Page 69 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

On the table sits the apple-ginger cake Marisa brought along with the stollen, meant for the crew, not the judges.

She slid it onto the counter last night between shivers and apologies.

I covered it with a glass dome and promised it would be here for the morning.

It is here, which means I am a man of my word at least once before nine a.m.

I set the cake on the cutting board and take the knife Isla calls Excalibur, because if you are going to cut breakfast you should do it with ceremony.

I think about taking a photo and sending it to our group thread with a caption that says I am doing quality control, do not fight me, and then decide the joke will be more delicious after I feed everyone.

Knife in. The crust gives with a soft sigh and the crumb looks like a good mood. I lift the first wedge and pause.

There is a crease in the center that is not cake, not fruit, not anything that belongs.

Something tucked where no something should be.

At first I think I am looking at a sliver of parchment from the baking paper, the kind that sometimes loses a corner when you are gentle and the world is not.

Then I see ink.

The edge is folded.

The paper is old in a way baking paper never is.

I set the knife down and slide my thumb under one corner, careful not to smear the crumb with my hands.

The note is thin and stiff, like it came out of a book that sat in a drawer for a decade.

“Deacon,” I call again, already knowing I should not touch it, already too late.

He appears, takes one look at my face, then at the cake, and puts on the expression he wears when a beam is not where he left it.

“What is it,” he asks.

“A message,” I say and open the fold.

Four words, ink dark and deliberate.

A hand I do not recognize but hate immediately.

You can’t protect what you don’t claim.

13

MARISA

I wake to the sound of a house keeping its promises.

Heat moves in the vents.

Old timber stretches like a cat and settles again. Somewhere down the hall a kettle begins a slow complaint that will turn into song.

I am warm under a quilt that smells like cedar and one of Cruz’s cotton shirts.

For three seconds I do not know where I am.

Then the rhythm of two small breaths threads through awareness and my body remembers how to be a mother before the rest of me opens its eyes.