Page 60 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies
I do it anyway where I can.
I put the water bottle back into Marisa’s hands and adjust the blanket at her shoulders so the warm air from the hearth folds around her spine.
“Stay,” I tell her, because I like practical words. “We have heat. We have water. We have patience.”
She nods once.
Her eyes flick to Roman.
Then she looks back at the babies, at the steam rising from Cruz’s bowl, at the red towel over the bread on the counter.
“Isla,” she whispers, a flinch of fear for the small life that runs around here like a spark.
“At her grandma’s for the holidays” Cruz says, softening his voice without softening his spine. “Video called before the roads went bad. She is smug about being warmer than us.”
The room exhales. The wind throws sleet at the window. The lodge answers with old wood and fire.
Roman waits until the heat puts color in her face.
He waits until the babies sound like work, not emergency.
Then he steps forward, not close enough to crowd, close enough to make the air tell the truth.
He plants his hands on the table, palms flat, and looks at her like a man who can live inside a hard question until it yields.
“Marisa,” he says, and her name sounds like a bell before a ceremony.
His voice is low and even, not a shout, never a shout, just steel under velvet.
“You showed up with two infants we did not know existed. You almost froze on a road we told you a year ago not to ride alone. You are here now. So I will ask you plain—whose babies are you hiding from us?”
11
MARISA
Roman’s question hangs in the air like a bell that refuses to stop ringing.
Whose babies are you hiding from us?
The hearth crackles, careful and steady.
Snow ticks at the windows like fingernails.
The lodge is too warm for my coat, too quiet for the storm outside, and my heart forgets how to beat in sequence.
Cruz has one of the babies tucked against his bare chest, skin to skin, a blanket folded like a small cloud around tiny shoulders.
The other lies on a warmed towel with Deacon’s large hand cupped at his rib cage, counting breaths with an engineer’s patience and a parishioner’s reverence.
I do not answer Roman right away.
I peel my damp gloves off finger by finger, slow so I do not drop the water bottle Deacon put in my hands.
My knuckles are sore and pink.
My hands still shake in short, silly bursts, the kind that make lids misbehave and buttons look like lies.
“Small sips,” Deacon says, low.
