"What do you mean he's not with you?"

Denise's gaze was wild, almost feral when Jax walked back into the door of her home with the rest of the guys, save for her husband. She knew they were grieving. She knew they were hurting. But she couldn't bring herself to understand why they would let Juice go off on his own at a time like this.

"He said he needed to swing by the clubhouse for something," Jax said numbly, shrugging carelessly - and suddenly, Denise felt angrier at him than she ever had. Suddenly, this Jax was not the same person who had been her friend for so long. This was the Jax that had terrified Juice so badly that he felt like he'd had to leave Charming in the first place, forced Juice to commit a murder that had driven him to nearly take his own life. This was the Jax that looked out for his now at the expense of anyone and everyone who happened to be in his way.

"Ly," Denise said to the other woman, though her gaze remained firmly planted on Jax. "Can you watch Fifi for a while? I'm going to the clubhouse."

Lyla murmured assent, and Denise grabbed a jacket flung over the back of the couch, pulling it over her shoulders and jabbing a finger in Jax's direction. "If anything happens to my husband..."

Her voice trailed of, leaving the unspoken threat dangling in the air as she rushed out the door to her car, making her way to the clubhouse.

Sure enough, she saw Juice's bike parked outside. She felt her heart pounding, fluttering as she got out of her car and hurried to inside, her eyes scouring the dark room until she caught sight of him, sitting on the floor in the corner of the room and staring blankly at a knife in his hand. He twirled the blade slowly so that it caught faint glints of moonlight seeping in through the closed blinds. There was an empty liquor bottle sitting at his side.

"Babe," Denise said, taking a few steps as though approaching a wild creature, a deer that could at any moment get up and run away. Denise held her hands out placatingly until she got close enough that she could kneel down in front of him. "Babe, why didn't you come home? I was worried sick about you -"

"I couldn't come home," Juice said, his voice miserable even though his face was almost completely blank. "I couldn't look at you and Fifi after... after..."

"What happened to Bobby wasn't your fault," Denise said, reaching out for his hand, but he quickly yanked it away. She sighed, clasping her hands in her lap instead. "Juice, why are you -"

"I wanted this, didn't I?" Juice interrupted, his voice cracking. "I wanted it to be Chibs who made it and not Bobby - I wanted it to be Bobby who died -"

"You didn't want anyone to die," Denise said frantically, feeling her eyes welling up at the realization that Juice felt guilty for this - even if he had done nothing, if none of it was truly his fault, it was eating away at him. "Juice, please..."

"I wanted this," Juice repeated, shaking his head miserably. "I don't got any right to - to feel like this. I should be happy, I got what I wanted, but I keep seeing it," he said, pressing the heels of his hands over his eyes and shaking his head desperately. "I keep seeing it. I keep seeing Marks pull that trigger, all of Bobby's blood on the ground. I wanted that. I wanted that - how can I go back to my family, to a beautiful wife, to a gorgeous little girl, when I'm this - this monster who wanted -"

"You didn't want this, Juice," Denise said, reaching out and clasping both of her hands on Juice's shoulders, giving him a slight shake. "You're not a monster. Baby, look at me!" she said, her face contorting in frustration. "Don't do this. Me and Fifi, we need you, okay?"

"I'm a not a fuckin' good person -"

"Yes. You are," Denise interrupted, her face growing severe. "And - and if this club is making you feel like you aren't, then - then..."

Denise's voice trailed off. Then what?

There were moments in a person's life when something had to give, when something finally became clear that wasn't before. For Denise, the idea of what it meant to truly put the family she and Juice had together before anything else had never been as clear as it was in this moment. For a short, shining few hours the previous, she had seen the person that Juan Carlos Ortiz could be - the kind of husband and the kind of father he was capable of being when the club wasn't breaking him. And it was the best version of him she had ever seen.

More importantly, Denise knew, it was the person he deserved the chance to be.

"...then we walk away from all of this. Right now."

Suddenly, Juice's expression shifted to one of the utmost confusion. Right now? The pieces seemed slow to come together in his mind. Denise, who had grown so dedicated to the club, to Jax, to Charming, was going to just walk away?

"You don't really mean that, do you?" Juice asked, his voice shaking slightly. "Right now? Tonight?"

"Tonight," Denise nodded. "Once everyone gets outta our house, we take Sofia, and we just - we just drive. We use what we've got, you get rid of your ink, and we start over."

Juice's mind whirled with a mixture of fear, of unsureness, and strangely enough, of hope. He had long feared that their talk of a new life with Sofia, just the three of them, was doomed to be just talk because each of them took turns getting pulled back in for one reason or another.

"Where?" Juice asked, shaking his head in his disbelief that they were truly having this conversation - that instead of thinking of him as weak, as some kind of monster, she was here with him. She was just here.

With his mind still a drunk, tired haze, he didn't wait for an answer to his question, instead cupping Denise's face with both hands and pressing his lips hungrily to hers. He just wanted to be as sure as he could that this conversation, that this possibility was real. And when her warm lips moved against his, her hands clenching gently on the leather of his kutte over his shoulders, he had his proof. He practically collapsed into his wife's arms, the way he did when he'd first told her the truth about covering for Gemma killing Tara. Denise held him tightly, just like she did before, and something about the fact that he had been sitting alone on the floor of the clubhouse just minutes earlier, but now within a matter of hours, they would be somewhere completely different, was overwhelming in the best way something could be.

"C'mon," Denise said, her voice now sounding just as shaky as his. "Let's go home."

Juice's hand remained clenched tightly on Denise's for the entire drive home, and she on her part refused to let go either - both had a deep-seated worry that the other would change their mind, that they would, in the eleventh hour, find some reason that they were forced to stay in Charming - just a little longer, just to finish business. But they made it all the way back home to find everyone still there. They walked back into the doors of their own home, and Denise scooped Sofia up out of Lyla's arms again, carrying her over to Juice who placed a kiss on the sleeping girl's forehead.

"You good?" Jax asked, glancing over at Juice with a nonchalance - a carelessness that for the first time made Denise's hackles raise in distaste for him. Juice looked over at Jax and nodded sternly.

"I'll - I'll be fine. Needed to clear my head," he nodded. Chibs, at this moment, rose from his seat and walked over, clapping his hand on Juice's shoulder, pulling him into a tight hug.

"Thank you," he nodded. "For wantin' to save my life."

"I'll always have your back, brother," Juice nodded, still holding onto the older man tightly. "I love you, brother."

Chibs pulled back slowly and looked Juice over - at first with the intention of making sure he was alright, that there was no evidence of him having tried something dangerous before Denise had reached him. But instead, he found that there was something different about Juice Ortiz that he couldn't quite put his finger on. He was planning something. He was thinking something. Juice felt himself grow slightly cold when Chibs' gaze lingered so long and so suspiciously, but Chibs said nothing.

No one deigned it appropriate to stay much longer, to force the Ortiz family to continue playing host when they were already genuinely exhausted from the previous days. So, in less than an hour, everyone began piling out of the house and getting ready to go, filing out the door. Chibs, however, lingered to make sure he was the last one out. He paused to give Juice another long hug, and then turned to Denise, who had just put Sofia to lie down on the sofa, and hugged her tightly as well, kissing her forehead.

"Be safe," he said vaguely. "Wherever you're going."

And he strode out the door, leaving Juice and Denise to look at one another, completely stunned. Chibs knew that they were planning something. He knew that this might be the last time he saw them.

Hearts racing wildly, they watched as their driveway emptied and began rushing to shove clothes and other things from the house inside of duffel bags while Sofia slept. They were practically running into each other as they rushed around the house, sharing brief glances as though continually verifying that this was happening, that this was doing this.

It was only when the bags were in the trunk of the car and when Sofia was safely in her carseat, when they had started the car and were on there way out of Charming that Juice Ortiz truly believed.

"Babe," Denise said breathlessly. "Can I - can I call one person to say goodbye?"

"Nero."

"Yeah," Denise nodded, which Juice glimpsed in the rearview mirror. "I just -"

"I know," Juice nodded, fumbling in his seat and pulling the prepaid in his back pocket out for her to take. "This has at least a few minutes on it."

Denise smiled tearfully, taking the phone from Juice's hand and dialing Nero's cellphone number, hoping it was him who answered. When it was his voice and not Gemma's, she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Hello?"

"Nero," Denise said breathlessly. "I just -"

"I heard what happened. That mess in Reno, with Bobby," Nero said dolefully. "I'm sorry about that, chinita -"

"That's not why I called," Denise said, gulping gently. "I just... I wanted to say g'bye, Nero. And... and thank you."

"Goodbye?"

"We're leaving," Denise said simply - saying the words, acknowledging them, caused a brief smile to flash on both her face and Juice's. "We're - we're getting out of Charming. We're done."

There was a brief silence, and then a quiet chuckle.

"I'll be prayin' for you. You and Fifi and that idiot husband of yours," he laughed - as hard as it was to believe, the term idiot had strangely become one of endearment because of his closeness to Denise. "You tell 'im keep drivin'. Don't look back."

"We don't intend to," Denise assured with a smile. "I love you. G'bye."

And she clicked the phone shut, staring at the road ahead of them.

"Where are we headed?" Juice asked.

"I don't know yet," Denise nodded. " But I know you'll take care of us."

A/N's

And ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves some runaways! The next few chapters are going to be bouncing back and forth between a few storylines, so I'm trying to figure out how to structure them, but I'm hoping it won't take too long. I'll be updating 'Flown South' soon too.

The coming chapters of this story are going to have more balance between fluff and tragedy, but I know that I really need to write some fluff to balance it out. I'm rewriting a lot of it because the storyline has been really heavy - I want some happy stuff in this story too! So, stay tuned and be rewarded to some happy Juice/Denise! Until next time, cheers!