Page 134 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

Not bright.

Just alive.

We roll slow up the drive.

I spot the faint tracks from last night’s wind and the careful new pattern from someone who took the trash out without asking. Order. Love dressed in chores.

We park where tires will not rut.

We kill the engines and listen.

No alarms.

No rush.

My hands remember the weight of sleeping children and tap the tank of my bike once as if to thank it for bringing me home.

“Long night,” Deacon says, stretching his back.

“Shorter than it could have been,” Roman answers.

We step onto the porch and I pause at the door, hand on the latch, the kind of pause a man takes when he wants to shake off the last of the outside before he brings the inside into his lungs. I look back once.

The east is thinking about peach.

The rail yard is chewing its gum.

The mill is ten minutes away and might as well be in another life.

Inside, the house smells like cedar and milk and the end of fear.

I hear Cara in the kitchen telling the kettle it does not have to scream to be heard.

I hear a baby sigh then settle.

I hear a page turn because Isla is an honest little book thief.

I hear nothing from Marisa and that is the sound I wanted most.

Roman closes the door behind us and the latch finds its home.

He looks a question at me and at Deacon.

We nod yes.

Not because we enjoyed any of it.

Because necessary is not the same as cruel.

“Breakfast,” I say. “We will braid sugar with the girls and change diapers like men who earn the right to nap.”

Roman’s mouth twitches, the ghost of a smile he only lets out when he forgets to be careful.

Deacon goes to wash his hands.

I stop in the hallway and pull out my phone.

One unread message waits.