His Best Friend's Daughter

Kyra POV

I swing off the back of the motorcycle and drag my fingers through my shoulder-length hair, working out the knots the wind left behind. Two minutes on that bike and my hair turns into something you'd find rolling across a desert highway. He grabs my waist and tugs me in, pressing a flat, dusty kiss to my mouth that tastes like asphalt and disappointment.

"Kyra!" The voice booms down from the top of the driveway like a thunderclap, startling us both straight. "You get on the back of that bike one more time, we're gonna have a serious goddamn problem."

Jason yanks his hands back like he's touched a hot stove hand that had been slowly migrating south. "Jesus," he mutters. "Is that your old man?"

I exhale slowly. My father doesn't do driveway confrontations. He saves the volume for concert stages, not suburban cobblestone. "No. That's my uncle."

Jason narrows his eyes up the driveway, then looks back at me. "Wait, doesn't he run that motorcycle shop over on Route 9? I think I actually bought my bike from him."

"Probably. He's not technically my uncle, though. He's been my dad's best friend since forever."

Tor is already halfway down the driveway, boots hitting stone with deliberate weight, his eyes locked on Jason like a heat-seeking missile. The ink crawling up his forearms flexes as he points a finger in Jason's direction. "You hear what I said? She doesn't get on that bike again."

"Yes, sir." Jason's voice comes out smaller than I've ever heard it.

"I should go in before he actually combusts," I say, slinging my bag over my shoulder. "Have a good time at the party tonight."

Jason tilts his head, eyebrow raised, that practiced smirk doing what he thinks is heavy lifting. "You could always come with me, you know." The implication hangs in the air between us like smoke. And honestly? A month ago I might have cared. But that was before I discovered he kisses like he's never quite sure what mouths are for and runs out of things to say somewhere around sentence three. I'd genuinely rather sit around a backyard fire with my dad's bandmates than spend two hours trying to manufacture chemistry that isn't there.

"I can't tonight, really." *Truly not sorry.* "I'll text you."

I don't wait for his response. I start up the driveway, cutting a look at Toren sharp enough to leave a mark.

He falls into step beside me the second Jason peels off down the street. "Listen to me for a second. That kid has had his license for what three months? He rides like he's still figuring out how the whole thing works. You wipe out going forty miles an hour, Kenz, it's not a scraped knee situation. You ride with me, you ride with your dad, you ride with one of your uncles. Not some teenager is still getting comfortable with the clutch."

"It was six miles. I wasn't crossing state lines." I keep walking. "And stop yelling. You're not my father."

"I'm the next closest thing, so keep moving." He cuts ahead as we reach the back of the house, taking the deck stairs two at a time and pulling open the French doors before I even get there. Inside, the kitchen looks like a grocery store went through a minor explosion. Bags lined up across the granite island, everything waiting to be sorted. Tor does this twice a month, hauls over food and drinks, sets the whole thing up before my dad's friends and band roll in for the backyard nights. Bonfire, pool, music bleeding out from whatever somebody picks up. It's become one of those rhythms the house runs on.

I know I should help unpack. I'm aware of that. But my mood is sitting somewhere under the floorboards, and the thing I need most right now is a door between me and everyone else.

I duck down the hallway, take the stairs, and close myself inside my room. Shoes off, flat on my back, staring up at the vaulted ceiling. One more month. Thirty-something days until graduation and I'm done with the social performances, the drunken weekend replays, the boys who confuse persistence with charm.

What comes after that? Genuinely no idea. The only thing I know is it involves distance from this particular building and the people inside it.

I've never really clicked with any of them, my classmates, I mean. My parents were fifteen when I was born. Fifteen. Still sitting in the same hallways I walk through now, some of the same teachers watching from the same doorways. There's something quietly strange about knowing my mother was pregnant with me in rooms I now take exams in. I used to joke that I got a head start in high school. Maybe that's actually true.

I came into the world already surrounded by people who made careers out of being known. My grandfather seventies rock royalty, the kind of songwriter people still cover at open mics. My grandmother cranked out over a hundred romance novels, a chunk of them turned into those cable movies people watch on rainy Sunday afternoons. My parents formed a band at seventeen and somehow turned it into a real life. My dad's group, Ashes & Elaras, is him plus his brothers and two cousins. By the time I was ten, tour buses and backstage chaos were just Tuesday to me.

None of it made me reckless. If anything it made me quieter careful in ways most kids my age haven't needed to be yet. I was loved completely; nobody hid me from anything. My parents brought me along because they wanted me there, not because they were careless. But absorbing all of that, the realness of it, the mess and the beauty before I had the language for it meant I grew up somewhere slightly ahead of where I should've been. And now I sit in classrooms with people my age and feel like I'm watching them through glass.

I figured out early that proximity to my family meant something to people. Kids who wanted floor seats. Boys who thought I could hand-deliver their demo to my father's manager. Girls who'd smile at me all week on the off chance they'd end up at a party and maybe run into one of my uncles or worse, develop some inexplicable thing for my actual dad. You learn to read it fast. The angle behind the friendliness.

So mostly I keep to a small orbit. Chloe, who's been my person since elementary school and never once asked me for anything. Rayne, my dad's younger sister, who's more like a slightly chaotic older cousin than an aunt. And the band's whole extended circle are the people who've been around long enough that they stopped trying to impress anyone years ago. Those are my people. Everyone else has a question I'm not sure how to answer yet.