Page 146 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

We lie on our backs and watch the little plastic stars Isla stuck to the ceiling.

The green ones glow.

The blue ones pretend.

The yellow ones do nothing but we believe in them anyway.

“Hey,” Gabe whispers from the top bunk. “We were right.”

“About what?” I whisper up into the soft underside of his mattress where people write their names in pencil.

My name is there.

So is his.

So is Mama’s.

We put a heart next to all of them in case we forget what those are for.

“Being loved,” he says. “It is like sugar. It sticks everywhere.”

I roll onto my side and look at the crack of golden dark under the door where the fire downstairs still thinks we might need it.

I nod even though he cannot see me, even though he knows, even though I am already half asleep and full of our whole life.

“And we’re never running out,” I say.

He laughs, small and sure, the kind of laugh you can put in your pocket and take to school when school happens later, much later, not now.

We breathe together.

The house breathes with us.

The oven rests.

The stars do their job without telling anyone how hard it is.

Churro snores.

Somewhere out in the dark the fox listens for a song, and if the wind wants to play a trick it does not dare, because the windows here remember every storm that tried and lost.

Tomorrow is Bakery Day again.

We already taste it.