A/N: We meet again, dear readers! I have an M-rated oneshot in the works and will be posted at some point! This chapter has a trigger for mentions of abuse of different kinds. Please enjoy and please review!

Moving forward, I'm adding an M rating to this story following this chapter, simply for the themes we're starting to delve into, such as Rhiannon's abuse, and the darker themes of the show itself.

I will, of course, add trigger warnings at the start of each chapter, including if and when I add smut to the story.

Who am I kidding, I'm totally adding smut to this story eventually.

Baby really hurt me, crying in the taxi
He don't wanna know me
Says he made the big mistake of dancing in my storm
Says it was poison

So I guess I'll go home
Back in to the arms of the girl that I love
The only love I haven't screwed up
She's so hard to please but she's a forest fire

Lorde — Liability

It turned out that even a shower and proper clothes did nothing for her hangover. Eggs, coffee, she simply had to ride it out with a bottle of Pedialyte stashed in her bag and wearing sunglasses. It didn't matter how many times she reminded people she wasn't a criminal defense lawyer, she was still sought after for advice. For the Oswalds? She would try, for Emmett.

And it was on the tip of her tongue to remind Karen Oswald that she was still banned from Hanna's Diner after rigging the jukebox to play "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley one too many times. Hopefully the manager would take pity on her and allow her in. It wasn't the best place for a business meeting, but the desperation in Karen's voice was enough. This was a mother out of options.

Rhiannon used to babysit Tristen. Even the idea of someone hurting her was terrifying.

"Hey, it's good to see you," she greeted, holding out for the awkward one-armed hug she was so used to giving out these days. "What's going on? How can I help?"

"Everyone keeps coming after Tristen and I thought if I had a lawyer, I could have someone mediate this shit for me. I used to have Emmett and now that he's..." Karen trailed off, her fingers ruffling through her thick red hair. "I didn't know who else to ask. I know that you did criminal defense and I just...don't know who else to turn to."

The coffee was disgusting as Rhiannon drank it, even after drowning it with packets of half-and-half and sugar. Her nose scrunched as she took a sip, willing her migraine to go away. "I can see what I can do to help. If you'd like, I can step in and direct where I can, but honestly, Karen, there's not much I can do." It was inserting herself into police matters and effectively wedging her between Hale and SAMCRO and it was not a place she could enjoy. "I will, however, give it my best shot. Don't worry, okay?"

Now Rhiannon sat on an uncomfortable chair outside the hospital room like a sort of guard dog. The partners weren't happy about her extended stay in Charming; she considered herself lucky that she even had a job to go home to. But, being a witness to a crime and now acting as an attorney, she had to stay.

She looked over in time to catch Jax's eye and her head thudded back against the pale textured wall behind her. As fate would have it, she was stuck seeing two exes in the same day. Her emotional bandwidth was rapidly shrinking.

"What brings you here?" he asked. Her stomach clenched and this time, it wasn't annoyance or anger or nausea. It was that same look he'd always fixated on her, the one that gave her butterflies.

"Karen Oswald hired me. People have been pestering Tristen to find out what happened to her and the poor kid just needs to rest," she replied, casting a glance to the door.

"Attorney/client privilege," he muttered with an incredulous shake of his head. "I guess I can't ask you anything."

"You can ask me about me, but you can't ask me about her. Or talk to her, not without me present and Karen doesn't want anyone talking to her." It was the rock and hard place she had prepared for, yet the execution was still tricky. "Even if Oswald hired you."

His hand scrubbed at his stubbled jaw with another shake of his head. "Yeah, I heard Hale got to you." Rhiannon knew his body language better than anyone's and the annoyance would have ordinarily amused her. This time, it fell flat. They'd fallen out of sync and it felt almost awkward to try and get it back. Re-sync?

"Hale knows he can't pit me against you." The words tumbled from her mouth before she could stop them and she cleared her throat, albeit self-consciously. "Or anyone else in the club. I just happened to be at the station."

"I heard."

The two words hung in the air and her fingers twisted the empty plastic water bottle on her lap. "What all did you hear?" she asked quietly. It meant Jax had possibly heard about Shane. Or met him. If he was working with ATF in California as well as Nevada, it meant something bigger.

"They snagged them for assault for throwing some ATF asshole out of Emmett's memorial. I don't know much else and something tells me you know the whole story. Bobby and Gemma said you were pretty shaken up about it." It was the closest thing she'd get to an are you okay? and even that was too much to ask.

"We need to tell Gemma the truth about Oakland because if he hasn't, then he's going to," she murmured, casting a glance over both shoulders to peer around any corners. "He's here to stir up some trouble. And he's doing it specifically to spite me."

They had barely discussed that day. It was too easy to blame the accident for the end of the secret pregnancy. Jax sank down on to the floor beside her chair, bringing one leg up to prop up his elbow.

"What the hell happened, Rae?"

The crinkly sound grew louder as her fingers tightened around it. Even talking about Shane scared the hell out of her. "He's my ex-fiance. I actually...left him the night before we were supposed to get married. He was a jerk. Scary, actually. He was emotionally abusive, verbally abusive, psychologically abusive, he was even getting sexually abusive and I left before it became physical. Or even worse than it had started." Her heart continued to roar in her chest, flip-flopping and stealing the breath from her lungs. "He was so controlling over everything. He wanted me to quit school after we got married, he pressured me to lose weight so I'd look 'better' for him. After I accepted the proposal, I didn't eat full meals because he kept telling me I was getting fat. I got to the point where I was getting scrawny. My boobs disappeared, my ass was nonexistent. Every time I did something he didn't like, he flew off the handle at me. He broke almost everything in the apartment when he found out I had gone out with a friend of mine and her husband because I was clearly cheating on him. It was toxic."

Every single time she spoke about Shane, her voice wavered and her palms grew sweaty. Her hands smoothed over the material of her skirt and she barely registered Jax prying the water bottle from her fingers. It was the same cotton mouth feeling, almost like the ground threatened to swallow her whole. The wobbly hospital chair kept her rooted to gravity in a way she couldn't help but feel grateful.

"After I left him, he started calling everyone in my family demanding to know where I was, threatening them, he threatened me. I never saw him or heard from him again and yesterday was the first time I'd seen him in years. He's here because he knows I'm here and now he has a reason. If we don't tell Gemma about Oakland, he's going to. And he'll do it to spite me and he wants to kick me while I'm down. If anything happens, Jax, I'll..." Her voice trailed off when the thickening in her throat grew too strong.

"He's not going to get the chance. I'll talk to Gemma, unless you want to be there, too."

The talk was a long time coming. It hadn't even been addressed by either of them since they agreed to part ways. Neither of them wanted a kid that soon. Barely eighteen with their only problems being a potential long-distance relationship.

"The only thing that's changed is that I can vote, smoke, play the lottery, sign a contract, get drafted, get married, and not have to check in with them every night."

"If only you were a gambling smoker instead of engaging in premarital sex with a biker."

"Or even playing scratch lottery. If only I was a gambling, voting smoker with plans to join the draft instead of a hussy out until after sundown with the person with whom I am in a committed relationship with for almost three years. But, c'est la vie."

"La vie."

"I should probably be there, too. I'm sorry you got dragged into my problems again. You've been free for eleven years and you've got other shit to deal with." It wasn't fair. It was likely that Shane had heard about Emmett's death and consequently inserted himself in the investigation despite the fact that California ATF annoyingly had it.

"Does he have anything else on us? Did you tell him anything about the club?" he asked quietly.

"No, of course not. I just said we lived in the same town. Your name was the only one that came up. I only told him about you because I thought I could trust him and be honest," she responded with a shake of her head. It was a more detailed response than originally intended, but it worked.

What a load of shit that turned out to be. It was a regret she would carry with her for the rest of her life. Now Shane dragged Jax into the mess.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered under his breath, swiping a hand over his face. "He's with ATF. If he's with Stahl on the investigation, this shit's gonna get worse."

And Shane would.

"He's from Nevada. Unless you guys had a connection with someone in Nevada, he shouldn't be here. He's dangerous because he seems like an attractive, likable guy. He seems like the kind of guy you could hang out with. Nothing about him screams dangerous and I guarantee if you brought me up to him, he'd give you some spiel about how he just wanted to love me and he just wanted to get me some help. But there was just something wrong with me. I'm self-destructive, I'm too resistant, I'm damaged goods, too fucked up. Or he'll go the other way and say he wishes me well." Shane Abernathy could make it look like his hand was on the small of her back while twisting her wrist. Devoted and loving in the eyes of the masses, a tyrant behind closed doors. His mouth to her ear looked like compliments, but snarled threats. He was a beautiful predator. One look in those baby-blue eyes and he could melt polar ice caps, a snake lulling his prey into a false sense of security. "I can't apologize enough for this, Jax."

"Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it. Besides, I can't say I don't owe you."

Oakland had been a secret between them, a long-healed wound that was now unceremoniously ripped open again. Part of her still wondered the what if but the little thought flicked away just as quickly. They had been kids; it was best to end it when they were still on good terms instead of bitter and angry like some. Rehashing something they had kept so close to their chests would only make it worse. Rhiannon knew Jax. She knew herself, and she knew them. Even being kids together as long as they had, it would have imploded. Keeping it a secret if she'd given the baby up for adoption wasn't an option. Their road had been the best one. Their road gave them both a future, albeit separately.

"Thank you. I wish I could help, but...attorney/client privilege. I can't even tell you if she told me anything." Karen hadn't, Rhiannon was strictly there to run interference.

"I know. If you hear anything, tell me."

It was a simple enough request and one easily fulfilled.

"I will, I promise. If you hear anything from Shane, tell me. You've got my card." The words felt foreign on her tongue and her nose scrunched up at her own statement. "And just...don't take anything he says to heart."

"Don't worry about Gemma. I'll handle her," he told her. "I'll handle him, too. I've got one ATF asshole here already, one more isn't going to make much of a difference."

The breath left her lungs in a harsh pant. "Well, if anyone asks me what I've been up to, it's this." Stanford be damned, this was what was going to define her. Eleven years ago, it was the accident that ruined her prospects at becoming a horse trainer. "You've made a life for yourself here and...I'm really happy for you. Even if it's not what you intended."

Jax was quiet, then, mulling over her words. Rhiannon shifted her focus to him sitting on the floor and moved to tuck one leg beneath her. The old familiarity between them was slowly chipping away at the awkwardness that had taken its place prior. Something in his expression shifted and it was a struggle to hope that it wasn't wistfulness.

"I'm a goddamn outlaw living my father's prophecy. Not exactly a life worth living. An outlaw and a good man can't live together in the same person, Rae," he spoke after a few minutes.

"Hate to contradict you, Teller-" she started before he cut her off.

"Then don't. You've been gone a long fucking time, Rhiannon, you don't get this anymore. A lot's changed," he interrupted as he pushed himself to a standing position. "I'm not that kid on the bike lifting your uncle's truck to get lucky on some riverbank. You're not the trick-riding rebel sneaking out every night."

It was her turn to be quiet. Her fingers twisted at the hem of her skirt for a moment and her finger closed over her knuckle in a small attempt to pop it. Fidgeting. Again.

"Jackson Teller, I know you a lot better than you think. You're not the kid on the bike, I'm not Reckless Rhiannon. It's a-"

"I don't have anything else to say about this."

"Good, then shut the hell up and let me get out a fucking sentence, Jackson. You've done nothing but interrupt me for the past two minutes. I've got something to say and I'm going to say it, whether you want to hear it or not," she snapped. Referring to her with her full name was ordinarily a clue she had well and truly pissed him off, yet she couldn't bring herself to care. "Shit's changed. I've changed. You've changed, but you're still the same you. I'm still the same me. We've outgrown each other, but face the fucking facts. I know you better than you do and you're not some scumbag, white trash outlaw, no matter what crackhead at a gas station yells at you. You've done things that'll send you to hell? I'm a fucking corporate lawyer. We'll fucking carpool."

It rapidly became one of those instances where her adrenaline swelled because it wasn't a monologue she'd remember giving later on. Rhiannon meant it. Even if it pissed him off, she'd hold herself to those words.

She braced herself for the onslaught of curses he was sure to fire her way, but he instead let out a laugh and shook his head.

"Mind cluing me in on your chuckle-fest there?" she prompted. The adrenaline faded, giving way to annoyance beginning to well at her. Had she still had the empty water bottle, it was likely she would have chucked it at him. Or hit him with it.

"Shit, I missed you."

The awkwardness had truly and fully melted away. Despite the bomb she'd dropped on him, everything seemingly fell back into place and it nearly felt like no time had passed. Almost.

"Yeah, well, it's nice seeing you, too. Karen Oswald will flip her shit if she finds out I'm chatting with you on her dime. I'll keep my ear out for you. Hopefully you can catch whatever creepazoid clown hurt Tristen," she finally said after a few seconds of pin-dropping quiet. Then it dawned on her and she pushed herself to a standing position from her chair.

The Fun Town clown from fourteen years ago. She'd glanced at him, the same fat guy dressed up in the same outfit. He had aggressively pursued her, up until Jude came into sight and he'd hurried away. She was fairly certain someone else had been a recipient.

"Jax, I think it's a clown."