Epilogue
Sean
Nineteen Years Later
“Are you guys fucking kidding me?”
I turn and cuff our seventeen-year-old son, Rhys, in the back of the head for cussing like that.
“Eh, your sister doesn’t need to hear it,” I tell him gruffly as Calli, our fifteen-year-old daughter, pushes through the side door with a huge smile on her face and her dark hair flying out behind her as she chases her brother.
“Sorry, Cal,” he calls, looking back at her.
“But holy shit!” he exclaims as he takes off down the driveway.
He’s wearing a suit but that doesn’t slow him down.
Layla tucks herself into the crook of my arm with a stunning smile as we watch our son open the door to his completely overhauled and redone 1993 Dodge Ram.
His dream truck I’ve been working on for months.
It’s a beast with flat gray paint and black rims done by his uncles, Kai and Wolfe.
“That’s it, I no longer have control over where he goes and when,” Layla says softly, emotion lining her face. “He was just five years old yesterday, sitting in the lawn chair while you worked on your bike in the garage.”
Her copper hair blows in the breeze, and with the way she looks in her black dress, ready for Rhys’s graduation, it’s a wonder I don’t sneak her into the bathroom and hike the skirt up over her ass before we leave.
I think about how much we still have to do before we go today and promise myself to fit the time in.
I still can’t fucking get enough of her after almost twenty years.
I bend down and kiss her head. “Gotta let him grow up, little dove. At least he’ll be driving something safe when he’s at Duke in the fall.
” It was our proudest moment when he got accepted to my alma mater, cursed and blessed with a brain like his dad—only he’s going to put it to better use than I ever did and become a doctor.
“Never seen her look so happy for her brother before … about anything,” I comment about our daughter, who’s currently sitting in the passenger side checking out Rhys’s new ride.
Layla starts to laugh her all-knowing mama laugh and looks up at me with the beautiful brown eyes I’ve loved for a lifetime.
She never ages; in her early forties, her face is still unlined and her skin is bright.
She still has the long thick waves I love, only they’re a darker copper now, and I have no idea how it works but her fucking body only gets better with age, I swear to Christ.
She pats me on the chest as I breathe in her sweet citrus scent. “She isn’t happy for him Sean, she’s happy for her,” she whispers with a giggle. “She graduates in two years, and she knows this means there’ll probably be a gift like this for her in the driveway.”
I scoff. “Only if she changes her dream car from a VW Bug to something that will actually protect her.”
It’s no secret that Calli is my baby. At fifteen she’s bound to make me take at least one boy’s life before her eighteenth birthday for looking at her the wrong way.
She’s a beautiful soul inside and out just like her mother, and is Layla’s spitting image only with my dark brown hair and green eyes.
“Well, she’ll be riding in Micah’s truck to Rhys’s grad, so you know she’ll be safe in that,” Layla comments, mentioning her best friend’s son who is a year older than Calli as she kisses me on the cheek and then backs away.
“Like fuck. That’s how you’re gonna try to tell me she’s driving with him?”
I know Micah is a good kid, but no one is good enough for my baby—and how much I like the kid and his parents means nothing. I’ll still break his hands if he touches her, and his dad would understand.
“Gotta let her grow up, babe.” Layla smirks, turning back around to scoop our four-year-old baby boy Max from the yard and taking him to see his brother’s new truck.
I stand in the sun of a perfectly clear May morning watching my family, knowing how fast the last twenty years have gone and knowing it all wouldn’t have been possible without every step of the journey it took me to get to her.
Layla has only grown more amazing every single day that I’ve known her, and there hasn’t been one second where I’ve doubted my gut instinct from the first day I met her.
The way she balances worlds to keep everyone and everything running in our family is nothing short of incredible.
I’ve watched her raise two kids almost to adulthood and then get the surprise of being pregnant with Max in her late thirties.
And she embraced that with me the same way she’s embraced my club, my job and hers.
She runs her own wellness clinic in town and has for ten years, employing a naturopathic doctor, two other massage therapists and an osteopath.
I fall more in love with her every time I look at her, and I did make good on my promise. We were married in less than a year.
Rhys turns up his custom sound system which is playing The Black Keys and Max dances in the yard.
I chuckle as I fold my arms over my chest and head toward them to join the driveway party.
Over the years, I’ve come to love the way my brain doesn’t forget a single thing, because the more years that pass with Layla and our kids by my side, the more memories fill my head, pushing out the ones that came before her.
It leaves me with nothing but peace, and changes my truth from one I want to forget to one I strive to remember every single day.
Layla
“He’s coming around that corner too fast,” Sean says, coming up behind me on our porch.
Inside, our house is packed already and we’ve only been back from Rhys’s graduation for thirty minutes.
Our house isn’t small, but with over sixty people inside and out it feels a little claustrophobic.
That’s why I stepped out onto the wide covered porch with a glass of wine, and of course Sean followed me.
He’s been following me every moment since the day I met him, and although life hasn’t always been easy or perfect, we’re still here, still in love, and I know we always will be.
“He’s fine.” I set my wine down on the rail and reach up to pat Sean on his neck as his strong arms wrap around my waist. We watch as Micah makes his way down the street at a completely acceptable speed with Calli in the front seat.
“Hmmph,” Sean grunts as he bends down to kiss my neck. “It was a good day, little dove.”
“It was,” I say, swallowing down the tears that are brimming.
Our family has always been so close, and with Rhys going away to school in August I wonder how I’ll survive the loss of him in our home.
He’s so much like Sean, and at seventeen he’s almost as tall and getting bigger by the day.
But unlike Sean he’s only known joy and love his whole life.
He knows who his dad is and has already got his learner’s permit to ride, but he has other aspirations that don’t include a life in the club.
Namely, right now, whatever girl is following him around that week.
I blame his uncle Kai’s influence for that.
“He’ll be home every six weeks and it’s only until spring,” Sean says, knowing exactly what I’m thinking.
He strokes my hip as Calli and Micah get out of his dad’s truck, and she smiles at him. She’s way too beautiful for her own good, and I watch him melt for her as she tells him she’ll be inside in a second and then swerves to the side of the porch to speak to us where no one can hear.
“Could you two not make out on the front porch when I bring my friends here?” she whispers at us before rolling her eyes and rushing after Micah.
I look up at Sean and we both laugh. I kiss him once, then twice.
The same familiar fire for him I’ve felt for almost twenty years creeps up my center.
At just over fifty he has more salt in his beard than pepper but he’s fitter than most twenty-five-year-olds.
He’s in better shape now than he’s ever been, after years of massage, acupressure and osteopathic healing for his slipped disc.
Not to mention he’s continued his intense training sessions almost daily.
He still works with the Vet hospital and even helped Buck move back home with his wife ten years ago, after life-changing surgery gave him more use of his upper body and back.
With mostly the same crew after all these years and Wolfe still president, the Hounds of Hell has settled into a phase of peace, forming a truce with the clubs they once had conflicts with.
Sean has definitely calmed down some since our early days.
He’s still got the same fire inside him, but he’s really settled into our family and into being a dad.
I know there are still things he has to do in the name of the club, but I’ve always lived on a need-to-know basis with those things and it’s worked well to balance the club life and our family life.
“Okay, my love.” I reach up and kiss him. “I’m going to get Rhys’s cake.” I nod toward the staircase below the porch that leads to our cold cellar. “Check on Max?” I ask. “He’s with your mom.”
Sean groans and leans in, kissing me just a little longer. “Later … you’re mine,” he rasps.
“Deal,” I tell him.
“Fuck, I love you,” Sean smacks my ass then squeezes it tight.
“I love you too, baby,” I whisper back, kissing him then turning on my heel to head down the steps while he goes inside.
Since meeting him, there hasn’t been a day gone by that I haven’t felt loved and safe.
Sean Hunter healed a hole in my heart after my mother’s death.
He gave me stability and a family of my own, and I’m grateful for him every single day I get to wake up beside him.
I stop to grab Rhys’s grad cap out of my car that I’m definitely making him wear while we eat cake, even though he’ll hate it.
As I walk, I think about our life and how it’s passing by in the blink of an eye.
The king of my family isn’t a knight in shining armor with sweet words and a squeaky-clean appearance.
My king is the vice president of the Hounds of Hell motorcycle club.
An outlaw. Always clad in black and leather.
He’s messy, depraved and loves me with every fiber of his being, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
This life I live is only possible because Sean knew we were meant to be the moment he laid eyes on me.
Even when I wasn’t sure, Sean never wavered and he knew enough for the both of us.
We’re as permanent as my name inked under his eye and the dove on my shoulder that now has his name scrawled below. We’re unstoppable. Unshakable. Infinite. It’s something I haven’t doubted since that first week with him.
The crickets are loud and plentiful as I crack the door to the cellar.
I step over the threshold and flick the light on, crossing the clean dry space to where our extra fridge and chest freezer are.
I’m thinking about where the birthday candles are when I open the door to the fridge, but the moment I do, the light in the space flicks off.
I flinch and my breath hitches when I feel strong arms wrap around me.
The moonlight shines in the small window under the porch.
I spin around in his arms and look up into the green eyes I’ve never been able to resist.
“So, you want to help me with the cake then?” I ask, one eyebrow raised.
Sean slowly shakes his head as his hands slide down my waist. I take my bottom lip between my teeth, understanding what he wants as I breathe evenly, starting to back up slowly.
“Hmmmm.” I look up to the ceiling thoughtfully. “Are you trying to fuck me in our cellar while our guests wait upstairs?”
“Fucking right I am, little dove,” he growls at the precise moment I turn on my heel to sprint the few feet to the door, knowing just what he wants. For me to put up a fight.
I’ve just grabbed the handle when Sean reaches over and stops me, pulling my hips back so my ass slams into his rock-hard cock. He groans as his hand slides over my hip to cup my pussy from behind.
“No, Layla. Stay.”
I moan as I let him do exactly what he wants with me. Sean Hunter never has to worry, because I’m never going anywhere.