Page 26 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

I can hear Deacon insisting on the right number of blankets for a room that has a draft I will not notice.

Cruz laughs as if the draft and the blankets and the cookies are all part of the same plan.

Isla sings something that rhymes cookie and rookie and makes Roman say “God help me” under his breath.

I carry the bag down the hall that remembers my footsteps.

I tell myself it is just until morning.

I tell myself the sentence is useful and not a lie.

I can leave with my head high and my heart intact if I use a door instead of a window.

Roman appears as I turn the corner, stepping into the narrow hall at the same time as me.

He is close enough that the breath I just took cannot be fully mine.

He smells like smoke and something warmer, like cedar after rain. The light makes his eyes an alloy I cannot catalog.

He takes in the bag and the way my hand tightens on the handle before I can make it pretend.

His voice lands low, as if he can’t believe I’ve made up my mind about this. “So this time, you really are staying?”

5

CRUZ

I catch the shape of her mouth from across the hall, the small brave curve of the words.

Yes, I am going to stay.

It lands in me like a coal cupped by two palms. Roman does not move.

He never gives away more than a breath.

Deacon looks past her shoulder to the window where the snow thickens, his mind already measuring how the night will settle around us.

I put my hand to the back of a chair to keep from doing something foolish, like crossing the space and lifting her clean off the floor.

The storm presses its face to the glass.

The pines wear frosting like crowns.

Inside, the lodge settles into the soft part of the day when plates are warm and laughter lives low. Dinner is not elegant, but it is right.

Roast chicken with pan drippings and rosemary, carrots stewed with orange peel, potatoes crisped in the cast iron and salted so the skin sings when your teeth break it.

She brought stollen that tastes like memory soaked in rum and good decisions.

I keep finding excuses to pass behind her chair, to set down another dish, to touch the back of the seat with two fingers as if the wood might tell me what she is thinking.

Isla anchors herself to Marisa’s side as if we have all agreed on this seating without saying a word.

My girl talks with her hands, crumb mustache bright on her upper lip, eyes flashing whenever I look at her. She is five going on forever.

She asks Marisa if angels bake and if so whether they use real vanilla or if heaven has something better.

Marisa tells her there is nothing better than real vanilla, which earns a solemn nod.