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phone.”
    After a small hesitation, Luca finally nodded. “Yeah, okay.” Those dramatic brown eyes turned back to me. “So why don’t they take our phones?”
    “Because if you are somewhere they aren’t and you need them, they are only a phone call away.” I straightened. “Now, go and give her the phone back.”
    “You gonna tell on us?” Luca asked, his chin still jutted out like the tough guy he was.
    “Not if you give her the phone back in the next two minutes.” I checked my watch and then glanced back down at him. “Go. I’m timing you.”
    Two pairs of feet ran up the stairs with the force of a category-five hurricane. Thrusting my hands into my jeans pockets, I glared after them. Damn little troublemakers. And I was going to have to deal with them for the rest of my life if I wanted to be with Lucy.
    A deep chuckle sounded behind me and I turned to find Jesse stepping out of the living room. “You handled them like a pro. I had a feeling that they had something to do with Lu’s missing phone when she couldn’t find it before school.”
    “She left for school without a phone?” Panic for what might have happened began to choke me. What if she had needed help? I didn’t care that Marcus was with her and had his own phone. That didn’t fucking matter. Her phone was my lifeline to her. What if..?
    “Relax, Harris. Layla let Lu take hers this morning. She was fine, boy.” His eyes were laughing at me even as his mouth turned down. “You’re acting worse than me, kid. Don’t give yourself gray hair.”
    “She’s my best friend.” And so much more. “I worry about her every day,” I confessed.
    “She’s my little girl. So do I.” He turned his head to the right, eyeing me oddly for a long moment before finally grinning again. “I’m glad it’s you, Harris. Maybe I can sleep a little better at night now.”
    I tried to keep my eyes from widening but didn’t think I pulled it off when he threw his bald head back and laughed. “Sir?” Had I ever called anyone but this man ‘sir’? I couldn’t remember.
    “I’m not blind, boy. Or stupid. I know Lucy better than even you do. She’s my baby. I see that she loves you and I know that you love her, too. I saw it when she was eleven. I knew when your face fell the night that First Bass opened and she wasn’t with us. I haven’t said anything because I was letting you two find your own way, but she wasn’t the same the last week or so. Glad to see that you two made up.” His smile was still in place, but his eyes were telling me vehemently that it would be better for everyone if it didn’t happen again. 
    I swallowed hard, trying to figure out if I was going to make it out of that house alive or not. I’d grown up in a not-so-pretty world. Rockers were scary motherfuckers. Yet it was only Jesse Thornton who terrified the living hell out of me. Not even Wroth Niall, the original rage monster and all-around scary bastard, had put the fear of God into me like the man currently standing in front of me.
    Maybe it was because Jesse’s best friend was Emmie Armstrong and she could make someone disappear with as little as two phone calls. You didn’t work as hard as she had for as many years as she did and not make friends with people in powerfully high places—and some incredibly low places, too.
    Or maybe it was something completely different that made me so nervous—and yeah, truly scared shitless—of Jesse Thornton. Maybe it was because I knew that he had the power to take away the one and only thing I knew I couldn’t live without. One word from Lucy’s father and I knew that anything we might have in the future could be thrown out the window. She said she loved me and I believed her, but Jesse was the man who had raised her, the first man to ever love her unconditionally. I knew that she hadn’t wanted to tell Jesse about us to protect me, but I also knew it was because she hadn’t wanted to know what he would do if he