Fallon by Jessica Gadziala

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Epilogue

Fallon - 1 week

 

 

 

 

I'd been worried.

Danny had a really good poker face.

And I wasn't one-hundred-percent sure she was as okay with the whole losing her club thing as she was projecting.

It wasn't that I didn't want her to be okay with it; I was just suspicious.

I mean, the woman had worked her whole life to get her own chapter, her own men. And she'd lost it twice in a week. Once for good.

I just wanted to make sure she wasn't putting on a front, and dying a little bit inside.

"Oh my God, what?" she snapped, tossing down the pen she'd been writing with, holding up both hands at me.

"What what?" I asked.

"You've been staring at me for like ten minutes," she told me, brows raising.

"Maybe I just like looking at you."

"Not with the pity-eyes, you don't," she said, pushing away from the kitchen table.

"Pity eyes," I repeated, realizing that was probably exactly what it looked like to her. Because, well, there was no nice way to say it, but Danny didn't have a lot of experience with emotions. So she could easily mistake something like concern with pity because she was programmed to only recognize the emotions that might make her need to defend herself against some sort of condescension or disrespect."I would never look at you with pity, babe," I told her.

"Then how you were looking at me?" she asked, grabbing a mug for coffee.

"Let's call it concern."

"About what?"

"You."

"What about me?"

"I'm worried you're not as okay with the club shit as you seem to be."

"I expected it to kind of sneak up and bitch-slap me too," she admitted, leaning back against the counter with her coffee cup. "But I'm really just... okay with it. I might be spiraling now if I didn't have some sort of purpose," she added, waving toward the stacks of papers on the table. "I've always needed an outlet for my, admittedly, sometimes unhealthy amount of ambition. And the club was really the only choice when was been younger."

"Makes sense," I agreed.

"With a little time and space, I'm not sure if I ever really wanted the club. I wanted the things I thought I would get if I got to be president. I wanted the respect and the feeling of pride at accomplishing a really hard goal. It was never about the club itself. It was about proving my dad and his men wrong. It was about being successful at something. It was about making something for myself. I still have that. It's different," she admitted, shrugging. "But it is just as challenging. And it's something no one can swoop in and take away from me," she added.

Right there.

That was a tiny hint of vulnerability.

She didn't give that to anyone else.

And I liked it more than was probably normal when she trusted me with those bits.

"I can help, you know," I said. "With the bar," I clarified. "I went through all the shit you're going to go through with renovations and inspections and food safety classes. All that shit. Been there. Can offer some insight."

"I'm going to need all the help I can get," she said, and I knew her well enough to know that was her offhand way of accepting my offer of help. "What are your feelings on the apartments?" she asked.

"Rent them out for sure," I said, shrugging. "More income. Why would you pass up on that?"

"Andres was asking yesterday when I bumped into him at the gas station if he could have a room. For a safe house, it sounds like."

"Is that the favor he wants?" I asked. "For helping us with the body," I clarified.

"No. He sounds like he intends to pay for it. He just wanted to catch me early before they got snatched up. He seems to think they won't sit long once they are up for rentals."

"Above a bar where they don't have to worry as much about noise? Yeah, they won't stay empty long. And you can use that income to make upgrades or whatever you end up wanting to do."

"It's kind of hard to believe this is happening. I mean, I'd always planned to open the bar. I thought it would be a great way to keep the IRS off my back. But it was more like a year or two year plan. It's crazy that it is starting to happen now."

If I knew anything about the woman, she would have the plans finalized and submitted within another week. Then as soon as her brother and her guys were out to their new clubhouse—which was just a block down the street—she would have the contractors in to get the ball rolling.

She was going to get impatient.

She wasn't lying about her ambition.

She still felt the need to prove herself.

And, in her mind, she couldn't do that until she had a successful bar running.

Luckily for her, she had some cash. Money talked. And she wasn't going to need it for living expenses since she was crashing with me.

We hadn't even really discussed it. It was just how it happened. She came home with me after the longest night of both our lives. And she just stayed.

In my house, in my bed, in my arms.

Which was exactly where I wanted her.

Possibly—and this realization was very new, and not something I was ready to say out loud yet—possiblyfor forever.

Danny - 2 weeks

 

 

 

 

They came in the middle of the afternoon.

Like a storm cloud seemingly out of nowhere.

One moment, I was sitting casually on the couch in the Henchmen clubhouse looking over paint swatches for the fiftieth time.

The next, they swarmed in.

A cloud of chatter and varying personalities.

The next generation of the famous "girls club."

The daughters of the original members.

The D.O.G.C., if you will.

The guys had been feeding me stories about the "cousins" almost since I arrived at the club. It was as if some of them sensed my fear surrounding them. As a woman raised primarily by and around men, the idea of a whole cluster of women who might be interested in meeting me and possibly befriending me, yeah, I was terrified. I didn't think I would know how to act, what to say, how not to be a snarky bitch half the time.

See, the guys got it. They rolled with it. And if I overstepped, they called me on it.

My friendships with them were blunt and forward and easy to navigate because I was used to that.

The only experience I had with groups of female friends had been in my very toxic high school where some of the cliques of girls were catty and backstabby and never talked about anything I was interested in.

I knew it was a very small lens to view female friendships through, but it was all I had.

So when the door to the clubhouse opened, and in the crowd walked, I will admit, my stomach dropped.

For a moment, they all talked at once, and I was too stunned to say anything even when they asked me direct questions.

That was until a woman in combat boots and a bomber jacket, long black hair with slightly red highlights, and a soft, feminine face, sat down next to me on the couch, exhaling a deep breath.

"It's a lot," she said. "We're a lot," she went on. "Hell, I was raised with all of them, and I feel overwhelmed sometimes."

"God, Hope, you make us sound like some kind of street gang that is trying to initiate her or something," a pretty, athletic blonde declared.

"That's Gracie. And she's the sweet, bubbly sort," Hope told me. "I'm sensing you are not the sweet, bubbly sort."

"I, ah, no. I'm kind of a bitch actually."

"Well, that's perfect," another gorgeous woman declared. That one had deep purple-red hair and what could only be described as a hippie dress on—oversized and very colorful. Judging by her earrings which looked like melting candles, but if you looked closely enough were actually dicks with semen running down the sides, it had to be the infamous Billie. "Hope is a bitch too," she said, giving her cousin a big smile as she dropped down on the arm next to her.

"I really don't think you should be calling your friend a bitch," another woman said. She had a shyer demeanor. Appearance-wise, she seemed mixed-race with curly black hair that, if you looked really close, almost seemed to have little strands of blonde in it. I knew from the book peeking out of her purse that she was the daughter of one of the OG members—Cyrus—and his librarian wife, Reese. Funnily enough, crazy-ass Billie's mom was also a librarian.

"Why not? She is," Billie said, shrugging.

"Would you like it if we called you a free-love, crunchy, hippie with very loose boundaries?" Luna, the book nerd, shot back, a brow arching.

"Well, seeing as I am all those things, sure," Billie invited, a woman very comfortable in her own skin.

There was another woman that came with them who, judging by her very corporate dress, was not a daughter of the club at all. Willa, if I remembered the convoluted family history right, was the daughter of a woman named Ellie and a man named Paine. And Paine was Luna's dad, and Reese's brother.

She was just opening the door to speak when it burst open again.

And in two more women walked.

"Sorry we're late. This pain in the ass thought she saw a stray puppy in the woods," the first woman declared. "It was a fucking raccoon. And now I probably need rabies shots," she added, pulling up the sleeve of her leather jacket to reveal a couple angry-looking red marks.

The other woman with her was one I'd seen before since she hung around the club with her man, Niro. Andi. Who, by all accounts, was a huge animal lover like her mother.

"We had to check," Andi insisted.

"Says the woman who isn't possibly going to start foaming at the mouth in a few days," the other woman, who I was having a hard time placing, announced.

"Don't be silly," Andi said, rolling her eyes. "Human rabies presents itself with headaches, fever, vomiting, and hallucinations."

The woman looked at Andi with a blank expression for a moment, lips parted. It was the perfect "what the fuck" expression if I'd ever seen one.

"And on that note, who is coming with me to the emergency clinic tomorrow?" the woman asked, looking around. When her gaze landed on me, she snapped her fingers. "Oh, right. You're why we're here. I'm Violet," she explained. "Daughter of Lou and Adler, if you're keeping track."

"I like what you did there," Billie said, smirking. "Mom's name first."

"Smash that patriarchy," Violet agreed.

I hadn't met Lou personally, but I knew that she was a bond recovery agent. Which sort of explained why her daughter came out seeming very strong and capable.

She was stupid pretty, too.

They all were in their own ways.

And Violet was on the tall side, long-legged, with a killer rack and a somewhat delicate face with a cleft chin, strong brows, and honey-brown eyes. She, like Hope, and like me, preferred the color black and comfortable and efficient clothes.

"Violet just got back into town," Gracie explained. "She's been covering for her mom who is caring for Uncle Adler. She was off chasing a fugitive in... where was it?" she asked.

"Well, it was supposed to be California. But the prick hopped a plane to a family farm in Iowa. Found him trying to hide behind a pig who was bathing in the mud. That fuckhead owes me a new pair of Docs," she grumbled. "So, what were we talking about?"

"How Hope and Danny are bitches," Billie supplied.

"Yeah? Me too. Three fucking musketeers here now," she said, shooting me a smirk.

"This is far from the 'if you hurt our cousin, I will gut you' talk I was expecting," I admitted.

"Oh, make no mistake," Violet said, leaning back on her chair. "If you hurt Fallon, we will be looking for places to bury your body."

"After digging out all your organs," Sweet Luna, of all people, piped in.

"You know, Dezi told me that when they autopsy you, they sew your brain back up in your chest?" Violet said, shaking her head. "That's fucked up."

And, really, that was what it was like for the next several hours.

Conversations started linear and pointed, but segued off into fifteen different directions before circling back to the original topic. Not used to that, I felt a bit disoriented as it went on, but after Violet and Hope dug out the alcohol, I loosened up a bit enough to just sit back and enjoy it.

"Look at this shit," Fallon said, walking in many hours, countless drinks, and more pizza than a small group of human beings should have ever been able to put away, later. "Next thing you know, they'll be dragging you to karaoke in Malc's truck," he said, moving inside. "Vi, hey, long time," he went on, grabbing her shoulder to give it a squeeze as he moved past. "You seemed to survive," he said, giving me a smirk.

"You knew?" I hissed, annoyed on principle, even if it had all turned out alright. "You knew, and you didn't warn me?"

"You done fucked up," Hope said, clucking her tongue.

"He needs to be punished," Violet agreed.

"Maybe I should have warned you, so you could have fled, and I could have avoided this," Fallon said, shooting me a smirk as he nudged me to the side to let him drop down, then half-pulling me over his lap. "Figured you would handle this better if you had no idea it was coming," he told me, running his hand across my lower back. "No time to make yourself anxious about it."

"Yeah, it was—" I started before Dezi came walking out of his room, still hunched over to his bad side.

"You were partying without me?" Dezi asked, looking hurt, pressing a tattooed hand to his heart. "Vi, you're back."

"I am. You look like shit," Violet said, shaking her head.

He kind of did. It was strange to see the usually so animated Dezi being slow and careful. His hair was all over the place because he was struggling to raise his hands up to wash or brush it. And he was pale.

"Yeah, well, if he would stop ripping his damn stitches open," I said, giving him raised brows. "He would look a hell of a lot better."

"It was an accident," Dezi insisted.

"Fucking someone is not an accident," I reminded him. "And maybe I'd forgive it the first time, but twice?" I asked. "I heard screaming," I told the girls. "And not the good kind. So I grabbed my gun and went running. Yeah, well, he'd torn his stitches and was bleeding everywhere. Including all over the girl he'd been railing. Who is probably traumatized for life now."

"And now," Dezi said, dropping down on the arm of Violet's chair, "they sicced Brooks on me. He's a tyrant. Won't let a woman within fifty feet of me."

"It's for your own good," I insisted.

"I'm dying inside," Dezi said, smirking. "If Sway was still here, he'd understand."

Slash and his men had headed back home.

With instructions on opening up their own chapter.

"You'll be fine. Hope said she's dropping you off some treats tomorrow so you shut the hell up already," I told him with a smile.

Even when he was a pain in the ass, it was hard not to be in a little bit of brotherly love with Dezi.

The most interesting thing about him was he was almost the reverse of most men I knew. Dezi wore his fun and sweet and silly sides outwardly as a shield, hiding away the dark shit I knew was underneath it, the stuff that only came out in a sticky or violent situation.

I was curious, over time, to see what all the dark was, where it came from, and what kind of woman he might settle down with. If he settled down at all.

"Alright, come on," Violet said, nodding at Andi, and slapping her knees before moving to stand. "I need to go get some sleep before my rabies shot kicks in. If anyone catches me around town before then, hissing and spitting at strangers—"

"It would be just like any other day?" Billie asked, smirking.

"Yeah, sounds about right," Violet agreed. "Nice to meet you, Danny. I'll meet you here on Wednesday."

"Sounds good," I agreed, saying my goodbyes to all the girls as they headed out.

"What's Wednesday?" Fallon asked, hands still roaming over my body. Chastely, for the moment.

"We're going to go box at your aunts' gym," I told him, kind of excited at the prospect.

"She's a killer," Fallon warned. "Just ask Dezi."

"Hm?" Dezi asked, looking up from snagging some pizza out of the box. "Oh, yeah. I was a walking bruise the next week."

I guessed if you were going to be a female bounty hunter, it took a lot of strength and stamina.

"So, did you have a good time?" Fallon asked.

"I did, actually. It was different, but not in a bad way. Oh, and they helped me pick out a swatch in under ten minutes," I said, tone a little pointed since he had been absolutely no help at all in the swatch department, claiming each of the reddish-brown colors I'd showed him were 'the same' when they were clearly very different.

"Good, that's good. One less thing for us to have to do when we could be doing, you know, much more interesting things," he said, hands sinking into my hips, turning me on his lap, then getting onto his feet.

"Sure. Sure. Have fun fucking," Dezi said, tone petulant. "I'll just be sitting here with my blue balls, drowning my sorrows in saturated fats."

"Yep, have fun," Fallon called over his shoulder as he walked me back to our room.

Fallon - 12 months

 

 

 

 

So, I'd knocked her up.

I wouldn't say either of us were particularly surprised when she'd missed her period and had to grab a test.

We'd been fucking almost nonstop since we'd started officially dating. And, well, sometimes the condom was just a little too far away.

Shit happens.

And since we were both serious about each other, neither of us really gave a shit that we didn't do the whole ring and wedding thing first.

But, ah, I was starting to think maybe we'd both been a little hasty in saying we wanted a little army of ankle-biters. Because, well, Danny was a fucking miserable pregnant woman.

Considering that she was difficult on a normal day and it didn't even faze me, saying she was a mess when she was all doped up on the baby-making hormones was putting it kindly.

It was so bad that Dezi, who never seemed bothered by anything, had started to go out of his way to avoid her.

Almost from the jump, she'd had whiplash-inducing symptoms. One minute she was hot and cursing and spitting about that, the next she was cold and crying about that. She was sad, she was mad, she was in constant search of foods to satiate her ever-changing cravings.

Then, of course, at the beginning, she'd been sick. All day sick. She practically lived in the bathroom.

Once that passed, she'd just been, well, let's just call it... uncomfortable.

And because she was uncomfortable, we all were uncomfortable.

Out of all the girls, Billie was the only one who hadn't run for the hills. Though as I stood back and listened to Billie encouraging Danny to tell me how she 'really feels' while rubbing her back, I was starting to wish she'd taken a hike too.

"I feel like he should have to carry this baby," Danny said, shooting small eyes at me. "He should have to have someone tap-dancing on his bladder and stabbing him in the internal organs and giving him never-ending heartburn. And then, after nine months of that pleasantness, he should have to push it out of his dick."

"It's not fair," Billie agreed, tone calm, still rubbing her back as she had Danny moving her hips in gentle circles on a massive exercise ball. "But Mother Nature really knew what she was doing when she had us bear the children," she went on. "Do you remember when Fallon had the flu last winter?" she reminded Danny, getting a snort out of Danny.

"He was pathetic," she said, but she gave me a small smile.

See, when I'd gotten sick, she'd gone from teasing me about my man-flu to bringing me chicken noodle soup and pressing compresses to my forehead and forcing me to take my medicine.

"But you're strong," Billie reminded Danny. "And you might be understandably uncomfortable right now, but you are going to get through this."

A few short months later, she did.

I mean, yeah, she cursed so badly and so loudly that even the seasoned nurses looked a little startled, but she'd yelled and pushed, and brought our firstborn into the world.

"Ugh. Nature's cruel joke," Danny said, watching me hold our son for the first time. "I put in all the work, and he comes out looking like you," she said, shooting me a soft smile as I wedged myself onto the corner of the bed with her.

Her hand moved out, stroking a finger gently down his cheek.

"Fallon?"

"Yeah?"

"You know how I was a miserable wretch for the past nine months?" she asked, and I felt myself tense a bit, realizing she was going to tell me that she'd changed her mind, that she was a one-and-done person.

"Yeah."

"Well, I'm sorry but... I think you're going to need to endure that at least five more times," she declared as she slipped her finger into our son's tiny palm.

"I think I can handle that," I assured her, all false bravado since we were riding the high of new parenthood. "So? Which one is it?" I asked, looking at our kid. We'd been going back and forth with names since the beginning until, ultimately, narrowing it down to three, and deciding we'd pick it when we saw him.

"Shaw," she decided, looking up at me with a soft smile.

Shaw.

After, and it sounded nuts, but, The Shawshank Redemption. The first movie we watched together that night her world fell apart. Or, rather, the night everything for us started to fall together.

"Shaw," I agreed, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "Now we have backups for any future boys."

"Oh, no. I'm only having girls from now on," Danny declared, getting a choked laugh out of me.

"What?"

"Yeah, I think that's why I was such a mess. You boys, so fucking dramatic. Girls would be easy-peasy, I think."

She would end up being right, then wrong, then right, then wrong again.

Danny - 15 years

 

 

 

 

 

"I say this with all the love I have in my heart, but if you call us, and someone isn't bleeding—and I mean like arterial spray bleeding—or unconscious, I am going to shave your eyebrows off in your sleep," I declared, looking at my two eldest children.

Shaw, who was still a spitting image of his father at almost fifteen. Tall and dark and cocky.

Then there was Max, our eldest girl, named after her uncle, a man better known as Grandpa. She was all me. From her blonde hair to her 'don't fuck with me' attitude. Though where she got her affinity for pink and girly shit was a fucking mystery. In fact, if you looked at her in her pretty, feminine floral sundress and platform sneakers, you wouldn't immediately be aware that she could wipe the floor with you if she felt so inclined.

"We can watch the kids, Ma," Max insisted, shaking her head.

"You called me fifteen times the last time I went to the grocery store," I reminded them.

"Reed was on the roof!" Max said, throwing out a hand.

"Yeah, well, what else is new? You got him down, didn't you?" I said, smirking.

"Barely. And I ripped my favorite jeans doing it," she added, still hung up on that.

"Hey, it's not my fault your little brother came out half chimpanzee, kid. I don't know what to tell you. He's feral."

He was, too.

It was, I imagined, what a little Dezi must have been like. Daring, reckless, completely unbothered by the idea of getting seriously injured or killed.

Those couple white hairs I'd been dying over the past few years? They all came from that one kid, I swear.

We'd gotten a good balance, all said and done.

We had our mini-mes in Shaw and Max. Then there had been a calmer, more even-tempered Cass—short for Cassian. After him was our other girl. And this thing, she was pure sugar and honey. Like, I don't know where the fuck she got it from, but Navy was the softest, sweetest creature the world had ever known.

Then, of course, there was our demon-in-human-form, Reed.

The mix kept us on our toes. And humble. And more than a little bit frazzled.

Which was why, for the first time in, well, ever, Fallon and I were having a date night.

We'd tossed two-hundred bucks worth of snacks and pizza on the counter, double-checked that the fire detectors were working—long story that involved Reed and an asinine idea to camp inside the house—and asked several of the club members and girls to drop by randomly over the next several hours, then made our way to the door with my final warning to the kids about not calling us.

"If Reed gets brain damage from jumping off of the fridge or something, I can't be held responsible," Max insisted, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Oh, honey, don't be silly," I said, ruffling her hair because she hated it. "He probably already has brain damage. Alright. I know it is a pipe dream, but be good!" I called, grabbing Fallon, and shoving him out the door. "We did it. We actually did it."

"Don't get too excited," Fallon said, smirking. "We haven't even left the premises yet."

But then we did.

See, we didn't have any grand nights out on the town planned.

I owned a bar. I had plenty of nights 'on the town' when I needed to work.

We just wanted some silence.

So we took ourselves to the store where we'd once been young and cool enough to fuck in the dressing room. We picked out comfy PJs and snacks, then we walked to the giant clearance bin of DVDs, grasped hands, and stuck them in. Whatever movies we ended up grabbing were the ones we were taking back to the hotel room we'd rented.

Then that was what we did.

We got into comfy pajamas. We ate our favorite snacks without the kids sneaking in and stealing them from us. And we watched a couple mostly shitty movies.

Then we did the grown-up thing.

And we fucked on really nice sheets in a fancy-ass hotel room while ignoring the flood of text updates from our children.

"Anything we need to worry about?" Fallon asked after, head on my chest as I scrolled through the texts.

"Someone has a bloody nose. Someone is crying. Oh, we need a new coffee table."

"Again? It's like the WWE in that house, I swear," Fallon said, angling his head up to look at me, a sweet smile on his face. "Wouldn't have it any other way, though."

"Me either," I agreed, reaching down to muss his hair.

"Hey, babe?" Fallon called a little white later.

"Yeah?" I asked.

"I kind of miss the little assholes," he said, getting a chuckle out of me.

"Me too," I admitted.

"Wanna wrap this up, then go home to do some damage control?"

I wanted absolutely nothing more than to go home with him.

To our kids.

To our life we'd worked so hard for.

"Absolutely. But you're the one who has to wrestle the little one into the bath tonight."

"Didn't we catch Shaw trying to sneak a drink last week?" Fallon asked, collecting our stuff from around the room.

"Crap. Yeah. We were supposed to punish him for that," I said, grimacing, then noticing the way Fallon's eyes were dancing. "Oh. Oh, I like the way you think," I declared. "Shaw can get the bath-scratches tonight."

Were we the best parents in the world to pawn off the bathing of our youngest, half-feral child on our eldest child attempting to go through a rebellious stage? Nope. Not at all.

But we were okay with that.

"Hey babe," Fallon said a while later as we stood in the never-ending mess that was our living room, looking down at our sleeping children. Yeah, sure, one of them was sleeping on the dog bed, but we were just pretending to ignore that.

"Yeah?" I asked, giving up on trying to straighten the mess around them without waking them up.

"We made something pretty fucking awesome here," he said, giving me a smile, shaking his head a bit in wonder.

"Yeah," I agreed, moving toward him, letting him wrap me up in his arms. "We did."

"Thank fuck you were such a bitch, huh?" he asked, smirk devilish.

"And that you were into that kind of thing," I agreed.

"I say next week, we don't call, just drop them all off at their grandparents'," Fallon said.

"That seems fitting," I agreed.

They were the ones who started all of this, after all.