Returning to Charming had been nothing but a God damn emotional clusterfuck on wheels for her so far.
It spun Tara too fast, whipped her too far past her usual boundaries, and flung her painfully out of her sphere of personal comfort. It overwhelmed her senses; tangled up all the overlapping threads from the past and present with just too damn much feeling and wound them into a complicated skein of sentiment that kept Tara from reacting in the clinically detached manner she'd learned over the last decade.
Her expert training normally kept her surgeon's nerves steady and calm because Tara had thoroughly planned and practiced every conceivable failure of the human body especially when it came to the small organ that pumped blood through her veins. She'd even schooled her heart and mind to Jax's natural perfidy when it came to separating females from their panties long ago but knowing and seeing in such luridly vivid detail were two very different things. It was like the monumental difference between a flat, papered, texture free, dry lab and the full-bodied, three dimensional, cadaver filled version of the regular wet lab from her first human anatomy course. There was really no comparison or technique that inured you against your own instinctive reaction to being tossed a shocking gray lump of someone's spongy brain matter like it was nothing but a dog's slobbery ball for fetch; you either caught it and rolled with the goading punches from your fellow lab mates or you dropped it and ran away in horrified disgust when some organic tissue haphazardly splattered across your face.
This time, she'd unfortunately reacted more along the bitter lines of the drama filled version of her teens than her ordinarily staid and stoic adult self. Tara contemptibly mused, it was thoroughly humiliating. Idly, she swayed back and forth; the gentle almost lulling motion of the swing became a soothing balm to her frayed nerves even as she heard the crunch of leather and well-worn boots finally closing in behind her.
The deep voice swept over her shoulder with nostalgic affection, "Want an underdog?"
Tara inherently chuckled in response, "Not sure we'd manage it now." Negligently, she kicked at the wood chips that had been sand the last time she and Opie had been at this playground and teasingly added, "You've sure grown some since then."
"So have you, Doc," he quipped back like a rascally big brother pointing out a very firm grasp of the obvious to his dorky little sister.
"Maybe," she self-deprecatingly replied knowing that her most recent actions had been anything but mature.
"You've been here a while," the solid tower of tattooed man quietly stated as he leaned against the metal support beams instead of precariously squeezing into the swing beside her. He was clearly waiting and when she didn't immediately answer, Opie finally asked, "Wanna tell me about it?"
Remorsefully, she conceded to her childhood confidante, "I know that I shouldn't have gotten so upset."
The subtle pastel layers of the sunset blanketed the evening sky behind him making Tara feel like she was still a little girl hiding under her warm, protective covers in the middle of a raging thunder storm when her lip trembled slightly, "We've been apart for longer than we were actually together and it's not really like I expected him to be alone all this time especially with how you guys treat women but-"
"But it still hurt," Opie wisely finished for her without the slightest edge of judgment undercutting his assessment.
"Yeah, it did," she confirmed with no embarrassment this time because it was clear that her friend wasn't censuring her actions yet.
"And, instead of knocking Ima's front teeth out in a hissing brawl that we both would have preferred," Opie boyishly smiled like the juvenile delinquent he'd thoroughly been from amid the heavy set of whiskers falling down his face in a bushy waterfall, "you took the other immature route and stormed off in a girlie huff."
"Hey," Tara instantly denied only to reluctantly reconsider and grudgingly admit a half second later, "I suppose so."
She flashed him the same sheepishly guilty grin she'd used after inadvertently throwing out his misshaped Transformers lunchbox in the sixth grade when she'd been helping him dig out the unhealthy hovel he'd dared call a bedroom. He hadn't condemned her then for disposing of his favorite BB gun target but it seemed like Opie might not give her such leeway now so she quickly apologized, "It was a really stupid move to just take off like that especially after what Jax told me earlier."
"So don't do it again," Opie grunted back with her contrite admission not bothering to needle Tara about the trouble she'd potentially exposed them all to because of her impetuous tantrum. Instead, her friend took a very different tack when he knowingly led her down the natural trail of his running explanation, "Certainly not because of some overly handled merchandise from Cara Cara that's been after Jax ever since I took up with Lila and got her out of the life and, definitely not, since he's been avoiding her like the fucking plague for about a year now."
"That's really not any of my business," Tara immediately deflected not wanting to plumb the depths of her unmitigated relief that the tawdry blonde wasn't Jax's regular dipping pool but that certainly didn't rule out them having been fuck buddies at numerous points in the past. Again, Tara silently reminded herself, it wasn't her right to be upset about this anymore.
"Like hell it's not," Opie snorted back at her. "You're his wife."
"Opie, Jax and I," she wavered suddenly not sure how to proceed, "we've got some rough history to work through."
Tara furrowed her brow as she struggled to get him to understand, "We don't make sense now, if we ever did, and we can't pick things up like our relationship spent a decade on pause or was just frozen in time."
Tara's traitorous heart whispered that she was a liar; branding another mark on the dark caverns of her soul for even trying to deny that that was precisely the taunting promise that scrolled through her dreams at night.
"That's bullshit," Opie obstinately countered. "Jax has been real clear that he still considers you his Old Lady. He might have tapped some trash here or there over the years but none of them were lasting or important because they weren't you."
"Op, that's not fair," she sputtered back, "you found someone after Donna and so will Jax."
Each word Tara had uttered of that hideous claim suddenly felt like a ton of stone weighing down on her, crushing her, grinding against the longings of her heart, and smashing against the heavy truth that she had never wanted Jax to replace her in any way even if that made her horribly selfish all things considered.
"Sure, I'm with Lila and she's good with the kids but she's no Donna," Opie drilled her with his painfully sharp clarification. "She never will be but I don't have the option of my first love like Jax does."
"There's nothing left for me and Jax now," she denied in a weak tone that sounded pathetically false even to her ears.
"Yeah, well," Opie stated with the road worn confidence of a seasoned biker who saw what he saw and spoke his opinion just as plainly, "all this 'nothing' sure seems to have you running hurt and scared now doesn't it."
The opening strains of Martie's viola happily strummed over him as Josh hummed along with his cherished iPod.
He'd been legitimately disgruntled earlier, upset by Teller's continued presence at Tara's family home and thoroughly displeased by the supposed motorcycle enthusiasts' shirtless handling of the doctor and her vintage inheritance. Even so, the agent had been helplessly enthralled by Tara's graceful familiarity with the tools of a trade that wasn't her well-studied profession and wondered if automotive mechanics was a childhood hobby she'd enjoyed learning at her father's knee. That innocent notion was so much more comforting than the dark question that had lingered like a vicious predator in the murky waters of jealousy that flooded his mind when thinking that Tara might have learned her handy skill from another less savory man who should just stay in her past.
Josh had made a mental note to dig a little deeper into Tara's history than the cursory research he and Stahl had done before bringing her back to Charming so that he could permanently sweep that nasty suspicion to the side just when Tara's escorts, a white trash caravan of biking hoodlums, had forced her back to the M.C.'s dirty stomping grounds. Impotently, he'd gripped his steering wheel in white knuckled fury when Tara had rushed into that shithole the Sons deemed a clubhouse, worrying that his angel would once again be spending the night there in such demeaning squalor and knowing that there was little he could do about it yet.
He shouldn't have been so needlessly concerned because his little Tar Tar had taken care of things beautifully all on her own. It had given him near sinful delight to watch Teller unsuccessfully chase after the heavenly brunette when the lawless biker hadn't anticipated his bride's cunning exit strategy; however, Josh's pleasure was heightened even more because he most certainly had. He'd been the only one to know and understand the intimate workings of Tara's mind so well.
And, now, even as Tara made her way back to her familial home for the evening, Kohn knew- just as sure as the Irish lilt of the tin whistle that ended the Chic's music he'd had on repeat for over an hour- that Tara was still ready to run.
When she did; he'd be sure to catch her unlike Teller who'd had to send one of his lumbering Brothers in his place. As the soundtrack joyously cued up again, Josh ignored another one of Stahl's annoying calls as he pondered whether flowers would be too forward a gesture for his precious burden or if Tara would appreciate the traditional boldness of his romantic actions.
The bonfire was the first good thing she'd seen or heard all day.
Gemma's lips curled into a smug, self-satisfied smirk as she pulled into the Teller-Morrow lot to see the raucous crowd assembled around the flames; beer, bikes, and easy pussy abundantly on display shouted Tara's absence louder than some shitty sonic boom.
The racket was divine rhapsody to Gemma's overly protective ears.
Before she could wander toward the drunken group cavorting by the picnic tables, Tig headed her way. His sober expression as he cut across the cement square had Gemma slipping into her darkened office to wait for him. Whatever Tig wanted to skewer her for, she could hear about in private after she told him about her not so friendly visit with Otto.
"Hey, Sweetheart," she naturally greeted him with a hug.
Tig kissed her cheek as he asked based on the ingrained habit after so many years, "Hey, Gemma, you okay?"
"Not sure anymore, Tiggie," the M.C. Queen sighed back knowing that she was saying far more with her attitude than her words as she pulled away. "Where's Jax?"
"He's with Tara at her Dad's old place after that stunt you pulled," Tig bluntly replied from the other side of her desk. "You and Jax will eventually get past this, Gem, but you can't mess with him and Tara anymore."
"What are you talking about," she falsely admonished. "I wasn't even here."
The Sergeant at Arms' dark brows drew together as his hands flew out to his sides in disappointed question, "I got nothing but adoration for you, Gemma, so why you gotta lie to me like that?"
"But I didn't do anything," she continued to deny any culpability in what had surely been an amazing performance from Ima.
"Come on, Gem," her longtime friend rebuked her. "That porn slut's visit had your manipulative claws all over it. And I'm telling you that if you chase Tara away this time," he punctuated his all too astute opinion with the pointed circle of his fingers, "Jax won't ever forgive you."
His warning was laced with concern for her and tied together with his devoted understanding and care so she finally confessed, "I didn't trust her then and I don't trust her now."
"It doesn't matter if you do or not because Jax does and he can take care of himself, " Tig profoundly offered without a trace of malice just honest advice. "You want back in with your boy then you better find a way to make things right with Tara."
"She's a runner, Tiggie," her maternal fears surfaced an objection. "She's gonna hurt him again."
He tenderly reached out and encircled her in his leather clad embrace, the well broken in cut almost equally soothing to her as he sagely offered, "Then you let her break his heart all on her own but keep your hands clean so that you can be there to pick up the pieces."
"Tiggie," her voice filled with the tearful mist starting to cloud her eyes, "I just can't lose him."
"I know, Sweetheart, I know," his grip on her tightened in comforting reassurance for a few mintues before he drew back and evenly demanded. "Now tell me why you went out to Stockton to talk with Big Otto?"
Gemma should have known better than to think that Tig, of all people, would have missed a single thing that happened in her world whether good or bad. Not bothering to evade or slant the truth in her favor, the M.C.'s matriarch informed him, "Otto wanted me to let Clay know that he believed my husband might have had something to do with Luann's murder and, either way, that the Club needed to find the scumbag responsible for her death or else Clay was going to lose the one that he loved most."
"Awe, Gemma," Tig commiserated with the lethal loyalty that she'd never really doubted, "What did Clay want us to do?"
Opie had offered to stay before they'd left the park but Tara had responsibly told him that he needed to go home to his kids. She'd even pride fully boasted that she'd be just fine alone with Jax but as Tara pulled into her drive and the safety of her friend's headlight zoomed away into the inky night; she was scared, vulnerable, yearning, hopeful, uncertain, wanting, nervous ...
Tara was a landslide of many things all at once as she faced Jax again; however, she was definitely anything but fine.
Turning off the stream of light from the Cutlass did little to diminish his illuminated form in the dark. Jax was huddled under his hoodie as he sat waiting on her front stoop with a haphazard ring of departed butts littering the ground at his feet that testified that he'd already been there a while. She didn't need to smell his breath to know that he'd probably consumed more Jack than she'd want the paper bag covering the bottle between his legs to manifest.
Slowly, he pulled down the covering of his sweatshirt from his rumpled hair to reveal a man that looked just as broken as she felt.
Instinctively, Tara slipped down beside him to ease the burden they both felt; her knee brushed against his thigh on the narrow step making her shudder a bit with the intimate contact, the rush of still familiar comfort that just being close to him generated from the barren basin of her soul forced her to whisper, "I'm sorry I left the way I did."
Hopeful surprise flashed resurrected life into his alcohol deadened orbs as Jax explained, "I'm sorry about earlier too, I didn't mean for you to get hurt by whatever Ima did. She's just-"
"I really don't want to know," she cut him off not wanting any more sordid details about his illustrious sex life over the last decade than she'd already learned. She just couldn't handle the salacious information and still do what was necessary tonight.
"Right," Jax swallowed back the rejection that instantly spread through his body at her rebuff, breaking the tentative connection that Tara had been enjoying far too much, and killing a bit of the fervent expectation that had risen between them.
"We've both had lives apart from each other," she started then faltered under the staggering impact of his intense scrutiny, "but I shouldn't have taken off like that."
"No, you shouldn't have," his rusty tone scraped across the raw patches of her long-standing fear because they both knew that Jax wasn't just talking about what had happened today. When he looked at her, his battered blue depths showed her every emotional scar she'd given him, every torturous fleck of internal chaos her absence had caused, and every lonely stretch of insecurity that he'd ridden through alone over the years without ever knowing why.
Tentatively, Tara placed her soft palms on his hardened frame, tenderly embracing Jax's aching hurt and offering solace through the gentle nuzzling of their entwined foreheads as her words kissed across the open sores of his soul, "I never meant to hurt you either, Jackson. I'm so sorry that I did."
The crickets' nocturnal performance was the perfect accompaniment to their slow, shattered breaths as they clung to each other; their ravaged hearts temporarily soothed by the peaceful silence that sang so meaningfully between them.