The wait was killing him.
His tortured nerves were beyond frazzled after suffering through the overseas flight home knowing that Salazar had taken Tara for petty revenge against him. The bastard had held her almost the whole time Jax had been in Ireland getting dicked around by the IRA and a self-righteous priest when he should have already been headed home to Tara with their son, destined to repair the muck he'd made of everything while Abel had been missing, and landing back in his Old Lady's forgiving arms.
Instead, his relief at having his boy back safe in his paternal embrace, where the baby naturally belonged, had been short lived, strangled by the scrambling phone call from the States reluctantly telling him that Calaveras scum had his woman. And, no matter what the negotiator tried, the disgraced biker would only exchange Tara's priceless freedom for Charming's worthless heir apparent.
Days spent terrified in captivity...
Bloody corpses littering the dusty roadside like unwanted refuse...
A cornered animal bent on savage revenge...
The testosterone laden S.W.A.T. team all too twitchy to prove themselves...
His flight landing minutes too late...
And fucking Stahl...
Whatever law enforcement had intended; it hadn't ended well for Tara.
All he'd been told en route to the hospital was that she'd been stabbed by Salazar just as the tactical squad had stormed Hale's office. The emergency personnel on hand had hurriedly treated her but then immediately transported Tara to St. Thomas where she'd brusquely been whisked into surgery before he had even arrived at the hospital.
That had been hours ago and Jax's threadbare control was about to snap. He'd rushed half-way around the globe to save his woman only to wind up pacing uselessly in a sterile waiting room being denied even the tiniest sliver of reassurance by a hard-nosed hospital administrator who'd taken it upon herself to bust his balls for Jax's obvious failures where Tara was concerned.
Desperate, he'd appealed to Uncer for news on Tara's condition knowing the hospital staff would continue to deny him a status update since he wasn't legally family yet but they'd give the Police Chief the necessary information because of the man's badge. That had been nearly twenty minutes ago and Jax knew, if he didn't find out something about Tara soon, he was going to throttle someone, anyone, it didn't matter to him who was on the receiving end of his frustrated fists, he needed relief from his unrelenting anguish and worry.
Just as he'd been eyeing a smarmy bastard who'd been giving him fleeting looks of disdain, Unser told him in an unnaturally subdued manner that he could see Tara. She'd just been settled into a recovery room. Jax had nearly knocked the man's cancer riddled body over with his brotherly clasp of thanks on the old man's shoulder. Barely listening to the officer's garbled caution, he'd hurriedly trudged down the corridor hell bent on finally getting to Tara's side.
The utter stillness of her room should have forewarned Jax that things would never be the same between them again but his hopeful gaze had breathlessly rolled over her small silhouette anyway. He'd tried to follow each graceful limb toward the source of her injury only for his seeking eyes to find unblemished skin delicately posed like she was a pale and lifeless doll. Normally capable hands were now idly arranged to cradle unwanted emptiness; her slender fingers still absently cupped what should have been a very precious life but was now just a slight bulge of pulseless surgical compresses.
The hushed atmosphere of grief oppressively wrapped around his heart, staggered him with the gut-wrenching truth of their loss as Jax stumbled for words, "Tara... I'm so sorry, I... I didn't know."
Guilt slithered through him like a deadly snake, coiling around his ravaged soul, leaving him to helplessly choke out, "I didn't find out Salazar had you until we were coming home with Abel. You gotta believe me, Babe, we got back here as fast as we could. I'd have done anything to save you and the baby if I'd known. I would have-"
His rambling apology was summarily cut off by Tara's unnaturally blank tone, "Why are you even here, Jackson?"
"This is where I belong," his brows drew together in confusion while he comfortingly entwined his fingers with hers only to find them cold, immobile, and unyielding. "We'll get through this-"
"No, Jax," she denied in a small, lackluster voice devoid of any passion or ire but full of detached certainty, "you made it plenty clear that I wasn't your family."
"I lied to protect you, Tara," regret misted his eyes as Jax willed her to believe him, gravelly pled with her to understand that he'd never meant any of the bitter swill he'd made her swallow, "you know I did."
"You might think so, Jax," she quietly stated without much feeling, Tara's flat timbre almost emotionless enough to make him numb as well, "but what you think doesn't matter anymore because you're no longer mine."
"What," he stuttered, the moment suspended in nightmarish disbelief, "what are you saying?"
His question was met by her unblinking stare; steady, and all too calmly resolved, "I'm not something to be cast aside when things get tough or you want to fuck someone else and then be picked back up at your whim."
"Tara, that's not what happened," he nearly yelled in his defense. "I was trying to protect you."
"That worked out so well didn't it," Tara's skilled hand instinctively hugged her now hollow womb but the precision cut of her onslaught didn't stop there. "You never called me or bothered to ask the guys about me because if you'd shown any interest or concern for me, Jax," the methodical edge to her unwavering claim nearly skinned him alive, "Piney or Tig, even Kozak, would have told you when you checked in but by your own admission, you didn't know since you couldn't be bothered to even ask."
The woman didn't need a scalpel to slice him open- the missing inflections from her words, the lack of sentiment in her tone, her dismissive attitude- Tara had already pierced his heart with her distant, callous demeanor and was now simply going for his jugular without any apparent effort.
"Get mad at me, Tara, scream at me," he roughly demanded unable to contradict the painful truth of her message now sorrowfully glazing his eyes with unshed tears. "I know that this is all my fault," he desperately implored, "say something about the baby, anything, but dont shut me out." He tenderly brushed the hair from her cheek along with his plea for her to not disregard him but Tara only withdrew further into her lethargic despondency.
"There's no use fighting for something not worth saving," his woman listlessly replied as if Tara was perfunctorily reading off a mundane checklist of no importance instead of leveling him with the blunt force of her message. "You hurt me, you intentionally betrayed me, and you left me to face your rivals by myself... There's really nothing more to say."
"Tara, please," he brokenly whispered; needing her to stop the welted remorse bleeding from his body with each lash of her pitiless tongue.
"What, Jax," she mercilessly challenged, "does your battered ego now demand the illusion of the respectable doctor helplessly devoted to you so that you can still believe you're a good man." The sting of her cold, flaying taunt finally showed the real depth of Tara's bone chilling rage for the first time. "Sorry, I can't help you with that this time," she icily mocked her hospital bed, "I'm just not strong enough to lie that convincingly at the moment thanks to your enemy."
Her vicious lingual attack knocked the breath from his body as the weight of her next words nearly crushed him.
"This time," she implacably swore without hesitation, "I'm done."
"Tara, stop, please, Baby," Jax raggedly begged, his blonde head intuitively shaking in denial from his sheer inability to accept her devastating wrath. Uncontrollably, tears coursed down his cheeks but Jax was heedless of them as he tried to get her to listen. "Don't do this," he desperately reached out to comfort her, hold her, to love her like he'd done countless times before but, this occasion was irrevocably different, Tara instinctively flinched away like he'd physically hurt her.
Her slender arms instantly raised up in front of her like a fragile porcelain shield to cover herself, to unexpectedly brace against him even while they both knew that he could easily shatter her puny resistance but Jax would never be able to fend off the knockout blow she'd imperceptibly landed, to recover from the rabid ache that bit clear down to the marrow of his existence knowing that his mere presence was causing Tara pain as she gutturally screamed, "Just go, ... Go ... GO!"
Her bitter anguish scalded him with burning shame as she desolately wailed, "I can't even look at you right now."
Slowly, leaving raw pieces of his soul trailing behind with every step he took away from the inconsolable woman who'd held his heart in the palm of her hands since he was sixteen, Jax unwontedly retreated from her well-deserved condemnation knowing that there was no way he could heal the widening rift between them now.
Tomorrow, he'd surely be inside; caged in Stockton suffering an emotional penance of his own making because there'd be no chance to fix this broken road he'd laid between them.