Epilogue
Sean
Nineteen Years Later
“Are you guysfuckingkidding 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 justfive 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 forher,” 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 soulinside 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 inlessthan 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 foldmy 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 almostas 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 twonotmake out on the front porch when I bring my friends here?” she whispers at us before rolling her eyes and rushing after Micah.
