Copies existed.
Screen recordings.
Reposts.
Someone had already added music to a shortened version even though the original dance track was different.
Someone else titled it:
BIKER DAD SAVES DAUGHTER’S RECITAL
Duke hated the word saves.
Lily did not need saving.
She needed company for thirty seconds.
That was different.
By morning the video had crossed a million views.
By afternoon, eight million.
Duke went to work anyway.
Malone Custom Cycles occupied an old brick garage on the edge of town.
The sign outside had a cracked corner.
The shop smelled like oil, rubber, coffee, and metal.
Three mechanics worked there.
All three were waiting when Duke arrived.
One wore a pink ribbon tied around his beard.
Duke stopped.
“Take that out.”
Rico laughed.
“No.”
Another mechanic, Mel, had taped a paper tutu around the shop’s mannequin.
Duke stared.
“You’re both fired.”
“You can't fire me,” Mel said.
“I own twelve percent.”
“Then I’m buying your twelve percent for a dollar.”
The third mechanic, Jo, stepped from behind a motorcycle.
Jo was fifty-eight, former Navy machinist, and the only person in the garage Duke genuinely feared.
She pointed at him.
“You made me cry.”
Duke groaned.
“Not you too.”
She walked over.
Then hugged him.
Duke tolerated it.
Barely.
Rico held up his phone.
“Twenty-one million.”
“Stop counting.”
“News station called.”
“No.”
“A morning show called.”
“No.”
“Some company offered you free tutus for life.”
“Absolutely no.”
Rico laughed.
Duke walked toward his office.
Jo followed.
“You can say no to all of it.”
“I know.”
“But?”
Duke stopped.
“But Lily is in the video.”
Jo nodded.
“That bothers you.”
“People are making comments about her.”
“What kind?”
“Most good.”
“And?”
“Some saying she shouldn’t be performing if she freezes.”
Jo’s face changed.
“People are idiots.”
“Yes.”
“Don't read comments.”
“I know.”
“You read comments.”
“Yes.”
“Idiot.”
He smiled faintly.
Jo leaned against the doorframe.
“Talk to Mara.”
“Talk to Lily’s therapist.”
“Figure out what’s best for her.”
“Don't decide based on strangers.”
Duke nodded.
That afternoon he did exactly that.
Lily had been seeing a child therapist named Dr. Naomi Reed for eight months.
Not because something was wrong with her.
Duke hated that phrasing.
She was seeing Dr. Reed because grief had started showing up in places neither of them expected.
Lily’s mother, Claire, had died two years earlier.
Breast cancer.
Thirty-five years old.
The diagnosis came late.
Treatment gave them fourteen months.
Fourteen months of hospital chairs, casseroles, insurance forms, hope, anger, exhaustion, and adults telling a three-year-old that Mommy was sick without teaching her to fear every cough forever.
Claire had been a dancer when she was young.
Not professional.
She had danced through college and later taught movement classes while training as a physical therapist.
She met Duke when he came into a rehabilitation clinic after breaking his ankle in a motorcycle accident.
Claire’s first sentence to him had been:
“You are too large for those crutches.”
Duke answered:
“They said one size fits all.”