who learned to move without waking the house.

Roman sets another log on the fire and watches the spark jump, expression unreadable.

Isla reads to Cleopatra from a book about engines and then tells the hen she is pronouncing carburetor wrong.

Cleopatra disagrees and pecks a boot.

I rinse bowls.

I stack cooling racks.

The room breathes deep and slow.

The boys are down.

The men drift to their chosen tasks.

I untie the apron, then retie it because the pocket still holds my things, then decide to empty it because my head is making lists just to feel safe.

There is a folded paper in the pocket I do not remember putting there.

It is small and neat and smells faintly of woodsmoke and something bitter that is not coffee.

My stomach drops in a very quiet way.

It is the kind of drop your body does when it recognizes a cliff by memory.

I unfold it.

The words are few and not clever, which is how you know they are meant to bruise instead of impress.

You will never belong here.

I close my eyes.

The edges of the paper flutter against my fingers.

The room does not change shape, but something inside my chest does.

This is not a message for a stranger.

It is a warning from someone who once stood where I now sleep, a person who knows exactly which pocket a woman uses when she is busy and loved and not watching her back.

20

ROMAN

The lodge used to sleep when I told it to.

Tonight it hums like a wire.

The fire has fallen to a low red sawtooth, the kind of glow that makes shadows look like old saints with their faces rubbed out.

My coffee went cold an hour ago, untouched, a dark coin in a chipped mug.

I sit at the long table and watch the length of the room that has kept men alive and made them honest, and it feels like a place listening for a truth it does not want to hear.

She is upstairs, probably curled into a quilt that still smells like my shirt.