Dusky light filled the room Jax had been calling home in the clubhouse, illuminating the dust motes as they danced slowly through the air.
"You weren't kidding when you said you were all about the service."
Jax smiled contentedly at Emily Duncan as she stood at the foot of the bed and pulled her jeans back up over her thong, a cat-that-got-the-cream smile on her face.
He put his hands behind his head and raised his eyebrows. "Now don't forget about our arrangement darlin'. We need you."
She rolled her eyes as she put her shirt back on but she nodded. "I know, I know, I need to let Skeeter take a ride." Grabbing his blanket covered foot playfully from where she stood at the end of the bed, a glimmer came into her eye that said she wasn't quite done with the VP. "I'll help out Samcro. Maybe once this good deed is done you can make me feel a little better about it?"
Jax's smile went from ear to ear, which distracted her from the fact that it didn't come close to reaching his eyes. "I'm never far away."
Satisfied with his answer, Emily Duncan left and Jax let his smile fade. Slowly sitting up, he peeled his kutte off, not loving the way the sweat from his back caused it to stick to his skin. She'd asked him to keep it on, made no attempt to hide the fact that what she wanted was to fuck the vice president. He knew that if anyone even marginally attractive had been wearing that patch she would have spread her legs for that guy just as fast. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate her forthrightness. Some chicks tried to pretend he was the man of their dreams as they fondled his leather. They wanted to be old ladies and it didn't much matter who's. At least Emily was honest, she wanted a quick fuck in the clubhouse in return for doing Skeeter. No harm in that, in his humble opinion.
Standing up he walked to the shower and turned the spray on scalding hot. He hadn't been able to get his head in the game a hundred percent, to let go and have fun like he'd always been able to before. Instead of feeling loose and relaxed like he normally did after sex, he felt irritable and tired. As he stepped into the stall and let the water pummel him his mind wandered back to this morning when he'd gone to visit Abel.
He'd been nervous as all hell to bump into Tara, had no clue what he would say to her about last night. He'd played it over and over in his head, the electricity that had snapped to life so unexpectedly between them still humming inside of him hours later. He'd barely been thinking about Emily while she was here, let alone now that she was gone and yet an almost kiss with Tara had his heart rate up for an hour after it had happened. Since Tara had been back this was the first crow eater that he'd nailed and he supposed, with everything going on, it really shouldn't surprise him that he wasn't satisfied. He'd been living in the past for a few weeks now, letting feelings bubble up that had long since been buried and it stood to reason that he would find the touch of another woman lacking with the feel of Tara's arms around him still so fresh in his mind.
Smacking the shower off, he felt his mood turn darker. Goddamn Tara Knowles.
When he'd gotten to the hospital she was in Abel's room and the nerves in his stomach went crazy, making him feel like a teenager again. They'd talked outside if the NICU, keeping things to Abel's recovery. He'd have to be in that toaster for a few months, but it didn't seem like he had any brain damage. Jax couldn't wait to hold him, wanted to bring his son home. As long as they were talking about the baby, they were on even ground and he asked her all of the questions that had been running through his mind.
With that topic exhausted though, they fell into an awkward silence and he knew he had to bring it up. Their non-encounter started to feel like the elephant in the goddamned room. He wanted to start by explaining the blood, but had no idea how he could. He wasn't going to tell her everything, he'd learned from the past that less was more with her. But he had to tell her something, feel her out to see what she her thoughts were about what had nearly happened just before.
"Hey look-" His face had grown serious as he walked over to one of the chairs that sat up against the wall in the observation room. A look of panic flashed through her eyes and he knew that she was aware he was changing the subject away from the baby. "I'm sorry about last night. I wasn't-"
"I really don't want to know."
Her voice had come out softly, but her eyes were firm as she shut him down, stopped him from drawing her back in.
His breath coming out on a resigned sigh, he dropped his eyes from hers. "Yeah."
He'd expected it, but it still didn't stop the little light of hope that he'd had in his heart, the one deep inside that he hadn't wanted to admit was really there from flickering out and dying. She had stopped wanting to be a part of his world even before she'd left, stopped wanting to know what happened when he picked her up with cuts on his knuckles or when he was gone on a run for a few days at a time. She'd stopped asking questions, told him the less she knew the better and the distance between them had grown until he'd lost her and it looked like she intended, as far as they were concerned, to stay lost.
Whether she wanted to be with him again or not, it didn't really matter. He'd never thought he would see her again. The fact that she was back had meant things to him that he still didn't know if he could express and he would just have to settle in with the fact that no matter how much he felt everything that she still stirred in him, even he wasn't sure how much he wanted from her. There was a lot of fucking hurt under that bridge and it might not be a bad idea to keep his distance for a while, to concentrate on himself and the changes he was trying to make in his own head.
The silence stretched between them for a minute before Jax smiled up at her.
His mood change threw her off balance and she smiled back at him in confusion. "What?"
Jax shook his head. "Just figured you'd land a million miles from this place. You always hated it here."
Tara took a breath and he could tell she was choosing her words carefully. "No, I didn't hate Charming Jax, just me in it at the time."
"Yeah." He didn't miss the haunted look that came into her eyes and a sadness started to grow in him. He knew, to some degree, that she hated who she thought he'd turned her into. Before him she'd never been in trouble, never gotten caught for anything more intense than skipping a class. The year before she left they got busted together no less than three times and she hadn't been shy about blaming him for it on her way out of town. She was a big girl, he'd never put a gun to her head to make her do anything, but he couldn't help but blame himself too.
"Looks like Wendy's gonna be okay."
He could tell by the abruptness in her tone that she was changing the subject and he had gladly let her as she took a seat beside him. "Define okay."
"We're taking her through a sedated detox. She'll be out for a couple days."
Jax nodded, the guilt and regret flooding him anew at the mention of Wendy's treatment. He would go to his grave feeling responsible for it. He hadn't put the needle in her arm, but he sure as hell could have done something to keep it out of there. Between Wendy's downfall and the mention of Tara's near miss with a life of crime he was starting to feel pretty fucking shitty and totally fucking alone.
"You two…are you together?"
Jax shook his head, so mired in his thoughts that he missed the falsely unaffected way that she posed the question as she fished for the clarification she'd been dying for. "No, I filed over a year ago. She got clean about 10 months back. We tried to reconcile. Didn't work out too well."
Tara's smile was friendly and understanding, and had he been paying the least bit of attention he would have seen the glimmer of genuine pleasure just at its edges. "Well, it looks like one good thing came out of it."
"Yeah. Yeah I guess it did." He peered up over his shoulder in the direction of his baby boy and let the smile he had for the little guy spread across his face. No matter how fucked up things were in his mind right now, no matter how torn up he was about the unresolved shit that Tara's return had stirred up or the bullshit that Wendy had pulled, at least he had Abel. That tough little shit had survived and he owned Jackson's heart.
He'd turned his attention back to her, saw her mind working away and wished for one more moment that she would let him in. It was going to take getting used to, having her around and not being on the inside of those thoughts. It only reaffirmed that what he needed from Tara right now was distance.
"I should get going."
She nodded thoughtfully at him. "Yeah, I'm late for rounds."
He leaned forward to stand up, but smiled sincerely at her before he did, laying a hand on her leg. "It's good to have you back."
He felt like a broken record but he didn't know what else to say. Somehow, I don't think I've ever stopped loving you but I can't be around you either didn't seem like a good choice. Standing up he walked out, missing the longing gaze she directed at his retreating back because he was working on ridding his face of a longing look of his own.
So he'd fucked Emily Duncan and the loneliness had only grown. If he was being honest, it wasn't like he hadn't enjoyed it. A roll in his sheets was fun and he had nothing against spending a little recreational time with the fairer sex. But Tara coming back was still screwing with his head. He'd been wanting more out of his life ever since she'd gotten here, but if he was being honest, it had started before that. He'd been getting tired of his empty bed and dodging unnecessary bullets for a while now. Tara coming back had just made all of those pieces fit together so he could look at them clearly.
As Jax left the clubhouse to go stage the Lodi crime scene with the bodies Skeeter had given them in exchange for Emily he just hoped she followed through with her end of the deal. Tig and Clay were being more and more open about their annoyance with him whenever he tried to take a more passive route. He'd practically had a mutiny from Tig on his hands when he suggested that they fake a murder to throw the forensic unit off of the warehouse instead of hunting down two Nords to send a message to Darby. The important thing at the moment was getting the two women out of the rubble so Tig's DNA wouldn't point the law back to Samcro. Jax knew muddying that shit up with a couple murders just to send a message to Darby would complicate shit way more than necessary.
He'd convinced the guys to take the easier road this time, but the look Clay and Tig had exchanged told him that wouldn't always be the case. Starting up his bike he heard Clay's words run through his mind again.
Don't make me regret this.
He knew he was coming up against Clay a lot lately, knew everyone thought it was because of some weird guilt shit with his kid, but it was more than that. His father had written, "Most of us were not violent by nature, we all had our problems with authority, but none of us were sociopaths. We came to realize that when you move your life off the social grid, you give up the safety the society provides. On the fringe, blood and bullets are the rule of law and if you're a man with convictions, violence is inevitable."
His words rung so true that Jax couldn't stop thinking about them. He'd done more for his cause, for his club, in the last few years than he'd even known himself capable. He'd fought, he'd stolen and he'd killed, all in the name of survival. Not just for himself and his brothers, but for what they stood for. But was it really inevitable? Did it always have to be the violent way, or was it possible to work within your nature and still maintain the way of life that strayed from the rest of the world? He knew he needed a change, but his dad had wanted to change Samcro all the way back then and the problems he wrote about were the same. It would take some pushing against the grain to get the changes to happen and he understood that wasn't comfortable, but the time was right. He felt it.
With the murder staged and enough thoughts running through his head to last a lifetime, Jax made his way over to his mother's house for a family dinner. She'd wanted to put it together before Abel was born, but now that the little guy was out of the woods it seemed like a good time.
The house smelled like home cooking as he walked in and a pang of longing hit him hard low in his belly. Gemma saw him and smiled as he made his way to her, kissing her on the cheek before he grabbed a basket of rolls and walked it over to the table. Everyone was there, his whole family both blood and brotherhood, but the feeling of loneliness that had plagued him ever since he'd nailed Emily sat unmoving over his heart.
Looking around at the people at the table, he couldn't help but notice the people that weren't there. He missed Opie, missed his best friend.
And he missed Tara.
Looking up at Clay and Gemma as they stared into each other's eyes, sharing a soft kiss just as they'd been doing since they'd gotten together ten years ago he couldn't help but smile at them. Fuck, he wanted that too. To have that one person who you shared everything with, who loved you completely and stood by your side even when your side got crazy. Right now, that seemed farther away than it ever had. He was older now, wiser and not ashamed to admit to himself that he wanted love. Not afternoon fucks with his kutte on but soul deep, no holds barred love. He'd married Wendy because he was chasing that but now that Tara was back he was reminded of what truly being in love had felt like and it actually physically fucking hurt to think about. With all the women he'd been with in all the time since she'd been gone, he was starting to think that maybe lightening didn't strike twice.
"Jax, can you pass the corn?"
Bobby's voice brought him out of his reverie and he passed him the bowl, the enthusiastic look on his brother's face at the sight of the food breaking through his melancholy a bit and he chuckled affectionately at his friend. He looked around the table and realized that he had a kind of love right in front of him. These people, this family, held a place in his heart that was unshakable. He would do anything for them. Soon, his son would be home and along the way, he'd find a woman who would stand beside him, but for now, he'd find solace in the family he'd been born into. He took a forkful of food, feeling his spirits lift a bit as he put all of his stress on a shelf in his head, just for a little while, so he could enjoy it.
As morning dawned over Charming, the doctors at St. Thomas brought Wendy out of sedated detox. Tara waited until she had the all clear to round on her. Wendy had taken an almost fatal overdose after Abel's surgery and Tara knew, down to her bones, where she'd gotten the fix. All she had to do was get confirmation.
Walking into her room, a hospital admin and a member of the hospital's legal team flanked her bed as she read over a form on a clipboard. Tara stood back, giving them space. She knew they wanted an accounting of how she'd come into possession of the drugs and that she would have to sign something stating that the hospital wasn't responsible for her actions.
As she waited for Wendy to be alone again, she let her mind wander to yesterday. It was getting harder and harder for her to pretend, especially to herself, that there wasn't still something there for Jax and yesterday she'd felt the façade slip just a bit more.
She'd been at war with herself ever since Josh, ever since she'd fled Chicago to come back to the only place she'd ever felt safe. On some level she knew that she felt safe here because of Jackson. She wasn't an idiot. He was one of the most influential members of the Sons of Anarchy for Christ sakes and he used to be in love with her, just as she'd been in love with him. But, the other part of her, the part that had torn herself from the life they were building together, was terrified to step back. If she let herself, she knew that all it would take was a baby step to fall back as deeply as she had been and she didn't want that. Didn't want to be an old lady with a rap sheet. At the time, she hadn't wanted to become Gemma. But now, looking at the quiet, broken woman in the hospital bed with the crow on her arm she saw that she'd only narrowly escaped becoming Wendy.
But would that have really happened? She'd been so desperate to be with him that she'd allowed herself to succumb to her own basic impulses, to throw caution and logic to the wind and go along for the ride. But they'd been children and if yesterday was even the slightest indication, Jax had grown into an incredible man. Talking about Abel, his face had immediately bloomed so full of love that her heart melted. He loved his son, completely and utterly. She shouldn't have been surprised. Even when they were kids she knew that a part of his make up was when he loved, he loved completely and without reserve. But this was different. This was a complete, total love that he wasn't afraid to show. He had no thought to pride or appearance when he talked about his son, There was no holding back the flood of emotion that overtook him and it took her breath away. Seeing who he'd grown up to be and knowing that she what she was capable of accomplishing, who was to say where they would have ended up if they'd stayed together?
Wendy signed her name on the dotted line and the people in her room left, giving Tara her chance. "Feeling better?"
Wendy kept her eyes low. "Little dopey, so to speak."
"When you're feeling stronger, I'll take you to see your son."
Wendy's voice was quiet, but Tara didn't miss the fear in her eyes. "Yeah, okay."
Looking up for the first time, she met Tara's eyes and the sadness in them was haunting. "Has Jax been around?"
Tara shook her head, hating herself for the lie but not wanting to get into the middle of things with them. "I don't know."
Wendy dropped her gaze again and Tara changed the subject to the one she'd come in here to discuss. "They said you had a friend smuggle in that syringe of meth."
"Yeah, I just signed the affidavit." Wendy's eyes didn't meet Tara's and she knew it was a lie. "Hospital's a little nervous about liability issues."
Wendy looked back up at Tara, who nodded her head dramatically. "I'm sure they are."
Silence fell between them, both knowing that the bullshit Wendy was shoveling was stinking up the room. Then, inexplicably, Wendy chuckled.
Tara was caught off guard. "What?"
"The two women who loved Jackson Teller. Could we be at more opposite ends of the shit spectrum?"
Tara shook her head. "Yeah, we're not that different."
Wendy rolled her eyes. "Save it sweetheart, I don't need a pep talk, I know what I am."
Wendy hadn't been around when Tara was, didn't know the first thing about her, so she let her disbelief slide. She wasn't about to fill in all the blanks about how she'd nearly destroyed her future because she'd been so wrapped up in a boy that she'd stopped thinking past the moment. Isn't that what junkies did? Wendy's drug of choice was meth, but Tara's had been Jax and any addiction had the ability to destroy everything.
Instead of saying any of that to the stranger in front of her though, Tara continued on. She knew Gemma was behind this and she wanted the truth. "So do I and you're not suicidal. You didn't have anyone smuggle in that dose. I have a pretty good idea who might have delivered it."
"Don't go down that road." Wendy dropped her eyes away again, but Tara saw the fear.
She pushed harder. "She the one who injected you?"
"No!" Wendy's face was full of righteous indignation but it barely disguised her fear and Tara's frustration grew.
"I stared at that 5 mil tube for over an hour and then I pumped it into my favorite vein, end of story."
As Tara looked at Wendy, she realized that at least that part of the story was true and it confused her even more. How could anyone be so weak? How could anyone with a baby who was fighting for his life choose that option? She wouldn't out Gemma, she seemed reluctant to even see Abel, she'd tried to kill herself and it made Tara sick.
Tara couldn't understand any of it and her confusion showed. "Why?"
Wendy thought a moment and then chuckled softly again at the exasperation in the other woman's tone. "God, if you don't know why then you and me…are nothing alike."
The two women regarded each other for a moment before Tara realized there was really nothing more to say and she nodded, picked up Wendy's chart and slowly left the room. She and Gemma had always had a complicated relationship, but it hadn't been all bad until she had graduated. She'd been in Gemma's inner circle, which meant that Tara was one of the family. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed having a mom, how good it felt to have someone notice anything you said or did. She knew that underneath the affection was a healthy dose of suspicion, knew that by keeping her close she had a better chance of keeping her eye on the girl running around with her precious baby, but once she'd come around the idea that Tara was there to stay she'd treated her like a daughter.
That was until Tara had graduated high school, gotten into college, and tried to get Jax to go with her. Gemma had turned on her like a rabid dog and the final showdown hadn't been pretty, but she'd survived it. Wendy's refusal to come up against Gemma was something, having lived through her own trials with the woman, that Tara didn't understand.
Her cell phone rang in her pocket and she picked it up to see a Chicago number as she placed it to her ear. "Hello?"
"Hey! I'm glad I'm not sick, you're a tough doctor to track down."
Everything in her body turned to ice as fear flooded her system at his voice and she snapped the phone shut as quickly as she'd answered it. How the fuck had he gotten her number? Did he know where she was? It felt like the room was spinning around her and every impulse in her body suddenly told her to run, run like hell, but she couldn't move her legs.
And just like that, in that instant, she understood Wendy. Everyone had their breaking point, that thing in this life that was insurmountable. They might not have been the same things, but Tara knew what it was to turn and run when something got to be too much. Hell, this wasn't even the first time she'd done it.
Calmly, she placed her phone back into her pocket and walked down the hall to round on her next patient as if nothing had happened with her heart slamming painfully in her ribs. She walked through the rest of her day trying to fight the urge to look over her shoulder. How could she have been so stupid? Josh Kohn was an ATF agent, a trained cop and he was bat shit crazy. He would have been able to find her anywhere, she was sure of that, but she hadn't necessarily made it difficult. But what was she supposed to do, run to a backwater place where no one knew her and hope to god that she could fight him once he eventually came for her? Or go someplace where she had ties, friends even, and stand her ground?
The thought that he would just back off and leave her alone had ceased to be a viable thought the day he'd been served with the restraining order and he'd come to her apartment, banging on her door in a rage and threatening to kill her. A neighbor had called the cops and he'd been long gone by the time they'd come but it didn't matter, her bags were already halfway packed. A couple phone calls and good word from her attending and she was on her way back to Charming.
It had been dark when she got into town and drove the rental car to her dad's. The place was paid for and she'd hired a guy to come and look in on it occasionally until she figured out what to do with it. She hadn't had the heart yet to sell it. The memories she'd had with her father hadn't necessarily been happy, but it was the last place she'd ever called home.
Walking inside had been like a time warp. Her dad never threw anything away and every room was filled with memories, knick knacks and reminders of where she'd come from all while feeling like the most foreign place on the planet. In the silence, surrounded by the belongings of a man she'd felt connected to only by blood, she'd never felt more alone.
She jumped at every noise. She knew she hadn't been followed, knew that only a handful of people had any idea where she was and that information wasn't public record. There was no way Josh could have found her so quickly but every creek, every groan, still put her nerves on edge.
In that shadowy house filled with ghosts of her past, the thought suddenly crossed her mind that if something happened to her there would be no one to notice. She'd built a life after Charming that was designed to keep people out and pretty soon her walls had gotten so high and thick that she realized she was totally alone. She'd picked up the phone and called the Charming police department. It was late and she almost hung up at the thought that some switchboard operator would likely be the person to answer, but a smile touched her lips for the first time in weeks when David Hale had answered the phone. There were some things about small towns that she'd always appreciate. Talking to him was easy, as if ten years had never passed. It was nice to hear the genuine happiness in his voice that she was back. She'd never made friends again like the ones she'd had here, lifelong friends who could pick right up where they left off with you as if no time had passed. She'd felt better immediately when she'd hung up, finally able to fall asleep.
With her pistol cocked and ready on her nightstand just in case.
As if summoned by her thoughts, David walked up to the nurse's station where she stood and brought her back to the present, his face a mask of frustration. He was working on catching the animal who'd raped Oswald's daughter at Fun Town, but as far as Tara could tell the family was stonewalling him and it genuinely frustrated him. As long as Tara had known David she'd always known him to have a deep sense of justice. As a kid that had made him kind of a stick in the mud and she smiled at all of the times that something either she or Jax did pissed him off. But there was something comforting about his consistency as well and she'd always trusted him.
Biting back her fear, trying to keep her expressions relaxed, she asked him about her restraining order and found a little relief in his promise to make general calls to see if it would still be good from Chicago to Charming.
As he walked away she tried to tell herself that it was going to be okay, but she knew that it wouldn't. If Josh Kohn was calling her, then he was looking for her. She'd changed her number, hell she'd even changed cell phone carriers. He'd put work in to be able to make that phone call, but how much? He was a federal agent for god sakes, it was probably nothing to find a new cell phone number for someone with the systems access he had. Which meant he knew exactly where she was and now all that was left to do was to sit and wait for him.
Her instincts wanted her to run to Jax, but she discarded the thought just as quickly as it had come to her. He had his own shit to worry about, an entire life that didn't involve her, and she had no idea what she would say to him.
Hey, I know that things between us are tense at best but could you do me a favor and beat up my ex boyfriend please? Oh yeah, and he happens to be a federal agent, is that a problem?
Closing the chart that she'd been looking at she slid it back into its slot behind the nurse's station and walked in the direction of the on call room, exhaustion suddenly hitting her so fiercely that she could barely shuffle her feet. There was nothing to do now but wait. If he'd found her, he would come for her and when that happened she would handle it.
Though at this point, she had no fucking clue how.