Epilogue #2
Blue and white balloons are tied to exposed pipes and support beams, some of them sagging slightly where the tape didn’t quite hold. Streamers hang crooked along the walls and over the bar, tangled up with old neon signs and Riders banners that never come down.
It’s a week after Harley’s graduation in Miami. She’s back in town while she decides what to do next. I know Steel hopes she’s planning on staying in Helena.
The smell of food already cooking rolls through the bar, Hecker’s set up grills around the back, and Brick and Snake have offered to act as grill masters for the night.
The place is packed, bodies pressed close, and the air-conditioning never stood a chance.
It’s sweltering. I can already feel sweat gathering between my shoulder blades, trickling down my back.
“Do you see Harley?” Steel asks.
I turn, scanning the crowd—bikers, old ladies, town locals, and a decent number of people who clearly don’t usually set foot in a place like this.
Harley’s old school friends stand out immediately.
They’re sticking together near the far end of the bar, drinks clutched carefully, their eyes wide but curious.
They look like they’re trying to convince themselves they belong here.
“No,” I say. “She didn’t say she was going anywhere. Her friends are over there. And she was sitting with my mom earlier.”
Steel follows my gaze. His jaw tightens the way it always does when his attention lands on anything connected to his daughter.
My mother’s seated at one of the tables at the edge of the room.
She’s doing well now. I finally managed to get her into a program that specialized in complex grief therapy.
We both needed it. She’s been accepted into the wider Steel Riders family, and it’s only right she came tonight.
While Steel and I aren’t married, in our world we are, and I guess Harley is her step-granddaughter.
And technically my stepdaughter, which considering there’s only three years between us is crazy.
In the two years I’ve been with Steel, I’ve gotten to know Harley well.
She’s smart, sharp, stubborn in the best way.
Talented enough to make her father proud, and independent enough to scare him.
I’m not her mother, and I’ve never tried to be.
If anything, we exist somewhere between friends and allies, which suits us both just fine.
Steel grumbles under his breath, something low and unreadable.
I reach out and rest my hand on his arm. “She’ll be fine, she’s probably just catching up with old friends,” I say quietly.
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 visit Liam’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.
We get closer and closer to the tree, the big one with the towering branches waving in the gentle evening breeze, a breeze not hot enough to dispel the sticky heat that is normal for late June.
Steel doesn’t bother to bark out Harley’s name. He knows she can’t hear us. We’re nearly there, and I can definitely see that it’s her, with her tell-tale wild curls and black dress, her leather jacket draped over her shoulders.
A twig snaps under Steel’s boots and the shape changes in front of us. I let out a gasp because it’s not just one black-clad, dark-haired figure.
It’s two.
Harley whirls away from the taller, broader figure, and faces us with fearful eyes.
“Dad.” The word came out in a rush of shock.
“Holy shit!” I say all breathy because it is all I can say.
“You’re a fucking dead man,” Steel shouts beside me, feral rage in his voice and I don’t doubt for one second that he means what he says.
Because there beside Harley, his wide-eyed daughter with the kiss-swollen lips, smudged makeup, and rumpled dress, is the VP of Steel Riders.
Edge.
THE END