Page 139 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies
She leaves with a paper bag that smells like sugar and ends, and a card that says,We bake on the bones of old kitchens. We serve second chances warm.
Isla chose the font.
Deacon pretended to hate it for an afternoon and then admitted it was perfect.
Around four, the men who build the county show up in a cluster, palms dusted with drywall and sawdust, faces split into grins you can see under beards.
They line up at the counter like boys waiting for communion.
I hand out hand pies and coffee, and one of them tells me he can fix the leak in our porch gutter for a dozen cinnamon twists and six dollars even.
I shake his hand because that is the kind of math that makes towns.
“Closing in an hour,” Marisa calls to the room, which makes three people jump and ask for one last thing. We give it to them, because we can.
In the hush that follows, I wipe small handprints from the glass case, count the till, tuck a silly drawing of a cupcake on a motorcycle into the corner of the menu board because Isla will notice and pretend she did not put it there.
Roman locks the front door and flips the sign to RESTING THE OVEN.
Deacon pulls the trays and stacks them like clean thoughts.
Cara starts a pot of caldo because she senses we will all want soup before the night is done.
Marisa leans her hip into me at the sink and brushes a sugar grain from my jaw.
“No regrets?” she asks, soft enough to speak to the part of me that sometimes still hears old ghosts.
“Hm?” I kiss the grain off her fingertip. “About choosing you? About any of this?” I look around at the steam on the window and the twins in their high chairs arguing politely in vowels, at Isla carefully laying two perfect napkins for an imaginary queen, at my brothers moving through a space they built with their hands. “Not one.”
She presses her forehead to mine and laughs a little like she is knocking quietly on my skull to see if anyone else is home. “Good,” she says. “Because I am only warming up.”
“Saint,” I call, without looking away from her, “tell her the oven is already too hot.”
Roman snorts. “The oven does what she wants.”
Deacon lifts a brow. “I annotate that statement.”
We close.
We clean.
We take a loaf to the pastor on the hill because he wrote another note and we are trying to be the kind of men who answer kindness with bread.
On the walk back up to the lodge, the boys strapped warm against our chests, the road damp and breathing, Isla skips in a pattern she calls “entrepreneur steps,” which means every third one is dramatic.
At the porch, the lantern glows.
The hens mutter.
The sky thinks about a pink I have only ever trusted here.
I open the door and the house smells like stew and lemon and the exact number of people we need to make it full.
I catch Roman’s eye over Marisa’s shoulder as she kisses the top of Gabe’s head.
He nods once, that small, private salute we give each other when the day did not ask for our knives.
Deacon sets a jar of honey on the table and writes a small label: For Tea.
