Hi! Thanks so much for the feedback! Hope everyone's doing well. Please forgive my editing/ clunkiness. On we go!
Chapter Ten – Something In the Water
"… Well there was something in the system
That made it easy to believe
Oh, I'll believe in anything you sell me
For cheap or for free
For cheap or for free…"
– The Henry Clay People
Rosie groaned, stretching her legs out beneath her. She felt amazing. She hadn't slept so well in ages. Turning her head to press her face into the empty sheets next to her, she moaned in pleasure, inhaling that familiar smell… home, and the road, and… Jax.
Her hazel eyes shot open.
Quickly turning to sit up, her head whipped around as she scoured the untidy room.
He wasn't hard to find. He had already changed back into his clothes from the night before, his long hair was tied up in a small, low bun. He had his back to her, giving Rosie some time to realize her chest was exposed. Frantically she drew her sheets up under her arms, she thought about pushing her messy hair out of her face, but that would mean having to face him without anything blocking her view. She didn't know if she could handle that right now.
When he finally did turn around, she saw that he had been holding and taking a closer look at Woppy. Rosie couldn't read his expression, she knew it wasn't cold, his blue eyes were as open and warm as ever but still, it made her nervous.
Though the young mother didn't know what she was going to say, she still opened her mouth to speak. A part of her felt like saying sorry and blaming everything on her lack of sleep.
But before she could say anything he spoke up "I was just about to go." Rosie felt her face fall, that hadn't felt good. He carried on explaining, "Maise…" he nodded at the door. "She just went into the bathroom, I was gonna…" he gestured at the door again, indicating he wanted to sneak past the little five year old.
Clearing her throat, Rosie tried to keep her cool, "Ah, yeah. Go." She shrugged.
He set Woppy down at the foot of her bed, leaving the room and shutting the door behind him.
"Oh my god…" Rosie spoke to the empty room.
She pressed her fingers against her lips, she could still feel his addictive taste against them.
"Jackie!"
Rosie jolted out of her stupor at the sound of Maise's voice. 'He didn't leave the house yet.'
Faster than she could think, she threw on some clean clothes and made her way out of her room and into the living room "Maise…"
"Mommy! Jackie's back!" The girl cut her mother off, she had jumped into Jax's arms and by the looks of it the biker didn't seem to mind. Rosie couldn't help but notice the absence of Jackie Moosterson, it seemed that that her daughter had truly replaced one Jackie with the other.
Maise frowned as she stared at her mother. "Your hair looks funny."
"Oh…" Rosie's eyes bulged. She started agitatedly combing her fingers through her hair.
"That's not nice Little Bug." Jax lightly tapped Maise's nose with a wide grin. "Not everyone can be as pretty as you when they wake up."
Though sandy haired girl had giggled at Jax's comment, her tone grew serious as she asserted with determination, "My mommy is sooo pretty."
"I'm not arguing with you Maise Mae…" Jax stated, causing Rosie's hands to stop and her light eyes to meet his "... I was just telling Maise about how I slept on the couch again last night and she was telling me about her Halloween costume." He conveyed his cover story to Rosie.
"Mommy's making one for me and Abel!" Maise excitedly drew the blond biker's focus. "Guess what mine is!" She demanded.
"Hmm." He stared off into space, "A princess?"
"Nope" Maise giggled.
"A fairy?"
"Na-huh."
"I don't know…" Jax stated after pretending to ponder, "What are you going as darlin'?"
"A lady bug!"
"A lady bug?!" He repeated with played up excitement to match Maise's, "So my Little Bug's actually gonna be a little bug."
Rosie felt a panic smack into her gut. 'MY Little Bug…' she knew she should do something but she felt frozen.
"Yea-huh," Maise nodded. "That was my idea," she beamed proudly.
"And Abel?"
"A caterpillar."
"Interesting." Jax nodded with approval.
"Do you wanna take us?"
Finally shocked out of her numbness, Rosie began to interject, "Maise I don't think…"
"What day is Halloween?" Jax interrupted the increasingly despaired woman.
He was staring at her with such firmness that Rosie finally had to reply, albeit in a soft voice, "Sunday."
Returning his blue gaze to the little girl in his arms he said with sincerity, "I'd love to take you."
With a self-satisfied smirk, Maise rotated her upper body to glance at Rosie. "See momma."
"Ok. Maise get down now, I'll make you some breakfast." Rosie walked towards the kitchen, making sure to avoid looking at Jax again.
As the brown haired woman got out a bowl and cereal, she heard the sound of a chair being moved, after she had poured milk into Maise's cereal, she turned to see that Jax had sat down with Maise in his lap.
It was strange, she couldn't help the feeling that he was using the little girl as buffer. In a way she was glad Maise was there too, but she also felt guilty about her daughter having to be used in such a way, it wasn't fair.
"Here." Rosie set the bowl down in front them.
"What about Jackie?"
"I'm not staying, honey." Jax supplied, saving Rosie from having to come up with an excuse.
"Why? Did you just come for Abel?" Maise asked swiveling to look up at him and completely ignoring her cereal.
"No." Jax tucked some of Maise's sandy brown hair behind her ear, "I can't take him anyway." His fingers skimmed over and came to rest on the kitchen table.
Rosie involuntarily shivered as the memory of the electrifying trail of his road roughened touch made her skin blaze… 'Stop Rosie. Stop.'
"Why?" Maise persisted with her seemingly ceaseless curiosity.
"I rode my bike."
"Why'd you come then?" Rosie found herself asking before Maise could get to it.
"I wanted to see you." Jax raised his blue eyes, "I wanted to see all of you."
The look on his face was one without innuendo, Rosie could tell he didn't mean that he had wanted to see all of her body… he had meant something else, and that was all the more terrifying to her.
"Ok Maise!" Rosie practically ripped her daughter out of Jax's easy grasp.
"Ow! Mommy!"
Wrapping her arms securely around Maise's little shoulders once she was close enough, Rosie tried to explain her behaviour, gently rubbing where she had grabbed Maise's arm. "Sorry honey. Jax just has to go… now." Rosie added with more weight, giving Jax a fast glance.
"Well, I had hoped to see my son."
"He went down late last night, so he's probably still asleep." She said lamely, her chest tightening at the thought of him staying any longer.
But Jax's blond brow knit together, as he questioned, "So…?"
Awkwardly clearing her throat, Rosie attempted to stay calm. "Yeah. Fine. Go see him…" she spoke so quickly and anxiously that it was useless to even try to seem remotely put together.
"Ok." He said slowly. Standing and ruffling Maise's hair with a smile, "You better eat your breakfast Little Bug, or else I'll eat for you."
Maise didn't need any more encouragement than that to plop down at the table and finish her cereal.
When he came back to the kitchen Rosie spent most of her time avoiding his eyeline and keeping her distance with Maise hovering somewhere between them.
It wasn't until she was about to close the front door and Maise had retreated in the house that she addressed him again. He had stopped to stretch on the front porch, with his back to the door. Rosie's eyes had scanned the inoffensive white on the back of his t-shirt… she thought of what was under it. And that thought forced a soft voice out of her, "You need to find a new nanny by the end of the week."
He stiffened, stopping mid-stretch to look back over his shoulder at her. There was an expression like understanding crossed with hurt in his blue eyes. He didn't say anything, but simply gave her a curt nod, before turning away and stepping off her porch.
Halloween came far too quickly.
Rosie had spent the entire day fretting, but the whole thing was pretty much painless... at first.
He had seemed tense when he got to the door. For some reason, by the way he had been holding the tension in his shoulders, Rosie could tell it was more than their night together that was bothering him.
'Probably to do with those bruises he had…' her mind began to drift from the marks on his body, to his body… his body heat, touching and thrilling and… 'STOP!' Rosie had smacked her forehead with her palm, causing Jax to look at her in confusion.
That was one of the rare occasions were hazel had met blue, for the most part Rosie had been trying to avoid looking directly at or speaking to him. Thankfully Maise had once again been helpful in that respect, she kept Jax from saying anything that may have raised questions, plus she made him take her to every single door.
At first Rosie had walked up each path with them but it had become too uncomfortable for her, at almost every second door the four of them had been told that they were a beautiful family.
As she watched him with her daughter and Abel, Rosie could see it, though she tried to deny it. The blonde tones in Maise's hair, the greenish hazel tints that were starting to come out in Abel's eyes…
So while Jax, Abel and Maise knocked on doors, Rosie simply waited at the end of the yards, looking in a different direction and giving the excuse that meeting so many people was giving her a headache. Eventually Abel, who had been held by Jax for much of the beginning of the trick-or-treating trip, had grown restless. His pudgy little fingers reached out for Rosie and he joined her on the sidewalk, a little caterpillar happy to wait for Jax and Maise to return.
Having Abel made dealing with her anxiety easier, but even he wasn't enough when Maise had furrowed her brow and looked at the baby with intense focus. That was when Rosie could really no longer take it.
Initially Rosie had felt some panic when the young girl had finally spoken, she had thought for a moment that Maise had said 'Daddy' when really the little girl had said 'Jackie'. Relief flowed through her as she absorbed the rest of what Maise was saying.
"Jackie, are you Abel's daddy?"
Jax laughed at the odd question. "Sure am, Little Bug."
The little girl squinted at the five month old and asked, "Is Abel my brother?"
Rosie had been too shocked to answer, but Jax hadn't been. "Do you want him to be?" He had queried with interest.
A second shock hit Rosie. 'What the hell is that meant to mean?'
"I mean, do you think of him that way?" Jax altered his question, reacting to the evident alarm on Rosie face.
"Uh-huh." Maise nodded absently, her head halfway buried in her bag of candy as they carried on walking towards the next house. Clearly her priorities had shifted.
"Well then I guess there nothing wrong with that." The blond biker concluded.
"Can you be my daddy too then?"
"NO!" Rosie practically screamed, the other parents and costumed children milling around them stopped to stare.
Maise frowned looking up at her mother with some concern, Jax was also eying her, though his expression was one of hurt.
Clearing her throat, and lowering her voice, Rosie stated, "You know he can't… I mean you know he's not Maise."
"I know that, it's just Sally Flecter was saying that I don't have a daddy and that means that I need to get one, or else I'm going to be weird forever."
Rosie had blinked at her daughter, who was describing and approaching all of this so nonchalantly. Her heart ached for her, she hated that she couldn't protect Maise from those little assholes. She didn't ever know what to say to Maise, it made her feel like such a failure as a parent.
"I like you weird." Jax broke the silence, ruffling Maise's sandy blonde hair, causing the little girl to stare up at him. "I'm weird too and we can be weird together." He smiled gently at Maise, who nodded enthusiastically.
Rosie had meant to give him a grateful smile, but when he lifted his eyes to hers some of that tension from early in the day had come back and it didn't look like it was leaving anytime soon.
Once Jax had said his goodbyes to Maise and left with Abel, Rosie had taken to scrubbing every surface of the house down. The whole entire experience over the past few days had made her want to throw up. She was meant to be trying to put distance between them and Jax. She felt so stupid, how could she have made such an enormous mistake?
'Yet again.' The voice in her head attacked. 'Mistakes, always, mistakes Rosalyn.'
Gripping Tony's ring tightly, her gaze raked over the living room as she tried brainstorming about what else she could possibly clean. Her hazel gaze landed on that long forgotten box from the attic.
'Better late than never…' she let out a breath, before sitting in front of the box and opening it up.
In it she found so many things that filled her with complete confusion and warmth. There were yellowed and scratched up pictures. A younger Tony was in many of them, which brought a smile to Rosie's lips.
He looked about thirty in most them, 'Just around the time I was born'. She saw the orange date that was printed on bottom right hand corner of some of the pictures. The house she and Maise were living in now was pictured a lot as well. Rosie had made a guess that this house in Charming may have been her first home and it was confirmed by the fact that her father was proudly holding a small pink bundle in front of the front door in one of the photos.
There were pictures of people Rosie didn't recognize as well, a few men that reminded her of Uncle Ax and Rico, a few women who reminded her of Martha and Ms. Gemma Teller-Morrow.
Then about halfway through the box she found one picture sitting on top of a large stack of papers. Rosie's eyes were transfixed as she lifted the photo out. It was of a pregnant woman, she was in flowery dress in the middle of a green field, holding her swollen belly and laughing. Rosie didn't have to guess, their eyes matched, the woman's hair was only a shade darker then her own.
This woman was her mother.
Rosie's fingers ran over the image. There was no date in the corner but it must have been the summer before she had been born. The woman looked a little big for a December birth, but it was likely that the way the dress was tenting her frame was making her look larger.
Tony had never really spoken of Rosie's mother. All of the people that they were close with in Sacramento had never met her, the most that they gave Rosie was a name that they thought was right…
'Margret…'
Rosie had only gotten confirmation of her mother's name when she had told Tony what she was going to call Maise. In the moment he had gotten angry, but once he had held Maise for the first time he had wept, saying that the name was perfect... but he never said anymore on the subject. This mystery had always been hanging in Rosie's life. And here, finally she had answer… not a whole one but it was something.
"Wow…" she mumbled at the image "you were so beautiful…" Rosie's commented softly. Her hazel eyes moving back to the box eager for more. That was until she saw something that made her frown and brought her night to a stop.
Shaking her head to make sure she was seeing right, she slowly lifted the heavy volume of pages that had been under her mother's picture out of the box. 'It can't be…'
Rosie had to read the words out loud to be certain that she wasn't imagining it "The Life and Death of Sam Crow: How the Sons of Anarchy Lost Their Way by…" she had to shake her head again. Rosie had traced the name some nights ago on Jax's skin, she was positive it had to be a mistake, but as she finished reading she found herself saying that familiar name "… John Thomas Teller."
Let me know what you think!
Sorry about editing. Been trying to go back in some of the chapters, to check and there are A LOT of errors.
Thanks for being so understanding and patient :)
Also wondering if I should bump the story up to a 'M' rating now. Opinions?