7

Chapter 77 Father

"

Ava looked at Jax and hesitated for a moment. Now that they were getting along, she wasn't sure she wanted to rock the boat with questions. She had to know the truth though even if it did start them back down the path of constant bickering.

"You're so different now than you were that first night when you were in my bedroom waiting for me when I got back from the spa. Which one is the real you?" Ava's tone of voice was sweet to offset a little of the harshness of her words.

"You're different now too," Jax pointed out.

"I asked you first," Ava said, her tone of voice sharper.

"OK, I'm both a bastard and a nice guy. Just depends on how I'm treated. When I got out of prison, I knew you wouldn't be overjoyed to see me, but your reaction was worse than I could have ever imagined."

"I'd had a tough day flying and suddenly there you are without warning in my bed. I'm sure my father planned the whole thing and that's why he wanted me to go to a spa that doesn't let you use phones or have televisions, so I wouldn't know what was going on with you."

"And I'd spent more than nine months in prison convicted of a crime I didn't commit. You could have been at least a little happy that I was out because I didn't deserve to be locked up."

Ava remembered how angry she'd been to find him in her bed. She couldn't believe he'd gotten out of prison. That never happened. Appeals took forever. His appeal should have taken at least four or five years, maybe more. She had a right to be surprised.

"I could have been nicer," Ava conceded, "but my father completely blindsided me. If I had known what was going on with you, about the documentary and the legal things going on, I would have been at least a little prepared."

"You can't blame your father for your attitude," Jax said.

Ava shook her head. He just didn't understand her father and how he liked to hurt her in subtle ways and some not so subtle ways like changing his will and getting Jax out of prison.

"My father is very passive aggressive. Maybe he did believe in you, but I think he got you out of prison because he knew that I married you to get around the provisions in his new will and he got you out to screw me over."

"If that's the way you want to think about why he got an innocent man out of jail, I can't stop you, but your father probably saved my life and, at the very least, he sure as hell gave me years of my life back because without him my ass would still be in prison for years."

Now that Ava didn't hate Jax and want him dead, she could see that it would be pretty horrible to be locked up like an animal knowing you were innocent yet having to face that, in the best case, you would be locked up for years while your case wound its way through the legal system. Even being innocent didn't get you released from prison.

"OK," Ava admitted, "I can understand why you like my father. He did get you out of prison."

"You acted like you were insulted that I was out of prison," Jax said.

"You weren't exactly charming. You wanted me to have sex with you."

"I only said that to piss you off because I was mad at you for not being a little glad that I was out of prison."

"Was prison really awful?" Ava asked. It was the first time she'd expressed any interest in his prison experience.

"It was hell. Did you think it was a spa vacation?"

"You never talk about it."

"This is the first time you've asked about it," Jax said keeping his voice even. He was angry that she'd shown him no compassion for everything that he'd gone through.

"That's because when you were being a jerk, I didn't care about your prison experience."

"You wanted me dead," Jax teased. He switched gears and decided to try to bring Ava around with a little humor.

"At times," she admitted.

"It's fair to say, we brought out the worst in each other. Now, we're being better versions of ourselves. There's no point dwelling on those bad first days we had. I don't have any desire to be in constant fight mode with you. I like how we are together now."

Ava felt an odd warmth around her heart. She wasn't sure what that was about, but it didn't matter. She might not actively hate Jax now, but she wasn't going to fall in love with him. Love was something that you felt at first sight and she'd felt revulsion at first sight when she saw Jax.

"Since we're stuck together for awhile," Ava said, she couldn't bring herself to say three years because that seemed like forever, "I agree it's better when we get along. Now, tell me about prison."

Ava realized part of her problem with Jax was his size. He was tall, broad and muscled. He was physically intimidating to her. She preferred guys just a little taller and on the slender side. He was just bursting with virility and she liked guys that didn't ooze sex appeal.

"You wake up and go eat breakfast. Figuring out where you are going to sit down can be a life or death choice. You sit at a table where you don't belong, you can find yourself getting the shit beat out of you by a half dozen guys. I'm in an MC. That makes me a target too because my MC's enemies might want to kill me to even scores. You've got to be alert every minute."

"What happened when you got stabbed?"

Jax had been through that day over and over in his mind trying to find a clue to who might have been behind the attempt on his life.

"Some guys just came up to me, two of them held me while one stabbed me. This young guard saved my life. There aren't many guards who would have done what he did for me. He's a good guy," Jax said.

"A guard? I thought prisoners were supposed to hate guards."

"There are some that are real power hungry bastards who want to make sure you go through hell every second of every day. He's just a guy who's trying to make money to support his family. He and I used to talk at night when I couldn't sleep. He's got a little girl who needs surgery but the insurance won't pay."

"That's terrible," Ava said.

"I have the money to help his little girl, but I can't give it to him or there would be problems with his job. I asked your father if he could help me find a way to get the money to him for the surgery without jeopardizing his job. He said that he could do it through a charity so it won't get traced back."

"Does the guard know you're going to do that?"

"No. If I told him, he might not feel right about accepting the money even though it's not a bribe or anything like that. The important thing is to get his kid the surgery. I don't need to feel his gratitude. Just knowing I helped his little girl is all I want."

Ava looked at Jax, her expression softening. Beneath that toxic male exterior, he did have a pretty great heart. To give money to the guard so his little girl could get her surgery was kind and very generous.

"I'm glad you are going to help his little girl. My father will come up with some way to make that happen. He is good at stuff like that," Ava admitted. Her father did have a softer side when it came to other people.

"The guard was happy for me when I got out."

"Do you think the guys that jumped you were just after you because of some MC thing?"

"The guys don't belong to any MC or known prison gang. That's why it doesn't make sense."

Ava remembered back to those days when Jax was in the hospital fighting for his life. He had been deathly pale and sick. She hadn't been very nice to him then, but he hadn't been very nice to her either.

"I'm sorry I wasn't nicer to you when you were in the hospital," Ava said. She could swallow her pride when she decided she was wrong.

"I said things to you just to make you angry too, so I wasn't perfect."

"If it had been a prison problem, would someone have come after you in the hospital?"

"I don't know. Trying to kill me in the hospital just doesn't make sense. If the attempt had just been made in prison, I could just shrug it off as prison stuff, but that second attempt changes everything. I can't figure out who would want me dead bad enough to come after me in the hospital.

"That's why I'm so grateful to your father. When those attempts on my life were made, he kicked his plan to free me into high gear and miraculously got me released. He knew just what to do, where to apply the pressure and he spared no expense to help me. No one has ever done something like that for me."

"We can disagree on my father's motives, but the result was you finally got justice. Could you have seen something in prison that would make someone want to kill you?"

"No. There was nothing."

"Why would someone want to kill you?"

"That's what I need to start figuring out when I get back to Charming."

"Do you think someone will try to kill you again?"

Jax rubbed his hand over his chin forgetting for a moment he was clean shaven. He gave this some thought before shrugging.

"I don't know. I do know until I find out who tried to kill me and why, I'm going to have to be on guard constantly when we get back to Charming."

Ava nodded. It sounded exciting to her, but deep down, she didn't believe that Jax was really in any danger.

Jax hadn't been completely honest with Ava. He felt certain that he was still in danger and it had something to do with Ellie Lowen.