He huffs, unconvinced but not arguing. For him, this is control he can’t exert—his kid grown, educated, out in the world. No amount of muscle or reputation fixes that.
“Where’s Edge? Don’t see him either. He was supposed to meet us here too,” Steel mutters.
“Maybe he’s just running late.”
Steel gives me a half scowl, half incredulous look that says that Edge doesn’t run late, especially not to something like this. The homecoming party had actually been Edge’s idea. He and Harley seemed to get on well. She’d been working at the garage during summer break and seeing as she was a business major, she’d had a few ideas to bring in new clients which had boosted trade. It was his way of thanking her.
“He’s probably hooking up with one of the club girls. You know what, enough of this. I didn’t want to do it, but…” Steel gets his phone out of his pocket. It takes him a second, but he flips open an app.
My mouth falls open. “Are you… Did you put a tracker on Harley’s phone? She’s a grown woman!”
He has the decency to look a bit embarrassed by that. “Yeah. Maybe I should have removed the app when she was eighteen. It’s not like I’ve been spying on her while she’s been away at college.”
I give him a hard stare at that. Maybe not spying, but I know for a fact he had Tracker check out her friends.
“Look. Don’t get so defensive. There’s a tracker on your phone. I have one. We have enemies, you never know when it might save a life,” he says.
“So this is just about that? Not wanting to know what she’s up to every hour of the day?”
“I swear to you that I’ve only used it once before—when she was seventeen and didn’t come home.”
“And where was she?” I ask.
“At the school library. She was studying and lost track of time—left her phone in her backpack and didn’t see my texts.”
I shoot Steel a look, and he frowns, pretending not to see it. He glances back down at the app and sighs. “I’ll let you win this one. She’s around the back of the building. Probably with friends.”
This time it’s my turn to frown. Harley’s friends all seem to be here too, and I can see them chatting in the corner.
“Do you think we should go find her? Maybe she just lost track of time again. I don’t want her to walk in late and be embarrassed.”
Steel scowls when his gaze sweeps over the room. I know what he’s thinking. He’s Harley’s dad. He loves her more than anything. Harley told me how she used to get bullied as a kid for being deaf, and now that she’s blossomed into a stunning woman who might not see or hear the trouble coming, even I sometimes worry about her. She might be twenty-one, but to him she’s still his little girl.
“Let’s go get her then. We can say we were looking for her. She doesn’t need to know about the tracker.”
“Because then she’d just delete it? Get a new phone?”
“Yes, and yes, though I’d put it on her new one too.”
I roll my eyes, but my smile is completely genuine. “You’re a good dad, Steel. The best.”
I don’t think about how my father turned out. We cleaned up his mess. Dealt with the estate. Got my mom into a treatment program and found her a small house a few miles down the road from us. She’s happy. Getting her life back together.
We both are. Neither of us ever talk about my father, though we have grown to the point where we can visitLiam’s grave together now. We talk about him a lot. Good memories. I miss my brother, and having my mom there with me for the first time ever brings him back in a way that I never even hoped could happen again. For both of us.
Steel and I rise from the table. I slip my arm through his, and together we walk out of the bar, back outside. We pass the lot where his bike is parked.
Throngs of people are congregated outside, laughing and talking. The Canteen might be a bit on the rough side, but it’s strictly no smoking so there’s always a few groups out front.
Steel checks his phone one more time and pulls me off to the left, through the grass. He has a determined look on his face that I’ve only seen a few times.
“Put your phone away,” I say with a hiss. “And wipe that look off your face. You look like you’re on the warpath or something.”
Steel grumbles something under his breath, but he tucks his phone back into his pocket like I asked. There is a group of trees ahead, and I’m pulled along helplessly.
I blink hard because, off in the distance, underneath one, I think I see a shred of something black… Raven-black hair, or a black dress… it’s hard to tell.
Steel obviously knows it’s his daughter, though, because his strides change, lengthening and quickening so that I almost have to run to stay beside him.
