Page 58 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

Hox is talking low to the other like a man explaining a joke he knows will land.

Marisa sits braced under a blanket with her hands in her armpits and her teeth not quite still.

She is looking at me the way people look at a fire they are not sure they can touch without burning.

Something in me is soft and something is iron and both of them agree on what to do.

“Any pain,” I ask. “Headache, chest tightness, nausea.”

“My hands,” she says. “They feel like glass.”

“Good sign. The blood is coming back to the party. Breathe with it.” I put my hand flat on the wheel and make my voice the temperature of a calm room. “You are going to tell me what you were doing on this road. Not because I want to fight. Because I need data.”

She swallows. “Ravenwell,” she says. “The holiday festival. The pastry competition. I baked for judging, six stollen, my nonna’s recipe. They invited me late. I thought I could make it.”

I look at the tote and do not comment on the obvious.

She would have made it if the mountain had not reminded us who is king.

“Why keep driving in this,” I ask.

Her eyes shine once and she does not let it spill.

“I almost turned back at the Palisades,” she says, “and then at the gas station, and then again when the lines disappeared. I kept thinking two things. That I needed one good thing to land. And that if I made it to Ravenwell, it would mean I didn’t dream that night.”

There it is, the part I was not supposed to touch yet. I do not touch it. I put my palm on the wheel and change lanes on the subject.

“About your festival,” I tell her, “There have been power outages at the square, per the information I have. It’s been canceled for today. It’ll be rescheduled.”

She blinks rapidly. “I thought maybe they would take the bread and write my name on a list so I would not vanish.” Her laugh is a single broken thing. “I drove anyway. Not sensible. I know.”

Hox keys the radio. “Saint, we got her. Deacon, Wren, Hox returning from Ravenwell run with cargo intact. Addendum, exposure non-critical, two infants warming. Eight minutes out if the ridge minds its manners.”

Roman’s voice comes through clean and level. “Copy. Hearth is hot. Cruz has water on. Gate is open.”

“Tell him to pull the cedar bin,” I say. “Tell him we warm the feet and calves first and that I am bringing bread and attitude.”

Marisa grimaces and I almost smile but stay in character.

Hox repeats it word for word.

I drop the truck into low and feel the tires take the grade.

Snow comes at the windshield in sheets.

The world is white and the margin for error is zero, and I like it that way because there is nothing here but what matters.

A woman who left and arrived anyway.

Two small lives protesting a cold that did not get them. Six loaves that smell like a promise.

We cross the gate with the blade of the plow as escort and the lodge appears out of the white like a ship.

The big door is open.

The hearth throws orange across the floorboards.

Cruz meets us with a bowl of steaming water and two towels twisted dry.