Page 25 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

I tell myself I will drive back to my apartment and sleep with my phone facedown.

I tell myself I am sovereign and practical and will not lean toward anyone who could keep me.

Then the snow decides to become an idea, not just weather.

It thickens and begins to fall in a way that narrows the world.

Deacon watches the porch and tilts his head the way he does when he is reading a roofline.

“The road will ice after five.” He says it like a fact that is already on the ledger.

“We can get you to the highway,” Cruz offers, a fingertip under Isla’s chin as he ties her scarf with the gentle competence of a man who has tied a thousand small knots.

Roman shakes his head.

He does not make problems into promises. “If she slides, the highway is a bad place to learn to pray,” he says. The line is simple. It is care disguised as a lecture.

I am too honest with myself to play the part where I protest with logic.

I want to stay.

I want to see night fall on the pines and wake up to the smell of coffee that tastes like a fight I can win.

I have an overnight bag in the car because after the fight with Nico I did not want to sleep under the same roof as my own anger.

The convenience of this fact embarrasses me for exactly one second then does not embarrass me at all.

Deacon says there is a small room on the second floor that is easy to heat.

Cruz says he will bring extra blankets that smell like cedar and old winters.

Isla tells me my braids should be tighter if I want to be fast in a snowball fight.

Roman does not say anything at all.

He stands with his hands in his pockets, and I can feel the yes he will not force me into.

I nod, and it is not a small nod.

It’s a nod that opens a door inside my chest and lets the cold in there meet the warm from here.

“Let me get my bag.” I head for the door before I change my mind in some smaller way that would make me wish I had been braver.

Outside the air bites with clean teeth.

The lot is already a shallow white.

My breath lifts and breaks.

I open the hatch and grab the overnight bag I threw in this morning when I thought I might need distance from my own kitchen.

The zipper catches then obeys.

I walk back in through a curtain of snow that makes the porch look like a stage with bad special effects.

Inside the lodge is dusk and gold, the light moving across the walls as if someone has told it to be kind.

Voices drift from the kitchen, low and good.