Chapter 63: Wolf.e: Epilogue

“That’s it, nice and slow,” I tell my oldest son Sebastian. “Squeeze the trigger halfway, you don’t want it to come out too quickly or you’ll just make a mess and you’ll have to start over.”

His brow knots in concentration as he focuses on the fine lines he’s mapped out on the gas tank of his own bike we’ve been refinishing. A bike he’ll be able to ride anytime, anywhere, in just two short months when it’s done and he turns seventeen. By then, he’ll be able to get his full M class. He’s already been riding with his permit for three months and he’s a natural. It makes his brother chomp at the bit to get his permit, but he has to wait another two years.

“Fuck,” he bites out when he moves outside the lines with the paint he’s airbrushing.

“Eh,” I tell him gruffly. “Not in front of your mother.”

Behind me, my gorgeous bride of fifteen years scoffs, her attitude has only grown stronger as has her beauty. At forty-one, she looks better than any twenty-five-year-old could, she says it’s thanks to always being sexually satisfied. Tells me it’s the fountain of youth and she must be right because I don’t feel anywhere near my almost forty-nine years.

“Sorry,” Seb mutters.

“Same thing I say every time, Seb, you gotta slow down, take your time. You think your dad got this good by rushing?” Brinley asks. “And by the way, if you two think I don’t know how you talk when I’m not around, you’re fucking crazy.” She winks. “Be cleaned up in an hour, I don’t want grease monkeys at my daughter’s graduation,” she says, moving in to kiss my lips.

Her signature jasmine scent is like heaven in my shop.

I pull her close and linger there a little longer.

“Disgusting,” Micah, our almost fifteen-year-old son, says as he comes into the shop. He’s already too big for the suit he’s wearing, and we just bought it last year for his own middle school graduation. Both my boys are almost as big as I am, much larger than I even was at their age and they’ll be a team to reckon with one day.

“Agreed, can’t you two cut that shit out,” Seb says without looking up.

“Be happy we love each other,” Brinley says, cuffing Seb on the back of his head.

“Mom, now I have to start that whole line over.”

“Guess that’ll teach you to mind your manners then, won’t it?” she asks him with an eyebrow raised.

“Come on, let’s let the hem out of those,” she says to Micah when she eyes up his pants. She’s wearing a little sundress, and it isn’t without great effort that I don’t kick both my boys out and take her right on my workbench. Later, I tell myself.

Seventeen years with this woman, three kids, two businesses, and club life, and the only thing that’s constant is the way I want her. Everything changes around us daily. Kids grow up, people live, people die, people move away, our businesses have changed.

My detail shop has moved to our property. After Seb started preschool, we expanded here so Kai and I could work and still take the kids to school while Brinley grew Hummingbird Designs to become one of Savannah’s most sought-after interior design companies.

The club has changed, we’ve patched in new members, seen members pass, and members retire. We’ve had times of peace and times of worry but through it all, I’ve never stopped wanting her, and I’ve always tried to make Brinley and our family my focus. It’s been the greatest joy of my life to raise our kids with her and have my club family by our side.

I watch as Seb starts over, he’s got the passion I had at his age. He’s big like me but handsome so the girls are already coming around more often than not. He’s eager to learn and eager to follow in my footsteps, a thought that fills me with pride and worries me all the same.

“Fuck yeah,” he says as he masters his grid. The design is sick; I’ll give him that. Even Kai is impressed with his skill.

“This bike is gonna get me every fucking girl in school,” he says.

I chuckle and pull my mask off.

“It’s gonna be hard to get any girl if your mother kills you for not being ready on time.”

“Can we come back out tonight? When the party winds down?” he asks, looking both grown up and so young at the same time.

“Yeah, come on. If we don’t hurry, both of them will be on us,” I say.

Seb shudders. “Sounds like a nightmare.” He laughs, knowing his baby sister is just as feisty as his mother.

I chuckle harder and pat his shoulder as we walk. It’s moments like this when the only regret I have is that my mother never got to see this life I’m living. Although, if I listen to my still faith-filled wife, my mother’s been watching over us and guided me to my little hummingbird the day her long raven hair, shining in the sun, caught my attention. The day my life changed forever.

Brinley

Our backyard is bustling after a massive barbeque dinner with the entire Hounds of Hell MC, all the kids’ friends and people celebrating our fourteen-year-old daughter Harlow’s middle school graduation.

For nineteen full years, Gabriel has been the Hounds of Hell president, and the club has never been more lucrative or peaceful. Over the last sixteen years, he’s had the club’s help with founding an additional three clinics for a total of nine now in the Savannah and Atlanta areas and they’re pushing into Florida clinics with recovery medications.

He’s aligned himself with the right people for protection and is working for the greater good. He’s also become an ear for any veterans who need help or need to talk, following their return home from active duty.

Is my husband unconventional? Yes. Does he do things that make me question his sanity? Also, yes. But he’s a proud man who does so much more good than he does bad.

I stand close to the edge of the woods where long rows of tables have been set up with condiments and paper plates, watching our family and friends talk and laugh while music plays. Some of the kids dance and some swim in the pool that Gabriel installed ten years ago when he added onto the house to fit all our kids.

Our kids have grown up as club kids, but Harlow is the baby and every single person we love has fawned over her since the day she was born, and why wouldn’t they?

I watch her now, in her pink graduation dress Gabriel thought was too short, holding Sean and Layla’s three-year-old son Max on her hip as she talks to Shelly and some of the club elders. Harlow has been a joy since the day she was born—happy, always smiling, always willing to help. She’s better than both Gabe and I are, that’s for sure. And oddly enough, she has a heart for ministry. She works with the local Salvation Army and their community outreach programs in Savannah, and at only fourteen has more volunteer hours than most of her friends combined.

Gabriel thinks she’s going to change the world someday and I don’t disagree, but there’s one thing about her that amuses me. She has her father’s feisty I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude through and through. No one messes with her. On the outside, she’s a sweet little thing. She looks a lot like I did when I was young, with her long black hair, but she’s a thousand times more beautiful than I ever was. It’s truly the bane of Gabriel’s existence that soon enough she’ll have boys calling on her.

I snort back laughter every time I think about it. Good luck with her brothers and Gabriel on standby. She’ll be thirty before that poor girl gets a date.

“How is she that old?” My husband wraps his arms around me, the way he always has from behind and kisses my neck.

“Time flies when you’re having fun, baby.” I turn to face him, patting the intricate hummingbird tattoo that takes up some good real estate below his left ear over his pulse point. A reminder every time I look at him that even if he is a man of little words, his actions and acts of service are and always have been his love language. There hasn’t been a moment since I’ve been with Gabriel where I haven’t felt completely taken care of and loved without measure.

I look out to the lake where the sun sinks behind the horizon as our party wears on.

“I’m gonna head to the shop soon with Seb. I promised him we’d work on his bike tonight,” he tells me.

I giggle.

“I’m pretty sure Seb is making out with Robby’s granddaughter in his room, they’re in the same class next year. Apparently, they’re bonding over that,” I tell him. “He thinks I didn’t notice them sneak off together.”

Gabriel chuckles into my ear. “He’s not as smooth as he thinks he is,” he says gruffly.

“I was just like him at that age, all I thought about was girls. He won’t take it too far; he knows the limit.” He kisses me. “Guess that means we’re waiting to work on the bike until tomorrow.”

“Mm-hmm,” I say. “I don’t even want to think about it, that’s your department but I’m not trying to be a forty-year-old grandmother. Hell, some women are just starting to have kids at my age.”

“Mmm,” Gabriel groans into me, setting my cells on fire. “Is that what you want, for me to put another baby in this womb?” he asks in that voice that still drives me wild. His large hand presses against my low belly possessively.

How this man can be almost forty-nine and still be in better shape than most men half his age never ceases to amaze me. Gabriel even still looks the same just with those threads of silver through his dark hair. In my opinion, he hasn’t grown older, just better.

“I find it weird that I have to say this twice in one day but… disgusting,” Micah says as he passes by us, shaking his head.

Gabriel and I both chuckle as he heads over and meets up with Sean and Layla’s oldest son who’s only a year younger than him.

“A toast,” Shelly calls out to the group of more than a hundred as all the solar Edison lights throughout our yard flicker on with the setting sun. “To our baby, Harlow.”

We all turn and face Harlow who’s smiling her beautiful smile and is thoroughly embarrassed by all the attention.

“Nana!” she whines as Shelly waves her off.

“Stop, baby, you’re getting a toast whether you want one or not.”

Harlow sets Max down and moves over to join Shelly across the yard. I spot Dell and his wife of ten years and nod. He’s still a joy to consult with and has finally stopped looking at me like I made the wrong choice when I chose Gabriel.

“To the sweetest soul we know, moving on to high school next year. Break some hearts, have some fun, and for God’s sake, if you’re thinking of bringing a boy around, don’t bring him around here if you want him to live.”

A chorus of hear, hear’s spark through the crowd from Sean, Kai, Robby, Mason, Flipp, and Gabriel followed by laughter from the crowd.

I look at my baby, she looks at me and rolls her eyes with the idea of all the overprotective men in her life acting like cavemen. The room toasts and the party continues with all the people we love surrounding us. We may not be perfect, but damn, we all love harder than any family I’ve ever known.

I laugh and give her dad a little backhand in his muscled chest.

Gabriel pinches my waist as the festivities continue. I use the back of my nails to grip and dig into his forearms behind me and he grabs me hard around my waist, pulling me into him where I feel his cock starting to swell already.

“You’re in the mood to tussle, little hummingbird?” he asks, pulling me backward from the table with his lips on my neck. “Everyone is busy…”

“Mm-hmm… seems like it.” I smirk as Gabriel pulls me into the treeline.

“Think you still have what it takes to catch me, Pres?” I turn my face up to him and his lips come down on mine only once before his gruff whisper takes over and I prepare for flight.

“I guess we’ll see, wicked girl…”

“Run.”

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