Falling for my Biker Roommate

8

The call came just after midnight.

I was still half-asleep when my phone lit up on the nightstand. Maya’s name. My heart jumped before I even answered. Leo was already in the hallway when I opened my door, boots on, keys in his hand. He had heard my phone too.

“She’s in labor,” I said.

He nodded once. “I’ll drive.”

We barely spoke on the way to the hospital. The streets were empty.

The only sound was the low hum of the truck engine and the occasional click of the turn signal. My mind kept racing ahead—what if something went wrong, what if the babies came too fast, what if Maya needed us and we were stuck in traffic. Leo kept both hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road. Every few minutes I caught him glancing at me like he wanted to say something. He never did.

Ethan met us in the waiting room looking pale and wired. “She’s doing good. They’re monitoring everything. It could be a while.”

It was more than a while.

Hours blurred together under the bright hospital lights. I fetched coffee. Leo paced. Ethan disappeared into the delivery room and came back out looking more wrecked each time. The sky outside the windows went from black to gray to pale blue. My eyes burned. My body ached from the hard plastic chairs.

Then, just after sunrise, Ethan walked out with tears on his face and a smile that cracked him open.

“Two healthy babies,” he said. “A boy and a girl. Maya’s okay. She’s tired but she’s okay.”

I hugged him hard. Leo clapped him on the back and pulled him in for a rough one-armed hug. We were allowed in a little later, two at a time.

Maya looked exhausted and glowing at the same time. The babies were tiny and perfect, wrapped in matching blankets. Ethan carefully placed the little girl in my arms first.

She weighed almost nothing. Her face was red and scrunched, one tiny fist tucked under her chin. The second her warm weight settled against me, something inside my chest pulled tight and sharp.

My throat closed up. I had known I wanted this someday. I had felt the longing for over a year. But holding her made it real in a way that online shopping for baby clothes never had.

It felt like a tactical alarm going off in my body. Loud. Clear. Impossible to ignore.

I looked up.

Leo stood on the other side of the room near the window. He was watching me. His face was completely closed off—no smile, no soft look, nothing I could read. Just gray eyes locked on me and the baby like he was memorizing something he didn’t want to keep.

I forced a small smile. He didn’t return it. He just gave a short nod and looked away toward the crib where the little boy was sleeping.

We stayed as long as the nurses allowed. I held both babies. I kissed Maya’s forehead. I promised to come back with real food later. When we finally walked out of the hospital the morning sun felt too bright.

Leo drove.

The silence in the truck was heavier than the night before. No radio. No small talk. Just the sound of the tires on the road and the quiet click of the turn signal every time he changed lanes. I stared out the window at the harbor as it came into view, trying to push down the ache in my chest.

I reached for the auxiliary cord to plug in my phone and change the station. My hand landed right on top of his.

He had been resting it on the gear shift. My fingers settled over his knuckles before I even realized what I had done. His skin was warm. Rough. Familiar in a way that made my stomach flip.

We both jerked our hands back like we had touched an open flame.

“Sorry,” I said too fast.

“My bad,” he muttered at the same time.

The silence that followed felt even louder. I folded my hands in my lap. He kept both of his on the wheel now.

After a minute he cleared his throat. “You always drive like you’re trying to win a race when you’re tired.”

I let out a weak laugh. “Says the man who takes curves on a motorcycle like the road personally offended him.”

“That’s different. The bike listens better than this truck does.”

“Sure it does.”

We kept going like that for the next twenty minutes. Forced jokes about clumsy driving, about how he needed new windshield wipers, about how I always left the gas tank almost empty. Nothing real. Nothing about the way he had looked at me while I held that baby. Nothing about the heat that had shot up my arm when our hands touched.

When he parked behind the restaurant I already had my door open.

“I’m gonna shower and try to sleep a couple hours before we open,” I said without looking at him.

“Yeah. Same.”

I climbed the stairs two at a time. Inside the apartment I went straight to my room and shut the door. I leaned against it and pressed both hands over my face.

The baby’s weight still lingered in my arms. Leo’s unreadable eyes still sat behind my eyelids. The feeling of his hand still burned under my palm.

I slid down to the floor and sat there in the dark, trying to remember how to breathe like someone who was not completely, hopelessly in love with the man across the hall.