A.N.-Okay, here is part two. These last two chapters have been done to death and I think I've read and loved every version available on this website. :D I sought out fan-fiction because I was searching for a satisfying resolution to the J/T season 3 storyline, but I stayed for the stories, so I need to throw some kudos and love to all of the authors who write in this fandom. This is a well-worn path. Hopefully it's still an interesting one.

A.N.- (version 2.0) The website wouldn't let me upload on Monday and early Tuesday and my less than positive reaction to Jax's behavior in this week's episode got in the way of me posting it yesterday. *sorry ladies* Norrific, as usual, thanks woman.

JAX & TARA

The sound of Jax's footsteps jolt Tara out of her thoughts. Her whole body tenses as she waits. She's not sure she's ready to grind through round two with him but she's also not ready to forfeit the fight.

"Tara, please open the door," Jax says and all of the casual dismissal she heard in his voice a few minutes earlier has been replaced with an urgency she can feel tugging on her through the door.

"No Jax, I can't even look at you right now." She says with more vehemence than she actually feels.

"Please babe, let me in. Look, I know I hurt you and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for all of it. We can talk about it. Just please open the door."

"You wanna talk? I can hear you. Go ahead, talk." is all the answer Jax gets from Tara.

He puts both hands against the door and leans into it, trying to reign in his frustration. His fingers press into the wood, flexing and curling as if he could tear the door down. He wants to be with her. It's so hard to be stuck out here, unable to see her or touch her. And he knows he could fix it, if she'd just let him get close and hold her, let his body communicate the things he can't get his mouth to say.

Fuck, but that's part of the problem, isn't it? What she's doing to him now, cutting off his access, he spent weeks doing to her. Recognizing the behavior being tossed back at him, and knowing he deserves it, doesn't ease the frustration. It makes it worse because he knows exactly how off the rails his thinking got when he was trying to cut Tara out of his life.

He knocks his forehead lightly against the door and then rests it there. "I know what you're thinking about right now. Don't leave Tara. Don't leave Charming. I couldn't take it. Letting you walk might be the biggest mistake I ever made. I love you babe…"

Please don't leave me, he thinks so intently it makes the space between his eyebrows hurt, but he can't make the words come out.

Tara would be lying to herself if she said his pleas have no affect on her. His obvious desperation leeches the anger out of her body, until mostly what she feels is tired. She wants this to be over and fling aside any barriers, but he's not going to get in that easily. Too much has happened between them.

"You know I can bust the lock on this door." Jax says.

"I know you can. But you won't." Tara answers and makes sure her tone issues an unspoken warning. If he takes apart the door and comes in before he's invited, she's done.

"No, I won't." Jax sighs. She hears a rustle and a thump as he slides down and sits against the door. "Come on babe, please talk to me."

"I don't know how you do it, Jax. How you keep stuff separate in your head. It's like you decided you didn't want me anymore, put me in a box, stuck me on your highest shelf and then just… left me there." Tara likes that she can't see him process her words, feels safe to admit things she would normally hide. "I'm good at being alone. It's what I'm used to. It's comfortable, but it's not what I want. I can put up with a lot of things and I want to be here with you, but the betrayal with other women, the distance between us… I can't live with that Jax. I won't."

"It will never happen again. She was nothing but me trying to get through a hard night." He says and Tara takes that in, thinks he's probably telling the truth, and it does nothing to ease the ache he's caused her.

"Jax, we're not going to make it through another hard night. That will break us."

"I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm not looking for anything outside of this. I'm not my old man. I don't want some teenager on the side." Jax says and the conviction in his voice takes Tara by surprise. "What I want is a partner. I want you."

"I want to trust you, I do." Tara says and Jax hears her scooting and feels the light thump against his body as she moves and settles herself closer to him, back to back on opposite sides of the door. To Jax it feels like progress.

"But you don't right now. I get that." Jax says and she reminds him of a different problem they have to work out, and based on how shit jumped off earlier, he's worried she's not going to like it. He keeps his voice light as he wades cautiously into new waters. "If we're gonna work, you gotta trust me. And not just with women. You gotta trust me about the club, especially about the club. I know I wasn't talking to you or telling you shit about Abel or the Irish, and maybe if I had you wouldn't have run all over the west coast stacking up felonies. But you've been playing outlaw for less than a year. I have been doing this for half my life. If I say you need to steer clear of something because it's too dangerous, I need you to listen to me."

"So I should do what I'm told?" Tara asks, her voice and words so sharp, so pointed, they could almost slide between his ribs like a stiletto blade. Jax winces.

"I shouldn't have yelled at you like that, but this isn't me trippin' some macho bullshit. I'm not talking about here in our house or with Abel. I'm talking about the club. I know you Tara. I know you're smart and loyal, but if Gemma needs her ass pulled out of the fire again, let SAMCRO handle it. It's not your job to fix her shit. It's mine."

Tara's not sure what to make of the turn in the conversation. She's been taking Gemma's lead on how to be an old lady, on what was expected of her. Somehow in all the talks she and Jax had about what he wanted for SAMCRO, they never really talked about this. "You don't want me involved with the club at all?"

"I'm not saying that. I don't want you taking risks. What's the point of you leaving Charming and throwing all that time and money into school, and doing all you've done, if you get busted? I don't ever want to see you do time. I don't ever want to see you lose your medical license… and I don't ever want to see you hurt again. Not because of me."

"You can't keep me in the dark Jax. I have to know what's going on in your head. I can't live with all the secrets piling up around me. You have to tell me the truth."

"I got no problem with that."

"So your truth for my…" Tara searches for a word that won't leave a bad taste in her mouth. "…acquiescence?"

"About the club." Jax clarifies again.

"Right, about the club." Tara repeats. "I can do that." She says and Jax relaxes a fraction, easing into their new agreement.

"Why didn't you lock the door with Ima?" Tara asks and the sound Jax hears is the spring and snap of the conversational bear trap Tara just laid out before him.

"You really want the answer on this one?" Jax asks.

"Yes. I want the truth." She answers and Jax makes a mental note to watch his step better when striking deals with Tara.

"I left it unlocked so you would find me with her and run the fuck away from Charming." He answers her fast, in one breath, like ripping off a Band-Aid. He is greeted with complete silence. "Tara?"

He hears her take a deep shuddering breath and the relief flowing through her voice steals some of the sting of her words. "God Jax, you're such a dick sometimes." She says, echoing back to him his earlier thoughts on the matter.

"Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

"We could've skipped all of this if you'd just talked to me after Abel was taken."

"I tried talking to you. You weren't listening to me."

"Well you weren't making any sense!" Tara says and Jax can tell they'll be circling the drain all night on this particular point, unless one of them is willing to cede.

"Peace, Tara. I'm sorry for how I was to you." Jax says, but he's been throwing apologies at her all day, and Tara's swatted every one of them away. He tries a different approach, one that flashes a little of his own underbelly, and hopes maybe she'll hear him.

"I thought Abel was dead Tara. Thought Cameron drowned him. And I couldn't move." Jax turns his head towards the crack in the door, hoping his words will go straight from his mouth and into her ear. "I never blamed you. I think you did what you could in a bad situation. But I felt like I was forcing something on you with my life. This is my club and my nightmare. And I didn't think you belonged in it. Even after I got proof that Abel was alive, I couldn't shake the feeling that you being with me was flinging you towards some real tragic fucking future. I don't know Tara, it's not an excuse, but there's the reason." Jax pauses and his hand reaches up to lightly twist the locked door handle back and forth.

"Whatever the reason, you didn't deserve it babe. And no matter how fucked up I was, the way I treated you was still wrong… I was wrong."

It's exactly what Tara wants to hear, no justifications and no excuses. Jax is a proud man. She wonders what it cost him to admit he was wrong. And he can brush it aside now, but he was lost after Abel was taken. Whether it be the booze or the grief, Jax couldn't walk, couldn't pull himself up off of the ground when the club came looking for him. Opie picked him up and carried him into the shower, like a child, like an invalid, like a person who had lost their reason to live. Tara couldn't watch; had to walk away before she joined Jax in his heap on the floor.

What must it have cost Jax to be so vulnerable in front of his brothers? Had she lost sight of how very broken he was as she raged at him tonight? Did she forget? Now that she has his admission of guilt, does she really need it?

"Tara, please let me in."

The lock clicks and to Jax it feels like victory. He scrambles to his feet, ready to crowd into the bathroom with her and scoop her up, but the look Tara flashes in his direction stops him from touching her. She's still working something out in her head. She walks past him and he follows her into the living room.

"What's changed Jax?" She asks putting her the palms of her hands over her face and when she pulls them down again Jax can see deep exhaustion in her eyes. "You were right. I did need protecting. Salazar came gunning for me, because of you. All the shit you were worried would happen, happened. So why am I here? Why haven't you put me on the first bus out of town?" Tara sinks onto the couch. "Jesus, is all of this just because of the baby?"

YES!

The word echoes through Jax's head but he keeps his mouth shut. It's not the answer she wants, and if Jax doesn't explain himself carefully, she'll get the wrong idea. He paces the room and presses his palms together against the bridge of his nose while he thinks. He looks up into the air, searching for the right words. He doesn't know how to tell her what he's feeling without sounding like a complete pussy. Tara's too logical for what's spinning in his head.

How does he tell her he felt trapped –strangled even- when he found out Wendy was pregnant? Felt his entire future was narrowing down to one full of resignation and bitterness. He and Wendy were a bad fit. Even if Tara had never come home, it wouldn't have worked for them, not in the long term. And the one eye he kept trained on the horizon -watching and waiting- was never going to be good for Wendy, or fair to her. And it would have eventually driven them both crazy. It's why he bailed.

Finding out Tara was pregnant was different. It took a moment for Jax to hear his mother's words through the fog in his head, and it took a moment longer for the implications to really settle in. Tara was pregnant, even though they were so careful, and at a time when he was trying like hell to cut his ties with her and his son. It felt like a sign, like a big fucking neon billboard. Jax believes in signs, believes things happen for a reason. Like the universe was trying to snap his head back on straight and was giving him permission to love who he wanted. That all the self-sacrificing he was doing was bullshit because he was supposed to have this family. Jax again saw his life following just one road, but instead of feeling boxed in, he felt… set free.

Jax cringes. There's got to be a better way to put that. Fuck… He's going to sound like the biggest pussy. Jax shakes his head and goes for it.

"Not everybody gets a second chance to have what we got." He kneels in front of her and pushes her hair out of her face so he can see her eyes.

"A lot of fucked up things have been thrown our way, there's a lot of bad in our world, but this… us… this is the good stuff. We gotta hold on to it. You were right babe, you belong here with me. We're supposed to be together. And as far as the club goes, I had this so completely backwards. It's not about hiding you and Abel away from it. Keeping business from bleeding on us, is about SAMCRO being careful. We go at them smart and fucking ruthless, and that's what keeps our family safe."

Tara lifts her hands and fingers play in his beard. "I love you so much but I don't want to do this Jax if it's always going to be back and forth. I don't want us to be vague anymore, and I'm so tired of being cautious." She says.

"This is what I want Tara. It's everything I've always wanted. In the back of my head, I've been thinking about you being with me and having my babies for over ten years. I don't want to be anywhere else. I don't want to be with anyone else."

His words get cut off as Tara's mouth slams into his with a passion that feels close to desperation. Her legs wrap around his still kneeling body, pulling him in closer to her. He's lost in the silkiness of her thighs, the push of her breasts against his chest and the familiar scent of her shampoo. And there is no place on Earth he'd rather be.

Tara breaks the kiss. "What about Abel?" She asks softly in his ear.

"What about him?"

Tara pulls back and he can see on her face that she's looking to straighten out at least one more knot in the ties between them. "I know Abel isn't mine. I know he's yours, I do." Her hands leave his shoulders to gesture in front of her, as if she is searching for the right combination of words. "But the way I think about him, the way I feel about him... He feels like he's mine. I love him like he's my baby."

"I know you do-"Jax starts, but Tara holds up her hand and keeps talking.

"I want him Jax. Whatever happens with the charges, no matter how long you're gone, I want him. Not just because I think Wendy couldn't handle him long term –though God I have this image of him locked in his bedroom screaming while she's shooting crank." Tara shudders. "She would try Jax, but I don't think she's ready to be a full-time mom." Jax finds himself nodding. Wendy couldn't handle caring for Abel, not every day. "But it's not just about her history. I want him because I can't picture not having him here with me. And I know I have no rights to him."

Tara's eyebrows draw together and he watches as pain casts its shadow across her face. "And with what happened with Cameron, I'm sorry I couldn't do more to protect him."

"Tara, stop." Jax tries, but she charges over his words again. Jax lets her. She clearly needs to get this shit said.

"It will never happen again. I will blow big holes in any person who tries to hurt him." Tara promises.

Jax isn't sure if this new hardness in Tara is a reaction to the last few weeks or if it's going to stick with her. He's honestly not sure how he feels about it, but at the moment it amuses him. He snorts and a smile cautiously spreads across his face.

"You know, I think I got that." He says jerking his head towards their bedroom where the gun she almost used to blow big holes in him lay on his dresser. It earns him the smallest of smiles from Tara before her eyes dart away and her face sobers, the pain creeping back in slowly.

"Hey babe, look at me," he says and he waits as she lifts her eyes to his. After a conversation -a negotiation really- about trust, Jax is surprised he has to say this. His hands squeeze her hips, giving emphasis to his words. "I trust you with Abel. You know that, right?" Like earlier in the hallway, Tara's eyes well but this time a wide smile breaks through her crumpling mouth. He gathers her to him and buries his face in her hair.

"Thank you," she whispers into his neck before she lays a kiss there.

Jax assumed she would take care of Abel while he was inside, had sort of counted on it. But he can't even begin to express to Tara what it means to him for her to claim Abel at a moment when his own future is so precariously balanced. She doesn't accept Abel because he's a package deal with Jax. Tara wants him because she loves him, and worries about him, doesn't want to be without him, and would kill to protect him, and a weight Jax didn't even know he was carrying, lifts off of his back.

"I know how much you love him. Abel should be with you. I want you to have him." Jax says and pulls back so he can press his forehead to hers. "We'll figure it out."

"Promise?" Tara asks.

"Promise." Jax answers and kisses her gently. As he relaxes, every ache, every bruise, every stitched slice he's accumulated in the past week begins to protest while exhaustion presses on his eyelids. He wants his bed. Wants Tara and Abel wrapped up in is arms. Wants his family close for this small piece of time he has with them. Wants Tara to really understand he's serious about respecting her claim on Abel.

"I love you so much," he murmurs into her ear.

Tara kisses his shoulder and hugs him tighter. "I love you too, baby."

"We okay?" He asks her and he can hear a small laugh in her voice when she answers.

"Yeah, we're okay."

"I'm so tired. We should go to bed." Jax says and he thinks his next sentence before he says it. It sounds funny in his head, and he worries it will sound funny coming out of his mouth. But he means it, feels it's true, and also feels down to his bones that it will stay true forever. It's just awkward to say because it's new. It's been coming for awhile, but it's a shift in his entire way of thinking. It's not about denying Wendy anything because that door will always be open. It's about him learning to share and it's something Tara needs to know.

"Come on, Tara." He stands and reaches out his hands to help her to her feet. "I wanna go lay down and be with our son."