Chapter Three:

It was two weeks later and eight o'clock in the morning on my day off when the shrill ringing of my phone dragged me from my wonderful dream of Leonardo DiCaprio.

I swiped to answer without bothering to look at the screen and groaned. "What?"

"Well, good mornin' to you, too, Georgia." Gemma's amusement was evident in her voice, as she tried to pull off my accent. "I'm sorry to call so early, baby, but do you have any plans today?"

My face was pressed into the pillow when I groaned again. "I was goin' to sleep all day, but now that it's not goin' to happen, what can I help you with, Gem?"

She told me that she had Abel for the day, rattled off an address and asked me to meet her there, waited for me to agree that I'd be there soon and then hung up the phone before I could even ask what we were doing.

The shower pressure and heating system in my house was messing up again, and I smacked my head against the tiled wall in frustration. It seemed that the day off that I was going to spend in bed had been ruined, and the universe had decided to make it a bad morning all around.

"Come on, baby." I shuffled Larry into my passenger's seat after I'd done my makeup and thrown on a summer dress, yawning into the air. "The queen has called, we've got to get goin'."

When I'd made it to the address that she'd offered, I cut the engine outside of the quaint home and smiled. It was a beautiful, reasonably sized place and it felt like home. It didn't look like something Gemma would live in, and I wondered who's house she'd invited me over to.

Gemma had been forthcoming with her past, and how her now-deceased husband had been the President of the Sons of Anarchy before Jax had taken his position and given up his VP patch. She didn't offer information on how Clay had passed, but the haunted look in her eye made my stomach churn, and I worried that my best friend had something to do with his leaving earth. I didn't ask, I didn't want to know.

The home reminded me of the house that I'd grown up in back in Georgia with mama and daddy, minus one wrap-around porch and a swing in the corner. My daddy had always said that a swing was the difference between a house and a home, and he always seemed to be right about everything.

Before I'd even knocked on the door to announce my arrival, it was ripped open and Gemma stood in the doorway with a large smile on her face and Abel by her side. "Good, you made it."

"Do you have any coffee?" I yawned again and ignored the smirk on her face. "I ran out at home and I didn't want to stop with Larry in the car."

Abel looked around my body to the pitbull who was laying on his back, stomach pointed towards the warm sun in the front garden. He didn't look scared, but definitely looked weary, and I appreciated that Jax had taught him not to approach stranger's dogs without finding out if it was safe to do so.

"Larry." I clicked my fingers and he appeared by my side instantly, then sat down next to my feet and looked up at me waiting for his next command.

Gemma watched with interest when I bent down to Abel's height. "This is my best pal, Larry. I hope it's okay that I brought him to play, Gemma said that you were spendin' the day with her and I thought that you might like to make a new friend."

Abel looked at the dog again. "Is he a good boy?"

"The best." I nodded and reached out my hand towards him. "Would you like to come and meet him? He might get a bit excited and try to give you kisses, but I promise that he won't hurt you."

The young boy was hesitant when he put his hand in mine and took a step forward, and I used the hand that wasn't occupied to motion two fingers down, appreciative when Larry sunk so that his stomach was pressed against the porch and he was smaller than Abel.

"Larry, this is my new friend, Abel." I said loudly. "You're goin' to take care of him, okay?"

Even though I wasn't insane and knew that all probability was Larry had no idea what English was, I pretended that he knew what I was speaking about for Abel's sake and grinned when it did the trick.

Abel sunk to his knees and patted Larry on the face, waited for a moment to make sure that he was safe, and then the dam burst and he was hugging my four-legged-friend without a care in the world.

After a few minutes of watching the pair get acquainted out the front, Gemma swept us all inside and nodded for Abel to take my dog out the back to play while we had coffee.

"Jax got called to the clubhouse even though he was supposed to spend the day with Abel." She grumbled as she poured the two cups and handed me one. "I had a ton of errands to get done today, as well, but I don't want to take Abel to the clubhouse while shit is hitting the fan, and Neeta wasn't available on such short notice."

Even though I knew that she was only complaining to me because I was a friend and an available ear, I still felt bad for her situation and spoke without thinking about it. "If you need to go do some stuff, I'm sure that I can watch him for a while."

She eyed me warily and I continued. "He's probably goin' to be entertained with Larry and forget that we're here, anyway. I'll just hang out around the house, maybe do some laundry or somethin' to keep myself busy."

Gemma was a straightforward woman; you either had her trust or you didn't. You didn't fuck with her family, and you didn't double-cross her. As long as you followed her rules and played her game, you were fine. Luckily for all of us, I had no reason to do anything that pissed her off or to betray her, and she trusted me despite our limited time of knowing each other.

"You have my cell, you call me if you need anything." She kissed my cheek and looked at Abel and Larry playing in the grass out the back. "I shouldn't be too long, I just have to do a few things in town and then-"

"Go." I cut her off and made a shooing motion with my hands. "We're goin' to be fine. I'll call if we accidentally blow up the house or if I cut my limb off, but I promise that Abel is goin' to be safe. Stop bein' such a worrier, it's bad for the skin, and you don't want your age to start showin'."

She all but growled at my joke but left with another kiss on my cheek and the reiteration that I was to call if I so much as saw a shadow outside, which I thought was a bit overbearing and slightly insane, but I agreed to nonetheless.

She'd been gone for five minutes when I went outside to join the pair who were still playing in the grass and sat down on the back steps. "Are you havin' fun?"

Abel nodded and looked up from his crouched position on the lawn where he was, once again, rubbing Larry's stomach with a childlike grin on his face. "You speak funny."

I giggled at the adorable statement and his bluntness. "I'm from Georgia, honey. The accent comes from an insane amount of sweet-tea and church on Sundays. It's in my blood, it'll never go away."

"It's nice." He nodded as if he were confirming the statement with himself before he looked back at my dog. "I like Larry, even though he has a strange name. I've always wanted a puppy, but daddy says he doesn't have time to take care of one right now."

He didn't sound sad when he'd said it, but I noted the way that his shoulders hunched over slightly and he seemed to make himself smaller when he mentioned that his dad didn't have a lot of time on his hands. It broke my heart that someone of his age had tried to hide his emotions. "Well, from the looks of it, Larry likes you better than he likes me. Any time you want to spend time with him, just let Gem know and I'll bring him by or you can come over to my house."

"Really?" When I nodded my head, his smile returned to his face. "Thank you, Ellie!"

The stress on Gemma's face when she'd mentioned Jax going into the clubhouse and the 'shit that was hitting the fan' replayed in my mind and I decided to do what mama did every time she was trying to lighten someone's load and make them happy.

Cook.

After I'd checked the backyard out to make sure that Abel and Larry couldn't escape, but also that no one could break in, I left the two to play in the garden and walked back inside of the house.

Their home was beautiful, but the beauty was dimmed by lack of organisation and general messiness of a home that was lived in by a family too busy to clean up. Gemma had filled me in that Abel's mother was a woman who had taken a wrong turn in life and gotten addicted to drugs, so she was no longer in their lives and Jax had gone through a divorce. Apparently the marriage had been a mistake to begin with and nobody really expected it to last, her son included, but that left Jax to raise a child on his own and try and run a club at the same time.

Gemma could only do so much to help out when she was the queen of the club and worked there almost every day, as well as babysat and ran her own household. It wasn't bad, and it wasn't anybody's fault, it was just ... as chaotic as their lives seemed to be.

On my way to the kitchen to take inventory of what groceries they had and what I could make, I eyed the dirty laundry that was piled up in the hallway and stacks of unopened mail on the kitchen table. My hands were itching in the pockets of my jeans to tidy up a little, but I didn't want to overstep any boundaries and I didn't know how Gemma would react, let alone Jax who I'd never met.

In the end my OCD won out and the need to clean took over, I decided I would compromise and put a single load in. After I'd put it in the washer and it was spinning away, I made my way to the kitchen and looked around at the cluttered space that was riddled with empty wrappers and containers.

I sighed loudly before I cleaned up and then got to work making dinner with the ingredients that were in the fridge, the sound of Abel's laughter washing in through the opened back door.

Right there, in that moment, as I hummed a country song to myself and danced around the kitchen as I cooked, I had no idea that my life was going to change forever.