Page 52 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies
I check the weather. Light snow. Nothing serious.
The GPS says two hours.
I kiss both babies, press my mouth to their warm, soft foreheads until my heart steadies, and whisper a prayer learned young and never unlearned.
We start north.
Brooklyn thins into gray river and old warehouses, then into a highway spine.
I sing badly and the boys doze.
Near Yonkers I think I could still turn back.
Halfway up the Palisades the sky opens pale and winter blue and the trees stand up straight, and an ache sits behind my ribs that is not sadness or joy, just the knowledge that there are places where I have been loved and left.
I try not to think about the lodge.
I fail.
Memory moves like a hand at my shoulder.
Roman telling me to breathe.
Deacon listing comforts like a man counting beams.
Cruz smiling like a summer that plans to be kind.
I grip the wheel until my knuckles pale.
“You will deliver,” I tell myself as the city falls behind and the mountains step forward. “You will smile. You will leave. You will not look back.”
The boys fuss in polite shifts.
We stop at a gas station that sells secrets and coffee.
The bathroom is a small horror and I love it for having a door that locks and water that runs hot.
I change both babies with military efficiency and a soundtrack of nonsense syllables.
I feed them in the front seat while an older couple argues about rock salt by the ice freezer.
I decide I will not explain my life to a stranger today.
Once we cross into the blue rise of foothills, gray turns to white.
The forecast said light snow.
The forecast is a liar with a good haircut.
Flakes begin fat and lazy, then sharpen and grow serious.
The road narrows.
The trees lean in.
The GPS has opinions, then loses them.
The boys sense my shoulders rise.
