Page 8 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies
He has rolled his sleeves, and he looks like a photograph from a manual about how men used to fix things before YouTube.
Soot smudges his forearms.
A pencil lives behind his ear.
He glances up at me for half a second, not to look, but to check. His eyes carry the weight of measurements.
He goes back to wires and does something exact.
The lights steady like a held breath finally released.
“Thank you,” I call, because gratitude is the one religion I never left. He lifts a hand without looking, a small curt wave thatsomehow feels like a hand against the back of my neck drawing a little heat down.
A troop of hens cluck along the edge of the deck, furious and determined and certain that this event should have been planned around them.
One pecks at a cigar stub and tries to pick a fight with a man who could lift a motorcycle and does not want to fight a bird. “Leave Cleopatra alone,” a woman scolds, swooping in with a cookie to bribe the offender away.
“She draws blood.” The hen eyes me like a rival chef. “Nice to meet you, Your Majesty,” I say under my breath, because I am not above politeness with creatures that have knives for faces.
“Conte,” someone says, and I turn to find the bride herself reaching for a lemon tart with a grin I like.
Her lipstick is the color of cherries left too long in the sun.
Water drips from the ends of her hair.
The diamond on her finger looks like a drop of sky.
“You saved the day,” she declares, and the way she says it makes me believe it for a second.
“The storm saved the day,” I say. “It hid the things that almost went wrong.”
“You are a poet in an apron.” She bites the tart, moans without apology, and drifts away.
Cruz cycles in and out of my vision like a warm tide.
He steals another biscotti and offers one back to me as if the ritual requires even counts.
He leans close to ask if the panna cotta set or if it is a saint walking on water.
He sneaks a candied orange peel, chews slow, and closes his eyes. “That,” he says, “tastes like a holiday I want to remember.”
He calls a little girl princess and ties her shoe with hands that have also patched bullet tears in leather.
He laughs with his whole face when a biker with a garland crown tries to reheat cider over the bonfire and almost sets his beard on fire.
I laugh too, and not the polite giggles for men who think they deserve them. I laugh with my belly and my teeth and my lungs because it is funny and because it feels good to let joy take up space.
The sound makes my chest loosen, and it earns me a look from Roman that is almost a touch.
I wonder, for one wild second, what I would do if he moved.
I find my hand smoothing the tablecloth because I am not brave enough yet to answer.
A hand slides a thermos beside my cutting board. The hand is gloved, which makes the gesture stranger and somehow more intimate. I do not see who leaves it.
I only hear a voice that is smoke and church and gravel.
“You have been on your feet too long.” The words drop like coins in a collection plate.
