Page 19 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

When an old rival floats a rumor about me being soft, I send Deacon with a gift basket and a message the man hears with his bones.

When the hens decide the back stoop belongs to them, I step aside because there are fights worth having and fights you let a bird win.

I want to tell myself the ache fades with work.

It does not.

It tightens until it becomes a small bead of glass lodged under the skin.

You learn to stop picking at it on the hour.

You do not forget it exists.

On certain evenings when the snow starts again and the road shines like a blade, I taste cardamom on a ghost of a spoon and think about a girl who handled sugar like it meant something.

Tonight I set my keys on the hall table and start toward the garage because a belt on the second bike has been whispering when it should hum.

The house has gone to its late hour self, nothing loud, nothing dead, the way places get when they have been lived in so long they know how to keep you from tripping.

I pass the pantry and my shoulder lifts all on its own, that animal thing a body does when it remembers being near heat.

I look in because I am not a coward.

The space is clean.

The shelves are lined like soldiers.

The jar of cinnamon sticks is down to a handful.

There is a smudge on the prep table I did not see earlier and I find myself wiping it with the heel of my hand as if any trace of her needs to be cleaned by me and not by a cloth.

I keep walking.

The door to the garage has a ghost of cold around it.

I put my hand on the knob and feel the room wait.

The rain ticks. Somewhere a chicken shifts on her roost and grumbles about the state of the world.

Above the door frame hangs an old Saint Christopher medal, dented and stubborn.

I touch it because it is a habit I do when no one is looking and because my grandmother would knock me with a wooden spoon if she saw me ignore a blessing within reach.

Then I do the thing I have not let myself do, because sometimes it is worse to move than to sit still.

I pull my phone from my pocket without telling my mind what I am doing.

It wakes to her name like a dog who already knows the leash.

My thumb opens the message field.

The keyboard waits like a dare I am tired of ignoring.

There are a hundred things men say when they want to pretend they did not want to say anything.

There are three things men say when they mean it.

I type, and for once I do not edit the truth out of the sentence before it can breathe.