Epilogue
ALICE
Eight months later…
“Hey, hey!” Lia says, brushing past me, her cheeks flushed and happy.
There is a weird energy in the air between them, something I can’t quite make out, but it started shortly after we moved out of Leo’s and into Morris’s apartment. I try to catch Leo’s eye, because he tends to be a lot more open than Lia, but he’s actively avoiding my gaze.
Before I question what’s going on, Morris walks in.
“Ho ho ho,” he booms, strolling through the door. He is wearing a Santa hat that Zoey made him at school. He looks absolutely gorgeous, silly red cap and all.
I cling to his chest like it’s been weeks instead of hours since we last saw each other and lift my face to his for a kiss.
“Hey, baby,” he says, waggling his brows at me.
“Nice hat,” I tell him.
I know he wears it because Zoey made it for him, the sparkly sequins that spell out his name peeling and falling off, leaving snowy shrapnel on the shoulders of his flannel shirt.
“Okay, let’s go,” Morris says, motioning with his head toward the door.
“Wait…what? What about dinner?” I look from him to Leo and Lia.
Leo is smiling at me, and Lia has already headed back toward the bedroom, calling for Zoey to bust out her markers and paper.
“We’ve got crafts to make.” Lia’s voice sings through the apartment.
I look back at Morris in confusion.
“Trust me, baby?” he asks, as if there’s any doubt.
Over the last eight months, Morris has done more to show me that I can trust him than anyone—man, woman, family, or friend—has done in my entire life up until now.
Leo and Lia too. It was great living with them for a short time, but once Jerry was safely behind bars, there was no reason to stay at Leo’s. Morris insisted Zoey and I stay at his apartment while he went back to sleeping at the compound almost nightly.
“Of course I do,” I say. I grab my purse and a light cardigan. Even though it’s December in Florida, when the sun goes down, it gets chilly. “Wait.” I put a hand on Morris’s arm. “Are we riding or driving?”
He grins. “The sweater will do you just fine, baby. We’re taking the truck.”
I take Morris’s hand and follow him out to the truck. When I climb in the passenger seat, I twist to ask him what we’re doing, where we’re going, but Morris pulls a face, turns on the ignition, and heads out into the night. I lean back against the seat and enjoy the ride.
Wherever we’re going, I know I’m in good hands. The best, actually.
“Morris? Where are we?”
When he pulls the truck up to a small brick building, I can’t tell what it is. It’s nearly five p.m., and the sun has started sinking in the sky. The violet-colored twilight makes it tough to see any of the signs.
“Come on,” he says. He comes around to my side of the truck and opens the door. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
I follow Morris into the small building.
We ride the elevator to the second floor and head down a quiet, carpeted hallway.
The office building needs some work. It looks like a place where shady people have tiny offices to make them look legit.
I can’t begin to imagine what the hell we’re doing here just a few days before Christmas when we’ve got people back at the apartment, expecting dinner.
Morris knocks on a closed office door, and when it opens, a very old man in an ill-fitting suit answers.
“Morris, you asshole,” he says, nodding.
His voice sounds like the sputter of a diesel engine.
The guy’s smoked a lot of cigarettes in his day, if the yellow staining on his thick beard is any indication.
His cheeks are heavily pockmarked, but when he looks at me, his smile is wide and sincere. “And you must be Alice.”
He reaches out a hand to shake mine, so I extend mine toward him. “Yes,” I say. “Nice to meet you…”
“Baby,” Morris says, “this is Fingers.”
“Fingers,” I echo.
The man laughs, a dusty, rattling sound that seems like it might actually be painful. “You can call me Frank, sweetheart. Fingers is my club name. Only the old-timers still call me that.”
“Sign of respect, brother,” Morris says.
“Frank,” I say, “nice to meet you.”
Frank’s got a hell of a hitch in his step and a deep hunch in his back. I look back at Morris, curious at what the heck is going on, when Frank comes around his desk and motions for us to sit.
“Sweetheart,” Morris says, “Fingers here is the club lawyer. He handles any little…scrapes we might get into.”
Frank looks at me and clarifies. “Frank Capobianco, attorney-at-law. I mostly handle criminal cases, thanks to my brothers in the club, but I’m a little bit of a Frank-of-all-trades. I handle real estate and even a bit of family law from time to time.”
Morris nods, and Frank pushes a huge stack of papers toward me.
“Okay, young lady,” he says, pausing to cough an incredibly dry, raspy round of barks into a stained handkerchief. “’Scuse me. Former smoker. That shit’ll kill ya.”
He busies himself finding a pen, which you might think a lawyer would have in a drawer or even in a cup on his desk, but finally, he curses and slams a fist down, jostling the stack of papers. “Hang on. Can never find a goddamn pen when you’ve got a stack of contracts to sign.”
“Contracts?” I look at Morris.
Fingers—Frank—is shuffling past us, headed for a small supply closet in one corner of the office. While he audibly curses out everything under the sun as he looks for a new box of pens, Morris shoves a photograph across the desk toward me.
“Merry Christmas, baby.” His smile is soft. Tender. Totally unlike my gruff, tattooed biker’s normal demeanor. “Bought’cha a little something.”
I look down at the picture, and I can hardly process what I’m seeing. “Morris,” I say. My hands start to shake as I take it all in. “You bought me…a house?”
Morris nods. “You’ve got plenty of dough from divorcing the douchebag. You can decorate it, fix it up, make a real home for you and Zoey.”
I shake my head, stunned. “Morris, but why? Why would you do this? And what about you?”
I don’t get it.
My thoughts race from shock and amazement to confusion. Why would he buy me a house? Doesn’t he want to do something like this together? Does he not see some kind of future between us, and this is his way of getting me out of his apartment, and his life?
“Before you think too hard,” Morris says, “this is part one of your gift.”
“Part one? Of how many?”
“Three,” he says. “Now just trust me.”
It’s hard, but I look Morris in the eye, and I know I have a choice to make. I can doubt his intentions, fear what he’s doing, or I can take the pen that Fingers has finally found and sign and initial the contract, binding me to a home I’ve never even been inside.
Morris looks so delighted, so happy, I can’t do anything but sign, sign, sign. When it’s all done and I have a fat envelope of paperwork, Morris grabs another envelope from Frank, and they speak in quiet tones before man-hugging each other goodbye.
“Merry Christmas, Alice,” Frank says to me as I pull on my sweater. “We’ll see each other again in a few weeks to sign the rest of the papers.”
At this point, I’m just going with it. Morris is still wearing the Santa hat Zoey made him, and the glittering sequins still dot his shoulders like snow. If this man is planning to throw me to the curb, he looks pretty damn blissed out about it.
We ride in silence after leaving Fingers’s office.
Morris is holding my hand tightly, a suspenseful silence filling the truck.
We’re almost back to the apartment when he makes a sudden turn and takes us down an unfamiliar street.
He pulls into a driveway, and I recognize the house as the same one from the picture.
“This is mine?” I ask, still in shock.
It’s dark outside now, but the exterior lights are on. The house is illuminated and looks welcoming, inviting. And it’s big.
I reach for the door handle, assuming we’re going inside, but Morris holds me fast.
“Wait,” he says. He points to the glove box. “Can you grab the box in there?”
I look at Morris but pop the glove compartment.
“This one?” I pull out a small brown paper bag.
“Fuck no, not that one.” Morris laughs and points to the glove box. “There’s something else in there. The bag’s for Leo. Christmas present I had made up. Didn’t have the chance to wrap it yet.”
“What is it?” I ask, curious and also delighted to know that Morris bought a gift for the kid who’s become so important to us.
“Lower rocker,” he says, as if I know what that means. “Go ahead, take a look.”
I open the bag and pull out an embroidered patch that’s shaped like a semi-circle. The word PROSPECT is stitched in thick letters.
“Prospect,” I read. That much I know. “You’re going to ask Leo to prospect with the club?”
Morris nods.
“Oh, Morris, he’s going to flip out!”
Morris grins. “He sure will. Now go on back in there. There’s something more for you. Wrapped box.”
I reach into the glove box and find something else. It’s a small box wrapped in sparkly red paper with a huge red bow tied around it.
“Go on,” Morris urges, nodding at me.
I untie the bow and lift the top off the box to reveal a black satin box inside. “Oh. My. God,” I sputter. “Morris…”
“Now, hear me out,” he says, holding up a hand.
“Alice, I want you. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone or anything.
But I know you need time. There’s no rush.
I’ve got a lot of shit going on with the club, expanding the businesses, building out the property.
And I can’t give up my space at the compound just yet.
I’m a biker, through and through. But I want you and Zoey to have a home you can call your own.
A place you get to kick me out of, lock the doors, and know you’re safe.
If you wanna dump my ass once you get settled, the house is yours.
In your name and paid in full. You can cut out and sell it if you want, move to Denver, be with your sister. ”
I’m taking all of this in while I’m slowly opening the satin box. There’s a beautiful emerald cut diamond ring inside.
“But if you decide you want me,” he says, “I’ve got two more gifts for you.” He nods toward the box and hands over the second envelope he took from Fingers.
“Morris…” My voice is shaking, and my stomach is doing flips. I can’t decide what I want more—to pull that ring from the box and try it on, or open the envelope.
“Open the envelope,” Morris urges.
That settles that. I set the ring securely in my lap and twist the fastener that holds the second envelope closed. As soon as I make out the words on the first page, I burst into tears.
“Oh fuck, Alice. No…” Morris looks concerned, worried. “I didn’t mean… I don’t have to. I just thought…”
I throw myself across the huge bench seat and wrap my arms around Morris’s neck. “Yes,” I cry, tears wetting Morris’s beard as I kiss his face, his lips, his neck.
“Now, there’s no rush, darlin’,” he says, seeming to relax at my repeated cries of yes.
“I just wanted you to know I’m here for the whole kit and caboodle.
If you’re mine, that means everything that comes with you is mine too.
We don’t have to rush, but there’s no goddamn way I’d marry you and not officially adopt Princess Zoey. ”
The paperwork is unsigned, but it’s ready. Once we sign all this, it will officially make us a family. Adoption papers making Morris legally, permanently, Zoey’s dad.
He’s giving me a ring that will officially make me Morris’s old lady, which, after eight months of hanging around, I know means biker wife.
The house that’s in my name will not just be the place I crash with my daughter. This house will be our home.
“You know what this means?” I say, looking over the paperwork.
“What’s that?” Morris asks, holding me close.
“I know your first name now.” I give him a nudge in the ribs, and we both laugh. “Dante. It’s so…”
It’s so not him. While being a good solid name, there’s no way the man in front of me looks anything like a Dante.
He’s totally a Morris.
“Stop. Come on,” he says. “We’ve got people waiting on Chinese carryout.”
And that’s how it all ends.
My string of bad relationships.
My disappointment and self-doubt.
I have the promise of a happy ending and a real family for my daughter.
A man I can trust.
Friends and work and security.
Independence and, at the same time, love.
I let Morris slide the ring onto my finger, and he holds my hand to his lips, kissing me reverently.
For as many times as I’ve been knocked out of the nest, as many times as I’ve had my wings clipped, I believe I’ve now found my flock.
Lia, Leo, the girl crew.
Fingers and Midge.
Tiny and Morris.
My Zoey.
I think back to what Morris said so many months ago and how true it is for me now.
We ride, we crash.
We ride again, we crash again.
Sometimes we’re lucky, and we don’t fall far enough or hard enough to do any permanent damage. But most of the time, a fall means bad news. Real bad. You’re fucked up so bad, you’re not sure you’re gonna make it. But if you wanna earn that patch and ride again, you get back up. You ride again.
And I, Alice Sparrow, have more than earned my broken wings.
Now it’s time to fly.