Page 14 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

The night waits politely for the answer as I drink the coffee that tastes like a holiday I cannot name yet.

The truth is, it’s too risky for me to stay.

I can see an endlessly open road of possibilities here, but where I come from, none of them will lead to anything good.

3

ROMAN

A FEW HOURS LATER

The rain drapes itself over the lodge in soft threads, the air inside thick with woodsmoke and the faint sweetness of all the desserts that we’ve eaten today.

Marisa is at the kitchen table, chin tipped just enough to tell me she’s weighing her answer.

I want to push, but not so hard she bolts.

The back door bangs open. “Uh—bosses?” A prospect stands there dripping, cut sliding off one shoulder. “We got a situation.”

Deacon doesn’t even look up from his coffee. “What kind?”

“The kind where the drunkest groomsman decided the bourbon barrels were lonely. He’s trying to tap one with a butter knife.”

Cruz grins. “Well, hell. Can’t let him romance the whiskey unsupervised.”

I glance at Marisa, hoping she’ll smirk, maybe tell me to stay put and send the others instead so she can tell me what I want to hear. Her lips don’t move.

We step outside expecting a five-minute rescue.

It turns into a circus.

The butter knife snaps.

The guy starts bawling about losing the love of his life. Another barrel works loose and rolls halfway toward the creek, and it takes all three of us to keep it from going for a swim.

By the time we’ve wrangled the mess back under control, most of an hour’s gone.

The lodge is quieter when we get back, shadows pooling in the corners.

My boots track rain toward the kitchen, and I know before I even open the door.

She’s gone.

No tray. No crumbs. Not even something that’ll allow me the mercy of pretending she only stepped out for air.

The kitchen holds the ghosts she left behind—an abandoned piping bag on its side, a spoon in the sink with her thumbprint faint on the handle, an apron folded with careful corners.

The kind of care you give when you’re leaving without a note and you want the room to forgive you.

I set a palm on the back of the chair and listen to the rain. Vanilla lingers in the air, a memory more than a scent.

There is heat under it from the oven bricks, there is smoke from the hearth, there is my own leather and iron and stubbornness, and under all that there is her, a trace I can taste on the back of my tongue if I stand in one place and do not blink.

I did not expect her to stay. Iwantedher to.

That is not the same thing.

Want is the first sin and the last comfort, my grandmother used to say, then she would press a rosary into my palm and tell me to walk it off.