CHAPTER THREE

I know the second I pull into the garage that I'm in huge trouble. Driving under the massive 'Teller-Morrow' sign I spot Gemma standing in the door of the office, hands on her hips and a pissed off look on her face. Not far to her left is a line of bikes, with several of the bikers standing beside their machines, two heads, at the end catch my attention Jax's pale hair contrasting with Opie's dark locks.

Jax's head swivels in the direction of the noise coming from my car and I barely have to time take in the longer hair and rough goatee he's now sporting before he throws a leg over his bike, cutting off whatever it was that Opie was saying. As I open my door and step out Jax roars past me and out into the road.

Not knowing what battle to fight first I headed over to Opie, only to be intercepted by Clay who yanked me off my feet exclaiming how much I'd grown.

Shooting a smile at the man who I admired almost as much as my own father "That's what happens when you leave then come back years later. I'm sorry."

Knowing that Clay would realise how many things that sorry covered I was grateful when he shakes his head and says "I'm good, you came back. But the old lady, well she's a different story. She destroyed the kitchen when she found out you had left. Took me a month before she'd let me get the prospects in."

I cringe and attempt to hide my head in Clay's kutte when the very distinct sound of heels crossing the lot reaches my ears.

"Oh no you don't girlie. You get your backside in that office and you better tell me what the fuck was going through your mind when you scarpered out of here in the middle of the night. NO ONE knew where you went. NO ONE knew if you were alright. You didn't tell anyone you were planning on leaving. We all woke up in the morning and you were just...not here." Gemma snaps at me, getting closer with each word. By the end of it she's inches from my face with her nail so close I had to go cross-eyed to see it.

"Sorry Aunt Gemma. I'll tell you it all, why I left and why I didn't come back." Even though Gemma was no blood relation to me she'd earned the title after I'd moved here, and Clay had been Uncle Clay since I was able to speak.

"Good."

Looking at her I knew I wasn't going to get any more out of her till I told her the whole story so I turned back to Clay and asked him when I could talk to them, cause I had a feeling me coming back wasn't going to be as easy as I hoped.

"If Gem can keep her panties on and her toe out of your ass you can tell us now. Opie, call Jax, get him back here NOW." Clay turned from me, grabbed hold of Gemma's arm and tugs her towards the Clubhouse. "You can listen to, if that's what Sarah wants."

"Sure, it's easier only having to tell the story once. But, Gemma, I really am sorry."

Gemma looks over at me, with her way of reading your very soul I could see the exact second she realised what a mess I was, and that the shit was about to hit the fan the minute that Redwood table had people round it. Wrapping her arms round me I had to bite hard down on one of the metal rings in my lip to stop the tears that were threatening to come.

With Clay on one side of me and Gemma on the other we all walked towards the Clubhouse, hearing the tell-tale sound of Jax in a bad mood coming back into the lot, engine growling like an angry lion.

Clay whistles half way to the door and called out "We're at the table."

The sound of half a dozen pairs of heavy motorcycle boots echo round the lot as feet hit the ground and men started moving towards a door almost entirely covered by the reaper they all wear on their backs.

Several minutes later they're all seated round the huge Redwood table, carved with the same reaper from the door, and their kuttes. "Right boys, this is Sarah's story. She's going to tell you what it is that she needs to share." Clay started, turning his eyes, and the rest of the clubs towards me. All bar the blue ones that I want to see the most.

"Right, well most of you know me already; you know who I am I mean." I start, stumbling over my words for a second, Gemma hands me a coffee and shoves me into the seat she's just vacated, stepping round the table she drops down onto Clays lap.

Sitting down heavily I try to start the story again.

"Sorry, I need to go way back in time for this to make any sense, and to clarify a few things. You all know me, I'm Sarah Hale. Jacob and David are my cousins, but they have never been family to me. You all formed the family that I needed when I was younger, and the family I should never have left.

"When I left I wasn't sure I was doing what I should have, most of you know that I had a massive crush on Jax since I was old enough to recognise boys and I was sure that he was going to be mine, that my future held his crow and his children. Being a supportive Old Lady, making sure to stay out of the way when needed, but to be there when needed.

"Then Jax met Tara." I can't help the bitterness that is coming from my voice now, and looking up from my hands my eyes finally meet the ones I want to see, they're filled with shock and disbelief.

"Wow, okay so Jax is obviously was the only person in Charming that didn't know how I felt. Anyway, for some reason Jax just went crazy over her, he forgot that I existed, but he forgot for a long time that Opie existed as well. When he finally noticed that there were still other people around it was already too late, in my mind, for us salvage whatever friendship we had. Too many nails had been put in that coffin, and too many knives went into my back.

"While Jax was stuck in Tara's pussy I had decided that life would have to go on without him, that my life obviously wasn't meant to go where I thought it was. I applied to every school I could, the only prerequisite was that they had to be far enough away from here to make it impossible for anyone to visit, and for me to come back for holidays. I got accepted to a number of schools, but the one that was the most distance from Charming was in New York. But then Jax and Tara had a fight, bigger than any of us had ever seen and it seemed like maybe things were going to go right for once. Tara was leaving and Jax wasn't, I was considering for-fitting the position I had secured in New York when she came to visit me."

Looking up again, I can see that this is all news to Jax. He looks like he's been stuck with a cattle prod and it's knocked his brain function out. But everyone else round the table is listening.

"She told me that she had convinced Jax to go with her, that he was going to leave the Club, and everything he'd ever known because she asked him too. So I left, I didn't wait any longer. I packed everything that I had left the night that Tara dropped her bombshell. I called the school from the road, somewhere just over the Californian border. I told them I'd be arriving earlier than planned and would it be possible to get into the room they'd secured for me for my first semester.

"I drove for what felt like months, but was only 4 days. Between stopping for sleep and food. I turned my phone off sometime after it rang the 20th time in a day. It went sailing out the window somewhere in Oklahoma.

"I met Cam and Al 4 weeks after I got to New York. The rental apartment in Manhattan Cam lived in had a spare room and we decided I would do all the cooking and cleaning for my share of the rent. Al lived a few apartments down; they were already friends when I met them both.

"Anyway, to cut a year from this story. I also met a man, named Craig, he seemed perfect. But when we'd been together about 6 months he started abusing me."

A chorus of voices from the guys all started up when Jax's voice calls out over them "Shut up. Continue."

I can't help but note his inability to meet my eyes, or say my name I sigh, finish my now cold coffee and continue.

"He was not long out of the army when we met; he told me he'd served his time. I later found out he was given a dishonourable discharge after he attempted to rape one of the Privates in his platoon."

Turning my arms to Opie I gave him a half smile and went on. "The tattoo on my arm isn't like it is by accident. It's camouflage the bits of blank skin are the parts that were too badly scarred for Al to cover up."

Extending out my arm in front of me its Happy who is first to reach over and look, I'm not sure if he's examining the ink, or the scars. But as his fingers tighten on my wrist I realise he's seen the parts of the ink that make up a ripped apart face shadowed on metal, and he's managed to piece them together, and may have worked out the significance of me having my own image in shreds on my forearm.

After each of the Sons looks at my arms, bar the one that still can't lift his eyes from the table I take a deep breath, determined to finish the story I'd started.

"Craig knew how much I missed home, he knew that there was something, or someone, here that I loved with my entire being and he was convinced that if he destroyed me enough he could break that part. He hated every time I got more ink. He hated that I was independent. He hated my friends. He hated my job. You can't tell now, but the scars under all the ink spell his name."

It seems to be that line that snaps Jax from whatever memory he's locked himself in, he shoots up from the table, his chair hitting the wall behind him before striding over to me and holding his hand out demanding something. It takes me a second to relax after cringing into my chair at the violent movement before I realise that he wants to see.

Putting my hand into his he pulls me to my feet and starts looking at the scars and ink that cover my right arm from shoulder to wrist. "He told me, 5 days ago, that he was done trying to make me love him, he was just going to kill me. He said if he couldn't have my heart while I was alive he'd take it when I was dead."

With that I let myself fall into the darkness that's been pulling around the edges of my eyes since I left New York days ago.