Page 30 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies
Hat crooked. Mittens clipped. Ready.
We head downstairs. The lights flicker again and return.
The front door opens to cold and pine and the orange sweep of the plow.
Grady stands on the porch in his knit cap, chains already on his tires, grin white in the dark.
“Window is closing,” he says. “Road is passable now. Mae’s got the stove hot and the generator humming.”
“Thank you,” I tell him.
I breathe into Isla’s scarf so it warms before I tuck it up under her chin.
She turns and hugs Marisa quick and fierce, a small face pressed to an apron that smells like sugar.
“Keep the house warm,” she commands, then points at me. “And the chickens.”
“On it,” I say.
Roman puts a hand to the door frame and scans the tree line like he can read the ice in the air. “Drop and return. We run the checks after.”
Deacon presses a knit cap over Isla’s curls and tucks her saber in her pocket. “Call when you arrive. Couplet code,” he says, which is our quiet way of asking for two proof-of-life details on the radio.
Dog snore and pancake count will do.
We hand Isla across the drift to Grady.
He buckles her into the booster in the big truck, then gives me a nod that has stood ten winters.
“Back to you in thirty,” he says.
The plow turns and throws its weight against the drifts.
The blade sings against the crust.
Tail lights blink red through the trees, then disappear.
I throw myself into prepping the chickens for the storm while I wait, and finally the radio clicks twice in my palm and crackles.
“Delivered,” Grady says. “Generator is steady. Beagle snoring. We will keep her through the ice. Check in at zero seven hundred.”
“Copy,” I answer. “Zero seven hundred.”
When I step back inside, the lodge feels lighter at the edges.
Safe is a temperature.
Tonight we have it set right.
Roman shuts the door with his palm and listens once more for the ice. Deacon checks the fuse box and the roof line on his clipboard.
I hang Isla’s scarf, shake snow from my curls, and look across the kitchen to where Marisa stands with her hands braced on the counter, cheeks warm, eyes soft.
The fire glows low, deep orange where it counts.
There are four of us now.
It feels like standing in the center of a familiar map and seeing the lines redraw around the place where you were always meant to stand.
