Page 98 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies
I look down at the babies, their lashes fluttering, their cheeks round and flushed, their tiny hands resting against me.
My chest aches, but not from pain, from the strange, fragile fullness of it.
When they finish, I burp them one by one against my shoulder, their small hiccuping breaths making me laugh quietly, something I didn’t know I had the strength for tonight.
The sound startles me.
Then I realize I don’t feel drained.
Not like before.
Not like every day of this past year when exhaustion was a second skin.
For once, even with their little bodies clinging to me, even with the weight of everything around us, I feel lighter.
I kiss the crown of each small head, breathing them in. “Less tired than I’ve been in a long time,” I murmur, half to myself.
I catch Roman smiling before he quickly replaces it with a light nod.
It’s close, I tell myself.
It’s almost everything I’ve ever wanted.
19
MARISA
The lodge wakes under pale winter sunlight, the kind that slants through pine and lays soft warmth across frost-rimmed windows.
It should feel peaceful.
It feels like a room that has been holding its breath for a very long time. I wake alone.
The covers are tangled with memory and a wrinkle of Roman’s shoulder where he lay before he went to do whatever men like him do with morning and worry.
From the nursery I hear Cruz whispering a lullaby that belonged to his mother, then to his daughter, and now to my sons.
The vowels hang sweet and sad in the air. In the kitchen there is the steady sound of Deacon preparing coffee the way a surgeon washes up, methodical and without flair.
No Roman, which means he is either outside or everywhere.
I slip from bed, pull on leggings and thick socks and a sweater big enough to call a decision.
The nursery falls silent as I enter.
Two faces look up at me with eight thousand feelings and not a single word.
Luca grins without warning, cheeks round as a Christmas ornament.
Gabe studies my mouth and then tries to copy the shape.
I kiss each of them until they complain with small protest noises. I change a diaper that has opinions.
Gabe pees upward on the clean one and blinks at me like the laws of physics are a personal attack.
I laugh out loud.
It feels like a window opening.
