Page 78 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

Gabe watches the ceiling’s shadow play and frowns like he plans to lodge a complaint with management.

“Light over the sink is flickering again,” Marisa says, glancing up as if the house is misbehaving on purpose.

“It was waiting for you to ask,” I say, already at the cabinet.

I kill power at the switchplate I added last year, pop the trim, crimp a cleaner connection in a wire nut that someone with fewer opinions than me used in 1998, and seat it all back.

Switch on. Solid glow.

She exhales, leans into the square of steady light like a cat.

“Thank you,” she says.

I shrug like it’s nothing and go find my towel.

I don’t say,You’re welcome for drawing a line against darkness we didn’t invite.

We eat at the long table.

Conversation tries out normal and gets tired quick.

Marisa’s voice has a brave lilt around the edges.

She watches our faces like she’s reading a forecast in the grain of wood.

Roman is quiet and watchful, a storm welded into a man.

Cruz serves seconds with the reverence of someone who knows how hunger works in more than one register.

I keep my eyes on the boys and my ears on the room.

Every clink, every laugh that doesn’t make it all the way, every sigh that thinks it’s hiding—data. I sort it without saying a word.

Gabe scowls through a hiccup.

I wipe slobber off his chin with a thumb and he tries to eat my thumb. “Open,” I instruct, and he does, and we get through it like people who have never read a book on parenting but could build a bridge from scratch.

Marisa catches me counting breaths again and doesn’t call me on it.

She cuts a soft-boiled egg in half and slides it onto my plate without asking.

I take it without thanking out loud because thank you will shake if I let it.

We do this strange, quiet dance around belonging and penance and polenta.

The lodge listens, old as iron and twice as stubborn.

When the plates are ghosts and the pan is soaking and the twins have entered their witching hour where both want everything at once, I take my chance.

“I’m grabbing the back room,” I announce to nobody in particular.

Roman lifts his chin a fraction.

Cruz is by the sink with a dish in one hand and a baby in the other, humming.

Marisa has Luca tucked against her shoulder, patting a rhythm on his back that is dangerously close to a heartbeat I recognize.

I go before I decide to stay and learn something I can’t unlearn.