CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Arriving back at the Winston's house the first thing Jax does it turn on his bike, "You okay, don't want to ride a bit longer?" The grin on his face is anything but innocent.

I climb off the bike and slap him on the arm, "You really are a perve!"

Jax gets off the bike, slings an arm round me shoulder, "Yes, but at least you knew that already."

"True." I reply, opening the door. "Honey's we're home." I call out.

"Hi dear." Donna's reply comes from the kitchen.

"Babe, you're late." Opie calls from the living room.

"Beer. Bring me beer." Happy's voice comes from the same area as Opie's and Jax and I double up in laughter.

Jax shoves me towards the kitchen smacking me on the ass. "Let's go with the last one. Get us beer woman."

I head towards the kitchen and find Donna standing in the door laughing at me, a single beer in her hand. "Ope and Hap already have beers."

I take the bottle into the living room and find the 3 leather clad bikers watching the news on the TV, hanging the bottle over Jax's shoulder he reaches up and grasps it, "Thanks Darlin'."

"No probs." I head back into the kitchen and go digging through the fridge before closing it again and opening the freezer. I find a couple of packages of frozen ground beef which I toss in the microwave to defrost.

Pottering around the kitchen I pull out the ingredients to make lasagne, wandering into the living room to let the guys know dinner will be at least an hour, they all nod and 3 empty beer bottles are held in my direction.

I gather up the empties and take them to the kitchen, Donna's sitting at the table chopping vegetables for the sauce and just grins when I throw the empties in the bin and take 3 full ones out, I've just handed Hap his beer when there's a knock at the door, turning around I see Al and Cam through the frosted glass, the light and dark heads peering through the window to the side of the door make me laugh.

Letting them in they follow me through to the kitchen where Donna has just put the bowl of onions, garlic and tomatoes over to the bench.

My three female friends all sit at the table and gossip about me like I'm not there, I zone out of the conversation they're having planning my love life and concentrate on what I'm doing.

30 minutes later the béchamel is ready, I've taken the meat sauce off the stove and added a huge pile of fresh basil, coriander and parsley.

"Here come, try this please." I hold out a spoonful of the sauce wanting to double check that it tastes okay.

Before Donna can move a mouth closes round the spoon, pulling back Jax looks at me, "It's good."

I laugh, "You would say that, its food and it's edible. While you'll say it would taste good no matter what Donna will tell me if it needs anything."

Donna stands up, shoves Jax out of the way, something that is quiet comical given her tiny size next to the biker. Rinsing the spoon I hand it to Donna who dips it in the thick red sauce. "That's amazing, what's in it."

"I can't tell you that, well I can, but it's got so much in it that you'd forget. I'll copy the recipe for you; it's in one of my folders."

Jax grabs more beer from the fridge and heads back into the living room passing the table where Al and Cam both giggle, I'm not sure what is funny to them, I haven't been listening but I'm sure I'll find out at some point.

Once Jax is out of the room Donna starts talking making sure I'm paying attention this time, "Ope and I had a quick talk about your proposal. He's all for it, but only under the conditions that Craig is dealt with first, and that your house is ready first."

I nod, "I expected that."

While Donna's talking I've finished assembling the lasagne and slid it into the oven, "I agree with him though, we can't have any renovations done till your house is done, and we can't have more kids till the renovations are done. Not to mention that you won't be moving anywhere alone till after Craig is gone."

"Who's moving where and what renovations?" Jax is leaning against the door frame looking curious.

Donna stands up, "I'll leave you to explain your plans to Jax. Come with me, I'll show you the rest of the house." Al and Cam follow, looking like they'd like to stay.

I glare at her, "Thanks for that, D."

Jax heads towards me and raises an eyebrow.

"I offered to pay for renovations to the house if they decide to have more kids." I state.

His eyes shoot to his hairline, "Really?"

"Well I wasn't here for the twins when they were babies and I want a chance to make it up to them."

"You may not have been here, but we all saw the boxes of clothes that would arrive for the twins every now and then. Donna refused to say where they came from but I'm getting it was you?"

I nod, "It was all I could do from across the country."

"You did more than that though, it wasn't just the clothes. There was the random other stuff that would appear for the kids as well. But there was the stuff for Opie and Don as well, the clothes for them that would show up on the doorstep as Donna was trying to organise a shopping trip with the twins. It was the kitchen appliances that would appear just days after the old one died."

I shrug at Jax, "Yeah, I did do that stuff for them. I spent money on them, but I couldn't BE here for them, which is where I should have been not on the other side of the country hoping material things would make up for me not being here."

Opie's voice from behind me makes me jump, I didn't realise that he'd come in the door from the garage till he spoke. Kicking the door closed, "You did for us what we should have been doing for you. You supplied us with things we needed when we weren't able to. But we didn't know that you needed help. So this is what's going to happen from right now."

He stops speaking while he puts the new box of beer in the fridge before he turns to me, "You are going to stop feeling guilty for not being present. Donna has told you that we will take you up on your offer, I know it will help get rid of the guilt you are carrying. But once that's done I don't want to hear anything else about you not being there for the kids. They knew all about you, they knew you loved them. From before they could talk they would get so excited when we'd get home and a package from Aunty Sarah would be on the doorstep, when they could talk all we'd hear about was when you'd come to visit them, they'd ask us to tell stories about you...and I must say that was hard."

Donna laughs as the 3 women come back in; she sits on the kitchen bench while Al and Cam take their seats back at the table, "It was hard finding stories that were kid friendly that's for sure. I couldn't exactly tell the kids about the time we broke into Lumpy's at 1am cause YOU wanted a slice of apple pie and insisted that only Lumpy's pie would be good enough."

I poke my tongue out at her, "Yeah, and I'm sure you were just as happy to tell them the story about when you forced me into breaking into the Mayor's office after you left Piney's lighter there."

Jax grins, "What about the time that the three of you got detained after deciding that the high school needed to be decorated for my 16th birthday?"

I laugh at that memory. Al and Cam look over at us, "Do tell." The both say at almost the same time.

Signing I open my mouth, "Opie, Donna and I broke into the school with banners, streamers, silly string and shit like that so we could decorate Jax's locker and home room before school. None of us realised the school had an alarm installed, the second we were in it triggered. When Unser, the Chief of Police, showed up D and I were sure he was wouldn't care that we were decorating for Jax, even though he's a good friend of the Club. We convinced ourselves that he was going to take all of us down to the station; we were only barely 14 and terrified of what would happen to us. Opie, who was 16, was sure Unser would let us go. Turned out we were both kind of right. He let us finish decorating the school he made us swear we'd clean it all up on Friday afternoon and then when we were done he took us all to the station where he rung Gemma at 3am to come get us."

Al and Cam look stunned and I grin at them both. "Yeah, when I was in New York I seemed so sweet and innocent aye?"

"God, your Mom was so fucked off as us. I'm sure she would have skinned us alive if she'd been able to." Donna laughs, and I'm sure it's a combination of remembering Gemma's reaction and the facial expressions that are currently being worn by my friends.

"She actually thought it was great. She refused to tell me where she'd gone in the middle of the night, but after school she didn't talk about anything else but how great my friends were." Jax says before turning to Al and Cam, "You need to get to know the Charming Sarah, she's..." he trails off like he doesn't know what to call me.

"A sweet, innocent, perfectly behaved Angel." I insert.

All four of them, Happy, Opie, Donna and Jax, burst into laughter and I pout from where I'm leaning beside Donna's legs.

She reaches down and tugs a handful of my hair, "More like a demon child of Satan hell bent on making the world chaos."

I grin as I open the oven to check on dinner. It's ready to come out so I toss the garlic bread in and get the leftover salad out of the fridge.

40 minutes later we're all sitting at the table finishing eating when Happy's phone goes off. He looks at the screen and flicks it open, "Yeah."

During the 2 minute phone call Hap's eyes are flicking from me to the guys to the doors, they don't stop moving and when he hangs up the phone again he rubs a hand over his face before looking at me, "That was Juice, the camera's at the garage just got a shot of your ex looking straight at the wreck and grinning."