Author Note: Apologies for not updating in a while! I forgot to mention at the end of the last chapter that I was going away on holiday. After this chapter there is only one more to go!

Have you guys all seen the new Season 2 promo? I don't know about you, but I'm on the edge of my sheet, chewing my nails waiting til September 8th.

Thank you all again to those who review and add me to your Favourite Story/Author and Author Alerts. If you don't want to leave me a review, you can always send me a message and tell me what you did or didn't like about the chapter or story.

Chapter Eight: Homecoming

Charlotte slept well considering the previous night's extra-curricular activities. Taking a quick shower, she suddenly pined for her father. She needed that reassurance. She needed to physically hear his voice out loud, other than the one that kept repeating in her head. With all the crazy shit that had been happening, she hadn't found the time to go to his grave lately.

After her shower, Charlotte checked in with the vet, who said that he had got the bullet out of Madison's body and she would be fine after her scar healed. Apparently, Madison's large stomach had saved her life. The bullet hit mainly fat and a bit of muscle, missing major arteries and organs. Next, she called Jax, wanting to thank him again for getting Madison to a vets in good time. After she had raced out of her house to go find her mother at the Vista Inn, Chibs and Jax had loaded both Nathan and Madison into their 'borrowed' car and dropped Madison off at the vets. Without the guys, she'd be burying Madison.

Heading downstairs, Charlotte saw Gemma sitting at the dining room table with two cups of freshly brewed coffee.

"You okay, baby?" Gemma asked, reaching out and taking Charlotte's hand as she sat down.

"Yeah," Charlotte nodded, "All things considering, yeah."

"Jax just called. Abel's coming home."

Charlotte beamed. That was the first good news they'd all heard in months.

"How many people are we feeding?" Charlotte asked as Gemma placed an assortment of five, huge, ready-made cakes into their already full trolley.

Gemma stood upright, hands on hips.

"We're celebrating."

"Yeah but who's 'we'? The whole of Charming?"

Charlotte glanced down into their trolley, filled with cakes, crisps, nuts, pop, and alcohol. They nearly had to get another trolley for all the bags of snacks and crisps that Gemma had wanted to buy.

"You got a smart mouth. You know that, young Lady?" Gemma couldn't hide her smile.

"Yeah, but I got that from you."

"Yeah, guess you did," Gemma said as she checked out her reflection in the security mirror hanging on the wall, readjusting the sunglasses on her head.

Charlotte arrived laden with presents for baby Abel and two cases of beer.

"Think we might run out?" Gemma teased, taking one case from Charlotte and putting it on the kitchen counter, where four other cases were already sitting.

"My fridge is busted," Charlotte explained, "My kitchen floor looked like a swimming pool."

Gemma left for the hospital, leaving Luanne fussing in the kitchen. Charlotte and Wendy were alone in the living room, putting up the final decorations in an awkward silence. Jax soon swung by and picked Wendy up. He handed her his spare helmet and Charlotte was catapulted back to eighteen months ago, when that gesture would not have been uncommon. Now Jax barely even looked at his soon-to-be-ex-wife…How times changed.

Charlotte tapped the cake again with her knife. It didn't even make a dent in the frosting.

"It's still frozen," she announced.

Tig made a noise of disgust and left her alone in the kitchen again. Tig loved cake almost as much as he loved going through hookers. He had his eye on the double chocolate brownie cake since he first got there, but it was taking a while to defrost.

Charlotte heard the front door open and she immediately went to go see baby Abel. Jax walked through to the living room where everybody crowded around him in a circle. This wasn't just about Abel's homecoming. This was about family, too. They were all there to show support, love, and commitment to one another. Charlotte realised that, when Abel was surrounded by his family - blood or otherwise - this baby was dearly loved and would forever be protected. She was too. They all were. They all had each other's backs.

"See? Nerves of steel," Piney declared, removing his hands from the glass that was balancing on Kenny's head.

"Don't laugh, Kenny! You're spilling it!" Charlotte said as some of the liquid sloshed over the sides onto Kenny's hair.

"Y'know the rules. Say that if you spill it, you have to drink the rest," Jax smiled as Piney was already putting a glass on Ellie's head too.

"You mean his Dad will," Donna laughed, looking up at Opie.

"Sure will, baby," he replied, giving her a kiss.

Out of the corner of her eye, Charlotte saw Tara take a seat on the chair's arm next to Jax. She also saw her lean down and kiss him.

Oh Shit, She thought as she glanced over to see Wendy's reaction.

"Look after this."

Jax handed Charlotte his beer bottle, before leading Tara away to talk. Jax's vacated seat wasn't even cold before someone sat heavily beside her. It was Tig.

"Checked on that cake lately?"

Charlotte shook her head.

"You're looking like a pro," Charlotte commented as she entered the kitchen to dispose of the empty beer bottles that had been littering the living room. Jax was holding Abel in one arm, putting beers in the fridge with his free hand.

"Yeah, I'm getting the hang of it," he smirked. "I don't care what anybody ever tells you, little man," Jax said, looking down at Abel, "You always listen to your Auntie Charlotte, you got that?"

She was so taken aback by the sweetness of his comment and his sincerity that she was left speechless.

"Here, can you hold him? I gotta take a leak."

Now that was the Jackson Teller she was used to. She carried baby Abel back into the living room where she took the only available seat next to Wendy.

After a little while, Abel fell asleep. So she put him in his cot under the supervision of Gemma.

"You know, she should be doing this. Not you," Gemma mumbled.

"Gemma," Charlotte warned.

"What? She should."

Gemma left, but Charlotte stayed for a few minutes, watching the baby's chest rise and fall with his breathing.

"He's a cutie."

Chibs' voice broke the silence in the room. She turned to see him leaning against the doorframe, watching her watch Abel.

"Yeah," Charlotte replied softly, stroking the baby's tiny nose.

"You okay?" he asked softly.

"I'm fine."

She turned and leaned against the railings on the cot. Chibs turned his head and looked down the hallway to check that nobody was coming their way.

"You still staying at Gemma's?" he asked.

"No, she's staying here tonight. For Abel."

He looked to the floor, thinking.

"What's wrong?" she asked, sensing something.

"Maybe you should stay here, too. 'Til this shit blows over."

"I thought it was done."

As their eyes met in the semi-darkness of the baby's room, Chibs debated telling her the whole truth about Nathan's sudden disappearance. Sometimes when people knew the truth, they panicked. And when they panicked…that's when they got hurt.

"Just...be careful."

Charlotte exited the kitchen with two slices of cake – one for her and one for Tig. The cake had finally defrosted. As she exited the kitchen, she saw Tig leave through the front door.

"Where's Tig going? I got cake," she asked Clay, who was leaning against the wall.

"He, urr, went to get cigarettes."

The house fell into a deadly silence after Jax, Chibs and Clay left to go and meet Opie. Gemma was washing up, trying to take her mind off things. Wendy and Charlotte sat opposite each other in the living room in another awkward silence.

Charlotte glanced at her watch and noted that the guys had been gone for forty minutes. They didn't know where the accident had happened exactly, but Charlotte was seriously considering going on a drive around the town to find them.

"You still doing your jewellery?" Wendy asked. She already knew the answer but she just wanted to break the tension.

"Yeah."

"I heard you got fired from the Nail Salon."

"Yeah."

"Found anything else yet?"

"No."

Wendy scoffed.

"Jesus, Charlotte, you have to give me more than one word answers. I'm making an effort here."

"What do you want me to give you, Wendy? Five hundred dollars? Or you just going to take that yourself again?"

Wendy winced, consciously rubbing the fading track marks littering her hands.

"Okay, I deserved that. I'm sorry. What more can I say?"

"Sometimes, Wendy, it's not so much what you say. It's what you do, too," Charlotte huffed.

"Dishes are done," Gemma announced, cutting off Wendy's reply.

The three women remained in silence until Abel's whimper came through on the baby monitor. All three women stood up to go tend to him, eyeing each other, silently figuring out who should go.

"Go," Gemma said, waving Wendy down the hallway - Junkie Mom had to learn sometime.

Jax entered through the front door, shaking his head. From the look on his face, everybody knew that whatever had happened, Donna hadn't survived. Gemma immediately stood to hug her son.

"You should go home, Mom," Jax half-asked, half-told his mother.

"What about the baby?" Gemma swallowed.

"I can take care of my son."

Mother and Son continued to look at each other before Charlotte stood and looped an arm through Gemma's.

"Come on," she urged.

"I'll get my purse," Gemma finally relented.

As Gemma collected her things, Charlotte looked at Jax and saw a mixture of torture and anger on his face. She gave him a quick hug before she left with Gemma.

The silence of her house hit Charlotte as soon as she stepped through her front door. She half-expected Maddy to run up to her, tail wagging, begging for more food. The only sound was the horrible clinking sound of her broken refrigerator. She'd really have to get that sorted.

It had been a long day and an even longer night. And with the onslaught of a headache, Charlotte headed straight up to her bedroom, her heart set on changing into comfortable pyjamas and watching 'Dirty Dancing'. Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey would make her feel a little better at least. Flicking on her light, she stopped in her tracks. Painted across the largest wall in her room in bright red paint was the message:

I'M STILL WATCHING

Charlotte was so terrified she couldn't even scream. She felt like she was bolted to the ground and couldn't move for a few seconds. When she was able to, she ran downstairs, grabbed her keys and headed straight for her car.

Peeling out of her driveway, she spotted a pair of headlights in her rear-view mirror. The lights were so bright that she couldn't make out the car or the driver exactly, but she had a good idea as to who it was. The car followed her the whole way to the Clubhouse.

She had stupidly left her phone in the house in her rush to get out. Thankfully, someone had left one of the Teller-Morrow gates open. She parked, got out quickly and shut the gate. A car stopped outside the entrance. But just as quick as it had stopped, it had sped off again. It was Nathan in his Pontiac.

Charlotte ran to the Clubhouse door, finding it locked. She banged on the door, screaming for someone to open it. On the other side of the door, she heard someone flick the lock and she stood back to let them open it.

"Charlie? What's-"

Charlotte didn't even let Chibs finish his sentence before she flung herself at him, arms going around his neck. He took a step back to steady himself and nudged the door shut with the tip of his boot.

"I thought you got rid of him!" she cried hysterically, "He's still here!"

"What happened?" he asked, one hand rubbing her back and the other on the back of her head, holding her close. Juice looked on from the bar with piqued interest.

Charlotte pulled away to look at him, hands gripping the collar of his cut.

"He was back in my house! He followed me here!""

"Oh Jesus."

Chibs closed his eyes for a second. He'd wanted to hunt down and kill Nathan the second he realised that he had escaped. He knew he should've said something to her earlier at the party. He was lucky she got out alive and unhurt.

"What's going on?" Juice asked, walking up to them. He couldn't hear what they were saying properly from the bar.

"Stay here," Chibs ordered. "You," Chibs pointed to Juice, "Watch her."

It had been almost half an hour since Chibs had left. Sitting at the bar with Juice, Charlotte confessed that she felt guilty about at least not going after him to check that he was okay. Juice had laughed at her.

"I think he can handle himself," he said, shaking his head then announcing he was going to bed with a bottle of Tequila in one hand and a packet of cigarettes in the other.

After being by herself for a few minutes, Charlotte got bored. She went to Chibs' dorm-room, just opening the door by a little bit, not sure what to expect.

Chibs' room had the same horrible, dark wood effect panelling that Jax had, all around the room. On the nightstand, stood a ceramic black lamp that she turned on, illuminating half the room in a dim light. He tried to 'decorate', which consisted of a large Scottish flag pinned to one wall, a framed hand-drawn picture of a Harley on another and a number of pictures of half-naked women stuck to his small mirror.

She sat on the edge of the bed, facing the door. When she heard the sound of his footsteps coming down the hallway she tensed up, hands gripping the mattress, preparing herself for whatever state he could be in.

The whole world paused as he entered. Charlotte's eyes diligently looking everywhere for any signs of stab or bullet wounds.

He stood in front of her whilst she looked up at him.

"Charlie," he started, "It's always gonna be like this, y'know?"

No, she didn't know what he meant. Her brows furrowed together in confusion and before she could voice her thoughts he cupped her cheek and continued.

"You're always gonna be waitin' around. Wonderin' where I am. When I'm gonna come back."

He pulled his hand away.

"You need to realise that and you need to accept it. 'Cause that's what I am."

She stood quickly.

"I know. I know that this," she said, placing her hands over the patches on his cut, "is what you are. But it's not all you are."

His eyes roamed over her face before he kissed her so hard she fell backwards onto his bed, Charlotte bursting into a fit of giggles.

In the room next door, Juice knew something was up when he heard Charlotte laugh. Then something crashed to the floor and after hearing her moans of pleasure, he proceeded to turn up the volume on his iPod.