I apologize for my AN in the last chapter. I phrased my thoughts all wrong and I didn't mean to sound as though I thought Honey being raped was rock bottom for her. I'm aware sexual assault is serious and it's never a choice, which is why I almost changed the story around to not include it because I didn't know if I could pull it off in the correct way. However, I had had this part planned out since chapter one and I didn't want to back off of it because I knew I'd regret it later. I meant that for Honey, she needed something to make her talk to her family and realize what happened and what more could've happened as a result of her letting her issues get the best of her. I'm not trying to make it seem like her fault or make it seem like she chose this, but I think it would make her realize the partying is wrong and she should get the help she needs. I'm sorry I was kind of an asshole about it in the last chapter, I wrote it and posted it after I finished studying that night and I didn't read it through well enough.
I also wrote half this chapter the day after I posted Chapter 25, and I only finished it today. My grandmother, my only living grandparent who practically raised me when I was little, died a couple weeks ago and I haven't been in the mood to write. I'm sorry about the delay, but I truly couldn't bring myself to finish any of the chapters I had started.
The song for this chapter is Drive by Incubus.
She couldn't feel anything besides a dull ache in her lower body and a pounding in her head. There was a soft beep every few moments from her side and she could hear scuffling sounds as someone moved around across the room. Am I not dead? She tried to open her eyes, only to shut them back immediately as a harsh white light assaults her sensitive retinas.
"Oh, you're awake." The nurse leaning over the IV bag above the bed said, giving her a soft smile. "I'll go tell Dr. Knowles."
Before Honey could protest or even ask what had happened, the woman was gone.
She sighs softly and raises her head, craning her neck to peer around the room. She had two IVs in her left arm, right in the bend of her elbow, and there was an oxygen tube hooked over her ears and into her nose. Clumsily, she pulls the oxygen tube off and looks down at it as if it were a foreign concept as she tries to remember what happened.
She could remember dancing and drinking, then she had started feeling woozy. Then he showed up and dragged her into that room...Honey's eyes widened as she raises the neckline of her hospital gown up in order to prove herself wrong. To her horror, she finds a bite mark just above her nipple, the soft, pale flesh turned a sickly blue-green as the bruising started to heal.
It wasn't another nightmare, he actually got me this time. She felt sick to her stomach as she remembered barely being able to fight him off. The door to her right opened and Tara approached the bed holding a clipboard to her chest. "Honey? How are you feeling?" Her voice was surprisingly soft and it threw Honey for a loop for a moment.
"I-I'm...okay..." Her throat was dry and her mouth felt as though she had been drinking sawdust. "Can I h-have some water?"
Tara nods and walks over to the sink on the far side of the room, bringing Honey a glass of cold tap water. Honey sips it carefully, one hand clutching the oxygen tubes. "Honey, I need to talk about what happened."
"What is there to talk about?" She mutters, immediately tensing up as she looks down into the empty glass, her eyes following the tiny droplets on the edge of the cup.
"Well, what do you remember?" Tara gently takes the tubing from her hands and sets it aside.
"I went to a party. I got drunk." She recalled robotically, her fingers moving to hold onto the top of the thin blanket covering her legs.
Tara sighs softly as she lays her hand over Honeys, making Honey look up at her. "Honey, maybe I should start by telling you what you've missed. You've been out of it for almost three days."
"Three days?! What the fuck did he do to me?" She yells in alarm, her eyes wide as she looks down at her body, searching it for any injuries or wounds.
"It wasn't what he did, Honey. Did you take any of your Xanax before you went to the party?" Tara grabs Honeys hands, stopping their searches as she looks at her seriously.
Honey's brows furrow as she nods slowly. "I took a couple...before Leah and I left to go to the party."
Tara nods, sighing softly as she opens her mouth to speak but is interrupted by the door opening. Gemma steps in, her face in a worried scowl as Jax and Clay fill the doorway and look in like spying children. "Honey, you're awake!"
"Yeah." Honey nods as she frowns, looking at all of them and feeling even guiltier for worrying them. She could see the bags under her mother's eyes from across the room.
Tara gives them a soft smile, murmuring, "I was just telling her what we know of what happened."
"How did you find me?" Honey looks down at the thin, waffle-knit blanket thrown over her legs and pooling in her lap. Her hands were in her lap, the thin veins crisscrossing on the back of them standing out against her pale skin.
"Justin called the garage, said he thought something was up with you. He couldn't find you, and a couple people said some guy had been talking about-" Gemma explains, only to be interrupted by Honey shaking her head rapidly and bowing her head, covering her face with her hands.
Tara gently rubs Honey's shoulders, feeling the bump of her shoulder blade beneath the paper thin hospital gown. "Honey, we need to know what happened. We've been treating your injuries but we can only do so much without knowing the full extent of them."
"I don't want to talk about it." It was muffled behind her hands, but everyone heard it. Jax squeezes past Clay in the doorway and takes Tara's place sitting on the edge of the bed.
"Honey, you promised me you'd try." He kept his voice soft, gently prying her hands away from her face and smoothing her tousled, slightly greasy hair away from her tear streaked face. "If you don't want to tell us about what happened, you don't have to. Just tell Tara so she can treat you."
Clay stepped forward to protest, his fingers hooked in the pockets of his cut. "Now, wait a minute-"
"Just Tara." Honey murmurs, looking up into Jax's baby blue eyes. It broke his heart to see the worn down, broken look in her eyes. She looked more like a jaded, 40-year-old woman than a 16-year-old girl. "No one else, only Tara." Her eyes move over Jax's shoulder to their mother as she stepped forward to protest.
"Honey, the club needs-" Gemma's eyes widen as both of her children turn to glare at her, one in anger and one in warning.
"Mom, back off. She wants to tell Tara, she doesn't have to tell anyone else anything more." Jax says seriously, kissing his sister's forehead gently in encouragement.
Honey tucks her face against his neck, inhaling the musky scent of his cologne as she whispers, "Thank you, Jaxy."
"Anytime, Hon." He whispers, gently smoothing the matted mess of her hair as much as he could before pulling away and kissing her forehead softly. "Talk to Tara while we go get the other guys, okay?"
Honey nods, letting her head fall forward and her hair create a curtain around her face as she waits for Jax to leave, then Clay and Gemma. A few moments pass before Tara's weight makes the bed dip slightly and her cool hand makes contact with Honey's cheek, lifting her face gently. "Let's talk, Honey."
oooooooooo
Ten minutes later, Tara exits the room and looks grimly at the crowd of men gathered around the corridor. "She needs a break. Whatever she has going on, it's going to eat at her and she's going to keep crumbling."
"Did she tell you what happened?" Clay asks, standing up from where he was leaned against the wall beside Tig.
Tara nods, holding the clipboard of Honey's report to her chest. "She told me what happened. I need to go talk to the doctor about it."
Gemma grabs Tara's elbow as she turns to leave. "That's it? You aren't going to tell us?"
"Patient confidentiality, Gemma," Tara says simply before walking down the hallway away from the group of bikers.
Gemma stands there a moment, watching her go before she turns to look at the one she knew could get Honey to talk. "Happy?"
"I'll talk to her." He grumbles, immediately heading into the room. From his spot on the edge of the crowd, leaned against the wall, Half Sack caught a glimpse of Honey curled up in the bed, her face red and puffy from crying.
oooooooooo
They sit in silence for a moment, looking into each other's eyes as the heart monitor beats steadily in the background. Happy drags his eyes down her slim body as if looking for any injuries and she lets her head fall back against the pillow.
"Tara says I could've died." Honey murmurs, her eyes flitting along the small, swirling designs on the ceiling. "The Xanax mixed with the alcohol and dropped my heart rate or something."
Happy nods slowly, taking a couple steps closer to her bedside. "You shouldn't have gone." The room fills with an uncomfortable silence before he nearly growls, "You need to start handling your shit."
Her eyebrows furrow as she looks up at him in shock. Happy had never sounded so angry with her before. "H-Happy?" She whispers, shrinking back against the pillow as she pulls the covers up over herself higher.
"No, this time you pushed too far. You knew doing that shit was nothing but trouble, but you did it anyway. Why? Because a guy didn't love you back? Welcome to life, Honey. Shit happens, and you can't run off and get high to fuck away your problems." He shakes his head, the muscle in his jaw ticking as he turns to the door. "I'm done, Honey."
"Pl-Please, Happy...I didn't mean to..." Her head was spinning and making it hard to focus as she watched him walk out, her vision blurred from the hot tears crowding her eyes as she listens to the loud thud of the door swinging shut behind him.
She curled up in a tight ball, the IVs in her arm tugging slightly as she presses her face into the pillow to muffle the sobs racking her body. When the door to her room opened again hours later, she raised her head and gazed at the bedraggled, frowning man in her doorway, disoriented and feeling a throbbing pain behind her eyes from crying for so long.
Cool, muscular arms wrap around her body, hugging her tightly as she raises up slowly in the bed. "Jax called me, Honey, I came as soon as I heard."
She sniffles softly as she looks up into Kozik's warm, blue eyes. "Happy hates me."
Kozik shakes his head, his hand smoothing her tangled hair. "He doesn't, he's just upset and took it out on you like an asshole."
"I deserved it." She lays back against the pillows, pushing the button on the side of the bed to raise the upper part of the bed into a sitting position as Kozik settles into the chair at her bedside.
"Honey, listen to me." He laces his fingers between her smaller ones and gently traces the tattoo on her wrist with his other hand. "I think you need to take charge in your life."
"How?" She mumbles, laying her other hand on her stomach and sighing softly.
"Just do it. Find something you really want and do it, don't let them decide it for you. Start dancing again, save the whales, write a novel. Just learn how to be yourself without them around." He says softly, his eyebrows furrowed into a thick line across his forehead as he watches her.
"They wouldn't like me if I was myself." She murmurs, looking down at her hands as she picks at a loose thread on the blanket. He scoffs softly, gently moving a lock of her hair out of her face as he shakes his head.
"I know the real you and I think you're pretty amazing." Kozik smiles softly at her as she lets a tiny smile form on her chapped lips.
A soft sigh escapes her as she nods gently. "I want to try." Her eyes raise to meet his and she takes a deep breath. "Can you go get my parents?"
He nods and stands up, pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead before walking out and flipping his phone open to call Clay.
oooooooooo
Clay and Gemma stepped into their daughter's room together, Kozik trailing behind them with his hands in his pockets. Honey was sitting up with her hands folded in her lap, her head bowed as if she were praying.
"Honey?" Gemma says softly, setting her purse down in one of the chairs lining the wall across from the bed. Honey lifts her head and takes a deep breath, glancing at her stepfather, then returning her eyes to her mother.
"I want out," Honey says simply, her face eerily clear of any emotion. Gemma frowns, her lips pursed into a thin, puckered line.
"Out of what?" Gemma crosses her arms over her chest, tapping one heeled boot on the pristine, white tiled floor as she pops one hip out to the side. Honey swallows hard, spitting it out before she loses her courage.
"I want out of SAMCRO's bubble." She reaches over to the nightstand, grabbing the piece of paper and pen Tara had brought her at her request.
Gemma lets out a heavy sigh, shaking her head. "Honey now is not the time-"
"Actually, it's a perfect time." Honey gazes down at the neatly bulleted list, suddenly feeling angry. Every offense she had ever suffered because of the club was written on the dull sheet of copy paper, the scratchy blue ink seeming to taunt her as she skimmed over the words. "You have always told me that the club would keep me safe, and that's why I had to stop doing dance when the studio moved to Oakland. That's why I couldn't go on school trips out of town, or consider any colleges where there isn't a charter, or work anywhere but the garage. I'm the fragile, little princess, God forbid I be allowed to be a normal teenager."
"Do you have any idea what could've happened to you if it weren't for the club?" Gemma says angrily, stepping closer to the foot of the bed.
"If it weren't for the club, there wouldn't be anyone who wanted to hurt me." Honey replies immediately, holding the paper out to Kozik. He takes it, frowning in confusion.
"What is this?" He skims over the paper and shakes his head, glancing at the girl he considered his little sister. "Honey, no."
"Please, Koz. They need to know why I am the way I am, and if I try to say it all I'll leave something out. Take it to church and read it, then take a vote for me. Majority rules, not unanimity." Honey pleads with him, her eyes practically begging him to listen to her.
He hesitates a moment before nodding, folding the paper carefully into fourths and tucking it into the inner pocket of his cut. "I'll do it tonight."
"Thank you. Mom, you might want to be there too." Honey adds, not looking at Gemma as she scoots back down in the bed to rest.
Gemma scoffs, grabbing her purse and storming out of the room, leaving Honey behind to contemplate her decision.