Page 118 of Wolf.e

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.

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