Authors Note: I know it seems like I abandoned this story and I kind of did, but I haven't given up on it completely. I hope to update it when I can as I find inspiration for it. I still have ideas, and I still like Hale and Jax, I just need to get it on paper. So if you read something you like, please leave a review and let me know. Thank you NL92, KelseyBl, kceeluv, piper14798, amber for leaving a review on the last chapter. I hope to hear from you again.
All That You Can't Leave Behind
Haley barely finished dropping off a table's worth of hot plates when she feels someone grab hold of her elbow. Catching sight of Stacy out of the corner of her eye, Haley informs the table full of customers she'd be back shortly to see if they need anything, before turning her attention to her saucy redheaded co-worker waiting at her side.
"Table six is just insisting they have a word with you." She vaguely reports. The wicked little smile on Stacy's lips is the only hint she's giving away.
Assuming it's a disgruntled customer, Haley's fiery glare shoots across the diner and to her complete surprise, her sights land on Hale seated at table six.
"Good luck," Stacy teases, with a playful jab at Haley's ribs before leaving her to it.
Haley can't stop her eyes from rolling, letting out a frustrated sigh to this unneeded annoyance. It has already been a long shift and the accommodating waitress in her is rapidly waning. They hadn't exactly parted on good terms after Hale gave her a ride to the hospital and Haley isn't eager to find out why he is so insistent in speaking with her.
Standing tall, unwilling to let Hale think this surprise visit has phased her at all, Haley moves to his table.
"You asked for me?" Haley musters the least vile greeting she can piece together. Her guard still tightly in place as she waits to see what Hale is after.
"Haley…" He smiles that bright goofy grin of his in acknowledgement.
"Take a seat." He instructes, his hand gesturing to the booth seat across from him.
Shaking her head in disagreement, Haley folds her arms tightly against her chest. Creating a further unconscious barrier between them.
"I'm on the clock. What do you want Hale?" Haley gets right to it.
In no mood to beat around the brush with false pleasantries. After spending over six hours on her feet, busting her ass for customers who could care less, and who rarely leave her the tip she deserves, Haley is in no mood for bullshit with Hale.
Nodding silently, Hale licks his lips, seemingly accepting her answer.
"I wanted to apologize for the other day. I shouldn't have said those things about the club to you. I want you to know I wasn't trying to get you to give up information." He speaks genuinely, his thoughtful eyes never leaving Haley's golden pair.
Haley is taken off guard, this is the last she thing expects him to say.
"It's ok… I think it was a weird day for both of us." She offers in return.
Her eyes scanning himself carefully, unsure of how she should take this turn of events. The look in his eyes expresses sincerity and a spark of something more she can't quite pin point.
"I'd like to make it up to you. May be we could grab lunch sometime?" Hale's cautious in his offer.
Revealing an insecurity of being shot down, something Haley hadn't expected to see coming from number-one-deputy Hale.
Finally seeing his attempts for what they are, Haley can't catch the laughter from bubbling up her throat. Covering the smile bursting on her lips with a quick hand, Haley tries to keep her amusement under wraps and not humiliate him further.
"That's not necessary and we both know that's not a good idea." She laughs, more at the notion than directly at him.
Hoping the softening smile in her eyes conveys to him it's not him she's laughing at. While Haley can see his offer is genuine and coming from a good place, Haley also knows it's a bad idea for a multitude of reasons.
"It wouldn't have to be a big deal. Just lunch." He back peddles, trying to explain his intentions without giving up on the notion entirely.
Patting his shoulder playfully, Haley shakes her head. "It's never gonna happen Hale."
One more irresistible chuckle slips past her smile as she moves to leave. Putting an end to it.
"Just think about it." He calls at her back.
"I'll send Stacy back over to take your order." Haley calls over her shoulder.
Ignoring his parting words. The amusement of this turn of events sends a smile spreading wide across her plump pout. Haley had not seen this coming. Not from a mile away. That deputy Hale might have a little thing for a daughter of Samco, the girl from the wrong side of the tracks. It's beyond the realm of possibilities, but amusing just the same.
After receiving an insistent phone call from Wendy, Haley fines herself spending her first hour after a long shift wandering through headstones. All the death and stone surrounding her sends apprehension filling Haley's heart. She thought Jax would be at JT's gravesite and when he wasn't a sickness deeper than disappointment fills her belly.
She knows there's only one other place and yet she had hoped he wouldn't there. Because finding him meant facing a place she swore she'd never return to. She spots him just where she dreaded, leatherback gleaming in the fading sun.
"Thought I'd find you at your dad's." Haley announces on approach, taking Jax by surprise.
Jax's whips around suddenly with the sound of company. His shoulders twisting, his eyes lurching to find the voice. Finding Haley, a gentle ease seems to sweep over his face.
"What brings you out here?" He calls back with a welcoming grin.
"Looking for you." Haley smiles back, coming to stop just in front of Jax.
Her eyes refusing to look down at the gravestone he sits upon. Even though the searing stab in her heart doesn't need her eyes to see the name to acknowledge who lies beneath her feet. Haley's eyes drill into Jax, refusing to deviate as her heart picks up its pace. Secretly afraid if she actually confronts whose gravesite she stands in front of she'll drop to her knees, overcome by grief before she even knows what hit her.
"Wendy?" Jax questions as a puff of smoke bellows past his lips. The strength of his eyes holding her together.
"Yeah…" Haley quietly admits and like an itch she can't seem to fight, her eyes fall to the name engraved upon the stone Jax sits upon.
The sight of Thomas's gravestone taunts and haunts Haley. Years ago, after watching Thomas' tiny casket lowered into the cold unforgiving earth beneath, she had sworn to herself she'd never come back to this place again. Never lay her eyes on the empty shell of what remained. With all the empty promises of what could have been stabbing at her heart. The sight of that granite stone reminds Haley the world is ugly and fucked up, because everything went to shit after he died. Nothing has ever been the same since.
A shutter runs up her spine, a coldness from within, sending goose bumps running along her exposed skin. Her eyes rip from his gravestone and back up to Jax's sexy pout, wrapped securely around a smoke, pulling a drag from it.
Stepping to him, wordlessly Haley flahes him an equally sly grin before stealing the cigarette trapped between his seducing lips. Moving over to the grave beside Thomas', Haley takes a light seat on the edge of it as she sucks in a deep pull of nicotine, letting it fill her lungs until they burn. Burn like her memories of Thomas.
Haley can feel Jax's eyes heavy upon her from just an arm's reach away.
"You never talk about him." He points out solemnly.
His tone deep and husky with reverence. No name needs to be spoken. There's no fooling who he's talking about.
Jax's words jab at her somewhere deep inside. Somewhere that she's felt guilty about all these years. Even though she knows Jax didn't mean it as an insult. Her eyes are dark and hooded, hidden under the sultry protection of her thick lashes as they drift over to Jax.
"Neither do you" Haley's words reverberate between them with brutal honesty.
No one talks about Thomas. No one, but Gemma. It's just too damn painful.
A silence summons between them with a truth almost too heavy to bare. Neither of them have ever really come to terms with Thomas' untimely death.
Despite Haley's best efforts to push them at bay, memories of Thomas surge in her mind. Memories she doesn't allow herself to think of too often. Losing Thomas had taught Haley anyone can die. And up until he had taken his last breath, she had been convinced he'd eventually get up out of that hospital bed and go home, no worse for wear. But he didn't.
Haley speaks up suddenly, when neither of them are expecting it. Sharing a broken dream she's never spoken aloud.
"I thought I was gonna marry him one day…" Haley whispers breathlessly, taking herself by surprise with the confession.
Her lips quickly finding the cigarette gripped tightly between her fingers for another drag to calm the sudden nerves racing up from her belly. Nerves she'd prefer to hide. The thought she would never see Thomas again, play with him, had been unfathomable at six. Everything changed after Thomas died. Barely a year later one of her mom's boyfriends had darkened her bedroom door late one night; Just the first of many. Haley always remembers Thomas' death as a turning point in her life, the end of her childhood.
Jax's steel baby blues fall onto Haley. "Really?" He responds with surprise.
A twitch of a smile edging at the corner of his mouth. The closest thing to happiness either can find in this moment.
Lungs full of smoke, Haley holds it in as long as she can. The burn comforting against the stab in her heart. Blowing it out slowly past her painted pouty lips, Haley shrugs her shoulders lamely.
"We were kids. He was my best friend." She quietly states as if that explains it all.
A light huff escapes Jax, sending Haley's eyes back to meet his. That shadow of a smile finally forming into something bigger and richer. Something that make her weak in the knees.
"I'd have been jealous." He smirks at her in that way that makes her insides melt, even though she'd never let him know that.
Haley's lips poise together as her head shakes lightly in protest. Her golden wavy lock swaying in the sunlight like shimmering gold.
"No you wouldn't have. You would have been happy for him." Her voice fills with more emotion than Haley had intended it too.
But she can't help it as a fleeting window into what could have been takes over her mind. Thomas would have been tall and strong like Jax. She imagines he'd look just like his big brother. Sandy hair, scruffy face, classically handsome, and she would have stood proud and untouchable by his side. Her heart and body unbroken by hands Thomas would have kept her safe from. Jax at her other side, bigger than life as president, and the great leader everyone knew he would be. Their lives would have been rich and full of fortune if fate hadn't stolen it all away.
Jax seems to sense the toll his words are taking on Haley. The toll this whole conversation is taking on her. Knowing better than anyone that Haley struggles with talking about the things that her most. Feeling the sting from the same old wound inside his own chest, reminds Jax he's not immune from that toll either.
Taking a deep breath, Jax backs away from whatever road this conversation is leading them down. It's too painful to play 'what if'. Even now it's too damn hard to talk about Thomas and everything that disappeared right along with him.
"You're probably right, but I guess we'll never know." Jax sums up.
A heavy gloom falling over them. Like a thick blanket that weighs heavily upon their hearts. Heavy with the kind of grief that never goes away.
Jax and Haley sit silently for what feels like forever after sharing words better left unsaid. When the chill of silence seems to reach her bones, Haley finally forces herself to speak up.
"A little friendly advice?" She offers.
Her haunting eyes darting back to Jax as she awaits his answer. Finally noticing the new cigarette he's dug out of his pocket and buried between his lips.
Jax turns her way and holds Haley's gaze steady as if mulling over whether he's going to like this friendly advice or not. Silently he nods as he takes a deep drag.
Running a smooth hand threw her silky locks, Haley delivers.
"I don't begin to know what's going on in your marriage, but I do know sooner or later this is going to destroy you if you don't deal with it." Her words are sober and straight to the point.
When Wendy had called after her shift looking for Jax yet again, Haley knew something needed to be said. For years she has held Jax and Wendy on a pedestal she can now see was always more mythical than reality. Whatever illusions she had once held about their love, were now dashed. Haley has given up hope they'll work this one out. And watching their relationship twist Jax in two, Haley isn't sure she wants it to work.
Jax's eyes drill into Haley's, his lips never speaking a word. Something in his eyes though, his unwavering stare says he hears her. He's listening.
Breaking from his gaze, Haley's eyes drop to the tapping of her foot below. A nervous twitch.
"Listen, I didn't just come out here to give you shit about Wendy. My mom's having a party at the apartment Saturday-" Haley changes the subject. Hearing loud and clear what Jax's silent words are saying, he doesn't want to talk about Wendy.
"I'd don't really like going over there when she's getting wasted with her friends, but it's her birthday. I'd ask Ope to go with me, but you know those two can't be in the same room together for longer than five minutes…" Haley explains, dragging it out.
She hates to ask this of him. Hates asking anyone for anything. Preferring to go it alone if she can, but if anyone will understand her reasons, it's Jax.
Before Haley can muster the words past her lips, she finds Jax already moving her way, stopping right before her. Swallowing hard against the way her heart picks up its pace with his closeness, Haley continues.
"Would you wanna go…?" Her words die unfinished, as her eyes rise up to catch his imagine.
The fading sun shining down upon Jax. The sun's rays piercing her eyes, but she doesn't look away as Jax seems to burst with light, towering over her like some mythical warrior.
"You got babe," An electric smile spreads across Jax's face as he seems to effortlessly know what she's choking to ask.
Jax's smoothness always puts Haley at ease, makes light of what feels heavy upon her, and she knows it shouldn't have been that hard to ask. Not him, realistically she knows she could ask him anything and he'd be there, but still Haley struggles with it. Something about asking for help or a favor, admitting she needs it, that always seems to send her lips fumbling.
Rising from the headstone, Jax wraps a strong arm around her shoulders. Pulling Haley tight against the warm strength of his chest. And for the first time since Haley approached Thomas' grave, she feels like she can finally breathe.
They walk in perfect rhythm as Jax finds that familiar sense of peace wash over him. An easy sensation Haley always seems to bring to him lately. Bonnie to his Clyde, second only to Opie. Sometime over the past few years Haley has transformed from the little girl he watched over like a hawk growing up into an extended piece of him, like a third arm. Jax isn't sure when this happened, but he feels keenly aware of it in the moment.
As if Haley senses it too, as if she reads the very thoughts brewing in his mind, Jax watches her face tilt up toward his, her eyes reaching for his. Looking down into her orbs, instantly Jax's feet stall as he takes the sight of Haley in. Deep haunting eyes, honey colored with felts of green. She has them thickly lined black, giving them greater depth and a haunting pull. Jax soaks up her milky flawless skin, her tempting juicy pout. Something about Haley's eyes call to him, seduce him, have him dreaming up a million things he'd love to do to her while lost in those eyes.
In that moment as they share a deep unwavering gaze, her orbs practically reaching out to touch him, Jax knows he doesn't see Haley as a little girl anymore. He sees her as the women she has become. And god help him, she's fucking beautiful. One of the most beautiful women he's ever seen. Leaning in, Jax places a tender kiss upon her forehead. Quickly pulling back, his feet begin to move once again. Swallowing hard, Jax doesn't dare look at Haley this close again. He holds her near, never letting go. But he knows he has to be cautious with these new feelings and the power they have over him or he could get himself in a world of trouble if he's not careful.
Authors Note: I feel Thomas isn't brought up a lot and he's a character that has always intrigued me. I would imagine losing his little brother at twelve would have a profound effect on Jax. And the fact that Jax doesn't talk about Thomas implies to me, it's just too painful. Thomas would have been the same age as Haley, so it makes sense they would have been friends. We well be rapidly entering a very crucial part of the story.
I'm not sure where I'm going with Hale and Haley yet. I'm toying with the idea of deputy home town Hale having a little thing for a daughter of Samco. We'll see. Thoughts?