“Oh my god. Why are you such an easy mark?” She groans, but she’s laughing, and the sound does something dangerous to my nervous system.
She unplugs her phone and plugs in mine, navigating to my music app with the kind of casual confidence that suggests she’s not even slightly worried I’ll object.
Jim Croce’s “New York’s Not My Home” starts playing through the speakers.
My head immediately starts bobbing to the groove. I can’t help it—it’s a perfect song. One of Mom’s favorites. The guitar work alone is?—
“Oh my god. What is this?” Harper moans. “Why are you a seventy-year-old man in a teenager’s body?”
She clicks to the next track. Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” drums through the speakers, and I start singing along because it’s Johnny Cash, and if you don’t sing along to Johnny Cash, you’re dead inside.
“Do you listen to anything from this century?”
She clicks through several more songs—Steve Miller Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bob Seger—finally stopping on The Civil Wars “Barton Hollow.”
“Okay, now this I actually like.”
“You should, because it’s a masterpiece.”
She’s scrolling through my whole library now, and I resist the urge to grab the phone back. There’s something weirdly intimate about someone looking through yourmusic, seeing all the songs you’ve collected like pieces of yourself.
Not to mention… Everything’s in order. Alphabetical by artist, then chronological by album. Mom’s favorites in one playlist, Silas’s in another, never mixed. Twelve songs per road trip list because?—
Because it matters. I don’t know why. It just does. She’s messing up the algorithm, and my fingers itch to fix it.
“I still don’t see what this is supposed to tell me about you,” she says. “That you like... old man music?”
“It says that I’m classic.” I nod with a cocky smile her way. “I value the good stuff.”
She rolls her eyes—something I’ve noticed she does a lot around me—but she’s smiling when she does it. That smile hits me square in the chest, and I have to remind myself to watch the road.
Focus on the road. Focus on getting us to school safely. Focus on anything except the way morning light catches in her dark hair, or how she smells like cherry blossoms, or how badly I always want to touch her?—
My hands tighten on the steering wheel. “What did you mean earlier when you said you’re leaving soon?” It comes out too fast.
I try again, forcing calm into my tone even though my heart is suddenly pounding against my ribs. “You planning to run again?”
The idea makes my stomach drop. Harper running—getting picked up by some trucker, getting hurt, getting lost, getting?—
“Run? No, I’m not running.” She says it casually, like we’re discussing the weather. “I mean, I turn eighteen in a few weeks, so there’s no running to it. I’ll just be an adult, and Silas won’t have any more claim on me.”
“He’s your dad. He’ll always have a claim.” The words come out defensive, and I take a deep, steadying breath before I try again. “Family is the most important thing we have in life.”
Otherwise, you’re all alone in the world.
The rules I’ve built my life around flash through my head like a checklist I can’t stop running.
The idea of Harper just walking away from the closest thing to a real family she’s ever had makes something primal and desperate claw at my chest.
I know we’re good for her, even if she can’t see it.
I can feel her looking at me, so I glance away from the road for a second. She’s got this expression on her face—like I’m a child who doesn’t understand how the world works. Like she pities me for my naivety. But also like she’s confused by me. Like we’re different species trying to communicate across an impossible divide. She gets that look sometimes around Mom and me. Like we’re as alien to her as she is to us.
“Family is the ones who don’t leave,” she says quietly. “And that’s not my dad.”
The words hang in the air between us, sharp and final.
My mind is moving too quickly, trying to process, trying to find the right response, trying to?—