I love my biker father more than anything, but he didn’t walk me down the aisle. I thought he’d abandoned me—just like Mom always warned he would.
My name is Olivia Mitchell, and I’m twenty years old. I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was eight, sitting on the tank of my dad’s 1987 Harley Softail while he worked the controls.
People always said it was dangerous. Mom left us over it when I was six, screaming that she wouldn’t watch her daughter die on a motorcycle.
But Dad never put me in danger. He taught me respect for the road, for the machine, and for the freedom that comes with two wheels and an open highway.
By the time I was sixteen, I had my own bike—a Honda Shadow 750 that Dad and I rebuilt together in our garage over two years. That bike became my whole world. But not as much as the man who taught me to ride it.
Dad—everyone calls him Hawk because of his sharp eyes and the way he watches over people—raised me alone after Mom left. He worked construction during the day, rode with the Iron Guardians MC on weekends, and never once missed a single moment of my life that mattered.
Every school play, every parent-teacher conference, every scraped knee, every broken heart—he was there. Always in his leather vest, his gray beard braided, his massive frame somehow the gentlest presence in any room when I needed him.
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When I met Danny three years ago at a bike rally, Dad was the first person I told. Danny rode a Kawasaki Vulcan, worked as an EMT, and understood what motorcycles meant to me.
Dad liked him immediately. They’d spend hours talking about bikes, riding together, working on engines in our garage. Six months ago, Danny proposed at the same rest stop where Dad had taught me to do my first solo highway merge. Dad cried harder than I did.
We planned a small wedding—fifty people, a backyard ceremony, nothing fancy. But the one thing that mattered most to me was having Dad walk me down the aisle. I’d dreamed about it since I was a little girl—my big, scary-looking biker father in a suit, giving me away to the man I loved.
The morning of the wedding, Dad was acting strange. He kept checking his phone, stepping outside to take calls, his face tight with worry. I asked him three times if everything was okay.
“Everything’s perfect, baby girl,” he’d said, kissing my forehead. “Today’s the best day of my life.”
But two hours before the ceremony, Dad disappeared. His truck was gone. His phone went straight to voicemail. I stood in my wedding dress, watching the clock, my heart breaking with every minute that passed.
The Iron Guardians MC—twelve of Dad’s brothers who’d been like uncles to me my whole life—were all there. They kept making excuses. Traffic. Emergency. He’d be there any minute.
But I knew. Deep down, I knew. Mom had been right all along. Bikers were unreliable. Selfish. They’d choose the road over anything.
Dad had chosen the road over me.
When the ceremony time came and went, I made the hardest decision of my life. Uncle Bear, Dad’s best friend and the road captain of the Iron Guardians, offered to walk me down the aisle instead.
I said yes, but I was crying so hard I could barely see.
As we walked toward Danny, I kept scanning the backyard, hoping to see Dad’s truck pull up. Hoping to see him running toward me with some explanation. But he never came.