Page 347 of Romeo

His thumb moved over my hip. “Know what?”

“If I look like him.” I frowned at the photograph, annoyed by the disappointment that followed. “I thought I would know.”

“Why?”

I glanced at him. “Because he’s my father.”

“Biologically.”

The distinction landed softly instead of defensively. I looked back at Angel’s face. “I know.”

The man who had been my father was dead. That hadn’t changed yesterday when Jasper gave me another man’s name. Dad was still the man whose coffee I remembered smelling in the mornings, the man whose shoulders had once seemed high enough to touch the ceiling when he carried me. Angel was something else.

I didn’t know what yet.

“He searched for my mother for two years,” I said, mostly because that was the only thing I knew about him that felt personal.

“Yeah. He loved her.”

“And then when he found out she had the baby, he started looking for me.”

Jasper nodded. “Immediately. He was given the president’s patch when Steele died. He turned it down and asked to go nomad so he could search for you. He had nothin’, Ma Belle. Nothin’ but the word of a girl he hadn’t seen in almost twenty years who told him you were born and gave him a name. He’s still searchin’, Cher.”

I stared at Angel a little longer. That mattered more than whether we shared a nose.

“Next one.”

Jasper swiped the screen. Banshee appeared. My uncle. Even thinking the word made me uncomfortable. Not bad exactly. Just premature, like wearing shoes that hadn’t been broken in yet. Uncle belonged to someone who showed up at birthdays or annoyed you at Thanksgiving. It didn’t belong to a biker in Nebraska who didn’t know the niece he was searching for had spent time in the same world as him without either of them realizing it.

“This is Banshee?”

“Yeah.”

I took the phone from Jasper this time. There was something different about looking at Banshee. With Angel, I had immediately searched for resemblance because biology was the only connection between us that I understood. With Banshee, I kept thinking about Kaylah. His little sister.

My mother.

“He looked for her for years.”

Jasper pressed his chin onto my shoulder. “Yeah. He only stopped this year.”

“When he found out she died,” I whispered to myself. Jasper’s arms tightened around me.

I wondered how many times Banshee had imagined finding Kaylah. Whether he had pictured some reunion where she yelled at him for taking so long or hugged him until neither of them could breathe. I wondered what it had done to him to eventually find answers instead of the sister he wanted. Then I thought about what Jasper told me yesterday. Banshee was still looking for Kaylah’s daughter.

Me.

Guilt pressed uncomfortably into my chest.

“He doesn’t know,” I whispered.

Jasper knew exactly what I meant. “No.”

“He’s still looking.”

“Yeah.”

I rubbed my thumb along the edge of the phone. “And I’m sitting here looking at his picture while he has no idea I’ve already been found.”