Page 21 of The Biker and the Single Mom

My hands were steady. My family was protected. The nightmares had stopped.

And lying here between the two people I loved most in the world, I finally understood what healing looked like.

CHAPTER 6

RORY

Luna has pizza sauce on both cheeks, her chin, and somehow in her hair.

"More pepperoni!" she announces, reaching across the kitchen table for another slice.

"Slow down, baby." I pass her a napkin she immediately ignores.

Doc grins from across the table, on his third slice, at ease in sweats and an old t-shirt. Friday night pizza has become our thing—Luna's choice, always pepperoni, always from the same place.

Three months of this.

Three months since Matt ran. Three months of pizza nights and bedtime routines and waking up in the same bed. Three months of being exactly where I'm supposed to be.

"Daddy Doc, Mr. Hops wants pizza too."

"Mr. Hops is a stuffed bunny," Doc says reasonably.

"He's hungry!"

Doc tears off a tiny piece of crust and hands it to her. "There. Now he's fed."

Luna holds it up to the rabbit's face, makes elaborate chewing noises, then eats it herself. "He says thank you."

"I bet he does." He catches my eye, that slow smile that still makes my ribs tighten.

Daddy Doc.

She started calling him that six weeks ago, casual as anything. We'd been at the park when another kid asked who he was. Luna had looked up at Doc with absolute certainty and said, "My Daddy Doc."

He'd frozen mid-push on her swing. His gaze found mine across the playground—questioning, asking permission, asking if this was okay, asking if he was allowed to be this to her.

I'd nodded, words sticking in my throat.

That night, after Luna fell asleep, he'd pulled me into his arms and held on like his life depended on it.

"I don't deserve this," he'd whispered against my hair.

"You deserve everything," I'd told him.

And I'd meant it.

This is real. This Friday night with pizza grease and a four-year-old's negotiations about stuffed animal dining preferences—this is my life now.

I work morning shifts at Sweet Salvation with Maddie, helping with the baking and counter work. Good, honest work that lets me be home by two when Luna gets out of preschool. Doc's flexible schedule with his clinic and other MC business means he can pick her up most days.

The other moms at preschool definitely notice him.

Hard not to—six-foot-three of tattooed muscle, all protective intensity and barely contained alpha energy. But when Luna runs out of the building and launches herself at him, shrieking "Daddy Doc!" at the top of her lungs, those other moms get the message loud and clear.

He's taken.

Very, very taken.