From the Flagstones

For as complicated as Tara's relationship with her mother had always been - even now, in death, what she felt for her mom was a tangled, jumbled mess, Tara had inherited more than just Grace's name and looks. Those things were simple. They were science. And, practically speaking, it made sense that Tara now lived in her mother's home, that she drove Grace's old 1995 Jeep Cherokee. As Grace's only living relative, who else could she have left her estate… for what it was, and Tara as a surgical resident, living and working in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world, had no choice but to take advantage of her mother's will. No, none of that surprised her. What did was the fact that, apparently, she also shared her mom's weakness for dangerous men.

Once Tara was through Hayward, traffic cleared out considerably, and her route seemed pretty straightforward. The last time she remembered being anywhere this remote was during a high school field trip up to Sacramento, the state capital disappointing when one had cut their teeth on adventures into Hayes Valley and the Mission District. But now, years later, she was appreciating the open road, especially when she turned off I-205 and started taking smaller, two lane state highways. Her mom's old SUV, now Tara's, didn't have a GPS, and she'd never considered buying one to plug into the car, because, usually, she went nowhere but back and forth to work, the maze that was San Francisco more familiar to Tara than even the next street over from her own in the town where she had been raised and now, once again, lived. So, when she did finally wander outside of the Bay, she relied upon gas station maps and an atlas that was even older than the Cherokee, tucked away in the pocket behind the passenger seat.

For as indirectly influential as Charming and the utterly foreign world it represented had been upon Tara's literal existence, she had no idea what she was driving into that morning. She told herself that, because for most people who weren't coming off a combined 24 hour shift, the work day was just beginning, and because it was off a main drag and not accessed only by a labyrinth of arboreal themed side streets, Tara was headed towards Teller-Morrow, not Jax's house - both addresses having been provided to her by the man she sought himself should she need to get in contact with him for any reason. But the truth of the matter was that she was curious. Tara's mom had loved and been left by a man who chose a motorcycle club over the chance for a future and family, and, now, Tara herself was somehow involved with a man who was perhaps even more deeply entrenched in the lifestyle than the father she'd never known and, after what she'd found out about him, never wanted to ever even meet.

Some things seemed just too obvious not to expect. There would be bikes, and leather, and the smell of exhaust, oil, and gas would blanket everything. Tara pictured everyone walking around with a cigarette in their mouths. She wasn't sure if Jax smoked. Thinking back on their night together, she realized that there had been a suspicious lack of any scent on his clothes, his hair, his breath, his skin - like he had actively sought to disguise any potential identifying markers… which made sense given why and how he had entered her life. But Tara's mom had been a social smoker - someone who, when alone or around non-smokers, didn't even think about lighting up, but as soon as she entered a bar, there was a cigarette between her lips, the lighter she kept in her purse a rasping metronome to sound every quarter hour. From what Tara had been able to piece together of her mom's life prior to Tara's arrival - something Grace absolutely refused to talk about with her daughter, the habit was another party favor from her time with Alexander Trager, the biggest, of course, being a baby.

Tara figured that the garage would be loud. With Harleys constantly coming and going, the tools of the automotive trade serving as the repair shop equivalent of elevator music, and booming, boisterous voices to match what had to be the larger than life personalities that made up Jax's world, she thought driving onto the Teller-Morrow lot would feel like ramming her Jeep into a wall of sound. As inland as Charming was, she knew that the air itself would feel differently - both thicker without the cleansing breezes off of the bay and ocean beyond and thinner, too, without the constant, threatening humidity and shrouding fog. It would be warmer as well, though Tara wasn't sure if the spike in temperature could solely be blamed on Central Valley. Her reason for being there and the person she was going there to see both possessed the ability to make her sweat.

But, most of all, Tara envisioned just how noticeable she'd suddenly be when she pulled onto the Teller-Morrow lot, how awkward. In an old but immaculate Jeep Cherokee and still wearing her scrubs - having not taken the time to change into street clothes before leaving the hospital and making her trek to Jax's home town, not only was she an outsider to the area, but she was also obviously not a part of what she presumed to be a very insulated and unwelcoming culture. Although she preferred to blend and not bleed through when in any environment but a classroom or operating theater, Tara wasn't so much intimidated or uneasy about the uncertainty she was driving towards but simply impatient. She needed to see Jax, and she wanted to sate her curiosity, but she had no desire to become the curiosity herself.

It was pushing 10:00, and Tara had been awake for 30 straight hours when she turned into the garage's deep parking lot. The first thing she noticed was that it seemed like the space was divided into opposing sides: bikes versus everything else, two versus four or more wheels - the West Side Story of motor vehicles. Despite the fact that business was obviously busy, Tara found an open spot and parked, climbing out of her SUV before she had a chance to second guess her impulse to drive to Jax versus simply calling him. Leaving her bag in the Jeep, Tara's feet made quick work of the pavement which separated her from the shop's office, her gaze zig-zagging back and forth around the fenced-in space. Despite the fact that Teller-Morrow was a business, Tara found herself considering whether the fence was meant to keep those who didn't belong out… or those who did from getting away and leaving.

Despite the fact that there was no one else waiting for the receptionist's attention, Tara stood in front of the crowded, messy desk for several minutes before she was even acknowledged. As her irritation grew, so, too, did the list of her observations. The woman was older than she was - perhaps her mother's age or maybe even a few years older. Attractive yet certainly not warm or even pretty, there was a hardness about the woman that made Tara think she was associated with more than just the garage. She wore her makeup thick, her clothes thin, and Tara could see at least two tattoos. The receptionist was intimidating in the way that all things foreign can be unnerving, but she also presented as entirely predictable, the definition of biker chick.

After shifting and clearing her throat more than once, Tara broke down and demanded the woman's attention. "Excuse me?"

Lackadaisical, the older woman raised both an annoyed countenance and a heavily ringed hand with a smoldering cigarette grasped between two fingers as she responded with, "what?"

"I'm looking for Jax Teller. Could you tell me…"

Tara was rudely cut off by a snort and a smirk. After taking a drag from her smoke and then stabbing it out in an overflowing ashtray, the receptionist taunted, "yeah, you and all of the other pussy from here to Lodi."

Bristling in offense, Tara felt her spine snap to attention as she challenged, "you did not just say that to me." She was indignant yet calm despite having been insulted.

"Look, I don't have the time nor the inclination to help you get laid." Looking Tara up and down, the woman added, "though if anyone looks to be in need of a good fuck, it's you."

The conversation was so surreal and inappropriate that Tara decided to just let it be, to not engage. Besides, she'd already pulled the proverbial tiger's tail once that day already, and it wasn't even noon yet. In the back of Tara's mind, though, she did find it almost amusing that, in the span of a few hours, she'd gone from the Whore of Babylon to the hymenally challenged. Aiming for placating, Tara explained, "I just need to speak with him."

"Bitch, I am not his goddamn secretary."

Given where the older woman was sitting, Tara was pretty sure that's exactly what she was, but she refrained from saying this out loud. Instead, she simply nodded. "I see. Well, in that case," and she was already turning around on the heels of her shoes, preparing to walk out of the claustrophobic, filthy office when she tossed over her shoulder, "I'll just wait for Jax at his house, then."

The scraping of a chair being pushed back suddenly and then colliding with the wall behind it made Tara's steps pause. "My son doesn't know any nurses, and he sure as hell doesn't invite them back to his house."

With her back still towards Jax's mother - his mom!, Tara allowed her shock at the revelation to wash across her features, though she made damn sure that she kept her tone unaffected. "Well, I'm not a nurse."

"Making house calls then, Doc?"

Reaching out for the door knob, Tara offered one last, parting remark. "Considering the fact that I'm a surgeon, you better hope not."

Without giving the older woman a chance to insult her further, Tara hightailed it outside. As soon as she crossed over the threshold, she saw Jax come out of the lot's other building across the way. Realizing that she had made a mistake in coming to Teller-Morrow, Tara practically sprinted towards him; Jax, noticing her immediately, became visibly worried and concerned. By the time she was close enough to him that she could have reached out and touched him if she wanted to, if she had dared to, Jax was already touching her - an arm wrapping around her hips to pull her into and against his body. He stood at a right angle to her, his upper body curved down and towards her in what felt like an attempt to shield her. His entire posture and his body language read as territorial.

"What is it? What's wrong?" Despite the rapid fire nature of his questions and the no nonsense expression of his worry and concern, Tara could see - and feel - that, underneath everything else, he was pleased to see her. "What are you doing here? Are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine. Nothing's wrong," she was quick to reassure him. For some reason, Tara sensed that it was important that no one else there find out what existed between them. What secrets they shared. So, she spoke in generalities, not specifics. "I just had an… interesting visit this morning at work, and I thought you should know about it."

With a playful lift of his brows, Jax pointed out, "you could've called."

Tara was highly tempted to flirt back with him… which was unexpected, because banter of the non-insulting, non-competitive nature wasn't exactly her go-to. Plus, that wasn't why she was there. So, instead, Tara fell back on what was familiar: misdirection and denial. "I felt it only fair that I see a part of your world for myself, considering that you know everything about mine."

Although Tara's face was turned so that she could give Jax her full attention, her body and profile still faced what she was realizing was the clubhouse. Peripherally, she had noticed other guys come outside after Jax, and she could sense that his mother had left her office, trailing after Tara's steps, but she wasn't aware of the intense scrutiny they were attracting or the stares leveled in their direction, because Tara's attention was completely focused on the physical presence of the man whose spector had been haunting her waking thoughts and sleeping dreams for weeks.

"Not everything," Jax grinned, licking his lips and his gaze dropped quickly down her body before relocking once more on her own. "Not even close to…"

A desperate, unnerved voice calling out her mother's name, "Grace?!," shattered the bubble Jax and Tara had effortlessly created for themselves… just as it shattered any illusions Tara might have still been holding onto in regards to the stranger who had fathered her.

She wasn't a violent woman, and her chosen profession was one of healing and care, not harm. Yet, when she heard that voice say that name, Tara wanted to lash out and physically hurt someone the way her heart felt utterly shattered in that moment. Even with Kohn, Tara's precautions - learning self-defense and carrying a gun - had been about protection, not a need to inflict pain. Her preference would have been to never confront her stalker, for him to have never become her attacker. When he forced her hand, Tara had been saved from having to make that ultimate decision by Jax, and a part of Tara knew that she wasn't just protecting Jax because, by killing Kohn, he had stopped him from raping her but also because his actions had prevented Tara from ever having to find out if she was capable of intentionally wounding another human being.

But now she knew. As she stood frozen across the lot from the man who had in part given her life - a man who, up until that moment, she had never wondered what they had in common or what they shared, because she had been so very much like her mother, and, yet, now she had to think that perhaps this is what Alexander Trager had given her: this, his capability of savagery, and for the first time in her life, Tara wanted to injure. She wanted to discover his weakest point and attack it. In her mind's eye, she saw herself walk across the pavement that separated them and slap the ranting and raving madman across the face. She saw herself claw at those pale blue eyes that she knew had haunted her mother until her dying day, and she could even imagine reaching for the knife Jax wore at his side, calmly approaching her father, and slitting his throat, so he'd never be able to say her mother's name again.

All this time - weeks of knowing what he'd done, and she'd never put the pieces together that her father's crimes weren't against his enemies but against his own. When Jax first came to her with revenge on his mind and in his heart, he wasn't seeking to assuage the pain caused by a rival but by a brother, by a man he had been taught to see as his family. Tara's father hadn't just murdered any woman in cold blood; he'd killed the wife of his brother, his niece and nephew's mother. Whereas Tara had already realized that she didn't fear for her life from Jax, that she trusted that he wouldn't hurt her, she now found herself not just grateful for his restraint but impressed by it. She admitted that it was odd to admire someone for not wanting to kill you, but there she was, craving violence against her own father because she was now aware of the full extent of his crimes, and she'd never even met Jax's best friend and his best friend's wife, let alone loved them.

While it took several other men - other brothers, Tara now realized - to hold her father back, she had unwittingly reached down to grasp tightly onto one of Jax's hands with both of her own. Even after realizing that she was holding onto him for strength and support, for comfort and control, Tara didn't let go. She wasn't sure what the instinct to turn to Jax meant, and, frankly, she wasn't in the right frame of mind nor did she have the headspace to contemplate her own actions or needs in that moment. So, she just went with it. She trusted the impulse, and she embraced it, doubling down.

In a strangled, choked voice she didn't recognize as her own, Tara pleaded with Jax, "get me out of here?"

He didn't argue with her, and he didn't hesitate. With their hands still twined together, Jax turned and led Tara wordlessly to her car. By that gesture, Tara knew that he was willing to go with her, that he would drive her SUV and leave his bike - one of many lined up and parked on the opposite side of the lot, but, suddenly, she didn't want to be confined. Tara had never been on the back of a motorcycle before - had never even considered it let alone wanted the experience, but even without that first hand knowledge, she recognized a need for the freedom bubbling up inside of her. Plus, she wanted to go fast - to run away from Teller-Morrow, from the MC, from her father, from the self-realizations she had made that morning as quickly as she could, and something told her that nothing and no one could help her escape faster than Jax and his Harley.

Just as Jax was about to reach out and open her passenger door for her, she squeezed the hand she was still holding and tentatively, quietly asked, "can we take your bike instead?"

A boyish, excited grin lit up his face. He wasn't ignorant of her feelings in that moment or dismissing them. The smile was just pure, innocent joy that he couldn't contain - a joy rooted in the pleasure of getting to share with her something he loved so much. He didn't need to actually answer her request; his compliance was already obvious, but he did so anyway. "Yeah, of course. Let me just…," and then he was turning around once again, getting into her car.

Within a matter of seconds, Jax had handed Tara her bag and the relevant contents of her glovebox, including surreptitiously slipping the gun she still carried into her purse. He then rounded the Cherokee and removed her license plate, handing it to her as well. While Tara slipped that rectangular piece of metal into her bag, Jax moved to the front of her car and did the same thing with her front plate as well. Finally, as she was placing it, too, in her bag, Jax pulled his knife from his sheath, asking her, "do you have any intention of selling your car?"

"I'm going to drive it until it dies," she answered him, beyond confused by both his actions and his question. With a nod of acknowledgement, Jax opened her driver's side door, popped the hood, and then she heard the grating sound of metal scratching metal. Unable to help herself, she queried, "what are you doing?"

"Charming's Chief of Police is a friend of the club." While the rest of his explanation went unsaid, Tara could fill in the blanks for herself. If she didn't want her father or anyone associated with him to find her, then Jax needed to get rid of any means of identification from her vehicle, including obscuring her Jeep's VINs. After all, what was a little misdemeanor when he'd already killed for her?

"No wonder he can get away with murder," she quipped, though her words and tone lacked any sense of humor or laughter.

As Jax closed the SUV's hood with force and came back around to where she stood, waiting for him, he glumly agreed with her. "Yeah…."

It was only then that Tara realized, sometime during their preparations to leave, the garage and the lot had become otherwise completely still and silent. Pivoting to reface their shocked audience, she was mainly confronted by angry glares or bewilderment. The one face that stood out to Tara, though, the one face that showed something different was her father's. He looked… devastated. No longer trying to escape the men holding him back but now depending upon them to hold him up, Alexander Trager - the man she knew everyone else thought of and referred to as Tig, but she just couldn't - was pale, almost waxy looking under the assault of his horror, regret, and sadness. To Tara, his face no longer looked human or alive but, instead, resembled a death mask. She found the sight disturbingly gratifying.

It was one thing for Tara to reach out to Jax when in a state of shock; it was a whole different matter to do so again now that she had at least absorbed the information that her father had murdered one of his own… even if she hadn't yet accepted that knowledge. Would she ever truly be able to come to terms with such shame? But damning the consequences of her actions, she did so anyway. Tara slipped her left hand into Jax's right, braiding their fingers together as they walked side by side towards his bike. The moment felt like a statement, like she was proclaiming to his friends and family that she stood with Jax, that she was on his side, that she was with him. In making such a bold declaration, Tara was surprised to find just how right it felt and just how little she cared about what such an assertion would mean to her father and his mother, to his club and these people who were utter strangers to her.

After stowing Tara's bag for her, Jax straddled his bike first, reaching out once settled to help Tara climb on behind him. He gave her his helmet to wear. Under any other circumstances, she would have argued that he needed one, too, even if it meant they couldn't take his motorcycle. But it wasn't any other circumstances, and she just wanted to get the hell out of there already. Besides, it felt like they had blurred past any modicum of safety the moment Jax found out about her existence. Once she was situated, Tara wrapped her arms low around Jax's chest, only for Jax to drag them further down to his waist and tighten her hold.

"Do you want me to follow them," someone yelled out, startling Tara into looking over into the crowd of bikers. Jax didn't react, but Tara found herself curious as to what the response to the offer would be and who would provide it.

After several seconds, it was Jax's mother who spoke, her narrowed, dark, and dangerous eyes never once leaving Tara's face. "No, baby," she told the young man with skull tattoos. Skull tattoos. In that moment, for what was certainly not the first time nor would it prove to be the last, Tara found herself questioning just what in the hell she had gotten herself into with Jax. Or, more accurately, what had he gotten her into. "It's not a knock against your riding; you just weren't born here. The only person who might have been able to keep up with Jax, to track him, was Opie."

And Opie, everyone in that lot knew - including Tara, was dead. The question was how many of those same people realized that, by murdering Donna, Opie's wife, it was Tara's father who was responsible for the death of Jax's best friend. Judging by the various reactions she had witnessed that morning, Tara would wager that not many knew the truth.

But they were starting to become suspicious.

Because of her.

/

When they first left the garage, they turned west, but it didn't take Tara long to lose track of where they were at and where they were going. Granted, she was unfamiliar with Charming and its fellow interior California towns, but she wasn't thinking in terms of street names or even city lines. While Tara would never claim an internal compass, she also wasn't hopeless when it came to her sense of direction. She could read a map, and she knew enough about the skies to pinpoint the major constellations and ballpark the time of day by the position of the sun. But the stars weren't out, and riding on the back of Jax's bike, it felt like they were driving, not in circles, but in some complicated, intricate shape. When they were finally finished, their route would form a mandela invisible to the eye.

At first, Tara wondered if, despite Jax's mother's words, he had feared they were being followed. But as the minutes compiled together into hours, Tara never once caught sight of someone following them, nor did she hear the telltale rumbling of another motorcycle getting too close. Her next suspicion was that Jax was afraid of what would happen when they finally stopped. Maybe he didn't want to hear about what had brought her to his doorstep, or perhaps he didn't want to know what came after her confession. So, in avoidance, he would push his bike as far as Tara and the bike itself would allow him to. But the explanation that made the most sense to her was that Jax was more like her than either of them had realized, and he was running, too. And now that they were running together, he'd keep them as far away from everything and everyone else for as long as he possibly could.

With that idea in mind - a decidedly romantic one that normally Tara would dismiss but, instead, found herself embracing the frivolity, she let go of everything else but Jax. Leaning against his shoulder - her body loose and relaxed, flowing with Jax whether taking a turn or pushing the bike's limits on a straightaway, Tara's lids fell to half mast, and she floated between the adrenaline of wakefulness and the peace and serenity of rest. It was the most relaxed she had been in weeks - since those all too brief moments of sleep she stole after losing herself in Jax's body, his focus, his tenderness, his virility, his protection, his… everything.

Eventually, she felt the tone of their ride change, become less. Although Tara didn't move an inch - not even after the motorcycle came to a complete stop, Jax lowering the kickstand as they idled, she observed enough of their surroundings to notice that they were exactly nowhere. Jax twisted around as much as he could with Tara still wrapped around him and his own body still wrapped around the machine that ran and ruled his life, but he didn't say anything. He just waited, feeling her out.

He had told her that, while he wouldn't come to her again, he wouldn't turn her away either if she came to him. Well, here she was. Tara had sought Jax out, and then she had asked him to leave with her, and he had - no questions asked. Wherever they went next - whether together or apart, that, too, was entirely up to Tara, and she knew that, whatever her decision, it would have consequences far more reaching than just when and where their ride would come to its eventual and inevitable end.

"We need to pick up another helmet."

Smirking, Jax teased her, "that's where you want to start this?"

Tara finally lifted her head, staring him down. "No, I want to start this in bed. My bed. But to get there, we have to drive back to the Bay, and the last thing we need is to get pulled over, because you're not wearing a helmet. San Francisco - even Concord - isn't Charming."

"It's just a fine, Babe."

"No, it's your parking ticket." At his puzzled expression, Tara didn't launch into an explanation of how the Son of Sam had been caught but, instead, detailed her unpleasant yet not entirely unexpected visit at the hospital that morning. "Two SFPD uniforms dropped by Parnassus this morning to have a little chat with me. Not only did they already talk to my neighbor who informed them that Kohn had been hanging around my house on the regular; she also told them about my biker boyfriend, and they're extremely interested in talking with you. I told them that we only slept together once and that I didn't know your name. If you get pulled over for not wearing a helmet with me on the back of your bike, the police might realize who you are; if you go home with me… like I want you to, they'll know I lied… even if only by omission, and they'll definitely find out who you are."

Although Jax's reply came almost immediately, Tara could hear the sincerity ringing from his voice - his answer obviously something he had thought about even before it became an actual possibility. "Let the cops come after me. I'd rather risk them than not be with you." Before she could second guess his declaration, Jax continued, "since you came to me, I'm hoping that means that even a small part of you cares. And I can work with that."

He wasn't wrong in his presumptions, but Jax didn't wait for Tara to either offer confirmation or to deny his reasoning. In one seamless step, he turned back around, lifted the motorcycle's kickstand, and sent them careening off down the road once more. This time, she didn't need a map, or road signs, or the still hours away night sky to tell her where they were going. If they weren't headed west yet, they would be soon. Because Jax was taking them exactly where they both wanted to go.

As improbable as it was given how and why they had met, Tara didn't just find herself attracted to Jax. No, she also liked him, she trusted him, and she felt safe with him. She cared. She cared more than what was advisable and more than what made sense. Since the moment she had walked out of her house and away from him weeks before, Tara's mind was never far from Jax. If she was honest with herself… and she always tried to be - it was the one way she never allowed herself to run, Tara had just been waiting for an excuse to find Jax. She fought the pull she felt towards him for as long as she could, but where she was in that moment - on the back of Jax's bike, holding onto him as he finally drove them back to her bed - had always seemed inevitable. There was even a small part of Tara that wondered what could have been had she been raised in Charming and within the club with him, because it was starting to feel like she was meant to know Jax Teller.