Page 13 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

Staying feels like that.

A rhythm you choose to repeat until it becomes your days.

He does not rescue me from my silence. He stands and lets me meet my own answer.

Behind him, Deacon walks past the threshold with a cable over his shoulder and a soft, unshocked glance in my direction.

Cruz lingers in the doorway to the pantry and offers me a look that says he would be glad, whatever I choose.

The lodge smells like cinnamon and woodsmoke.

The men who have been circling the orbit of my day stand where a single step will change the rest of the evening.

I set the towel down and place my hands on the counter because they are shaking a little and I want to be honest about that.

I breathe, meeting Roman’s eyes and watching the thunder there ease by a hair, as if my looking is an answer even before I give one.

“I can stay a little longer, at least,” I say, and my voice does not crack. “If someone shows me where the coffee lives.”

Firelight lifts under his cheek. The smallest line at the corner of his mouth gives.

He steps into the room, closes his hand over the sugared petal, and sets it down in a safer place.

His eyes slide to my mouth once, then return to my eyes like a vow. “I can do that,” he says. “I can show you where everything lives.”

The storm goes quiet around the roof as if it has heard enough.

The chickens mutter in their sleep.

The generator hums a softer note.

The lodge shifts on its old bones and settles for the night.

“Thank you,” I say, and the sentence is simple and caloric. It feeds me as I speak it, and it feeds something in his face that has been hungry for a very long time.

He nods. Not a triumph. An acknowledgment.

A man who knows what it costs a woman who listens to her own hunger for once.

He crosses to the shelf and pulls down a mug the size of a fist. He pours from a kettle I did not notice starting to steam.

This time, the coffee smells like dark chocolate and the part of the night that follows the last song.

He hands me the mug and does not touch my fingers, which somehow feels like more restraint than if he had.

I lift the mug and sip.

The heat rolls through me.

I stand in a kitchen that is not mine and feel a door open, a real one this time, the one that leads to the hallway with rooms and quilts and the kind of silence that hears you breathe.

My pulse taps against my throat like a person knocking on her own door from the inside.

Behind Roman, Deacon reaches to the chalkboard and adds a single line in neat handwriting under tomorrow’s list for those who will stay over.

Nutmeg.

Cruz takes three steps into the room, tucks a stray curl behind his ear, and leans his hip against the counter like someone settling in for a story.