Author's Note: Thank you again for all your reviews. As I always, I remain awed by your kindness! A special thank you to givelovesolong for your particularly lovely review—in the midst of my bout with writers' block your extraordinarily sweet feedback gave me the boost I needed.

This chapter brought to you by one of my favorite clues into Tara's backstory: "I'm not eighteen years old anymore, Gemma. My cat-fighting days are behind me."

Take me, take me back to your bed
I love you so much that it hurts my head
I don't mind you under my skin
I'll let the bad parts in, the bad parts in

—"Degausser", Brand New

Dating Jax Teller, Tara discovers, is not unlike not dating Jax Teller. There are perks like his easy charm working in her favor and the frankly amazing things he can do with his hands, but mostly dating Jax Teller is the same as not dating him, because she's starting to think you don't need to be his girlfriend to be on the receiving end of his charm. Or his hands. It's not that she worries about other girls, but that nothing has really changed since they've started dating, and she can't help but think that something is supposed to have changed. Tara has had crushes and kisses and fleeting flirtations before but Jax is her first real relationship and sometimes she wonders if she's just going about everything all wrong.

Which makes it hard to sit and listen to the bullshit about how she's not good enough for Jax.

The whispers follow her at school, have ever since Jax cornered her outside of AP Bio and laid a kiss on her right there, and mostly they're more of a nuisance than anything. The hardest part is going from being ignored to hypervisible. Even her teachers treat her differently. But since she was young and the clerk at the drugstore gave her mother's bruised eye a look that was more judgmental than sympathetic, Tara's known that most people's opinions don't mean shit.

So when she walks into the bathroom and Emily Gonder gives her a look from the top of her head to the bottom of her shoes and says to her friends, like she's not even there, "I give it three weeks before he gets bored," Tara doesn't care. Not really. Not even when she rolls her eyes and shoves past Emily hard enough that she stumbles back into a stall's door and hisses something nasty at Tara. She doesn't care at all.

Really.

Really, the issue is probably that they haven't had sex.

It's only been a little over a month now and it's not like Jax pressures her but he's Jax. The worst part is that she wants to, really wants to, especially because it's not like they haven't done anything else—but every time he goes to pull at the hem of her shirt Tara remembers the bruises there, the bruises that are always there, and she can't help it. She freaks. In a panicky way that screams 'severely disturbed' more than 'not ready'. She doesn't blame him for being confused, especially when she's the initiator, but there's nothing she can do. There are two sides of her—the Tara that's growing up and the Tara that's still a little girl tasked with keeping her family's secrets and shame shadowed—and they are at war.

"You should come to the party tonight," Donna says over the phone. Tara is sitting on her bed, phone wedged between her shoulder and ear while she coats her nails in blue polish. She figures Jax will like it—SAMCRO colors. He hasn't brought her around the club too much but that has as much to do with her apprehension as it does any hesitance on his part.

"You think? Jax mentioned it, but…"

"Yeah, totally. You know the Hales' house opens up to all that land…it's a great spot."

"I just can't believe Jax and Opie would willingly go to a party at David Hale's house."

Donna's laugh comes through bright and easy. "They wouldn't miss the chance to start shit with him in his own house."

Tara feels a little bad for David, honestly. He's a nice enough guy, if not a little too upstanding in that 50s All-American way. Sometimes she half expects him to offer her his letterman jacket or invite her to the diner for a sodapop. But he's always been kind to her, even when Jax is hovering over her shoulder insulting him. She used to wonder why he never stood up for himself, but soon enough she was able to decipher the meaning of that glinting look in his eyes and the slight clench of his jaw.

He didn't think Jax was worth it.

So she figures he probably won't take Jax's bait tonight and, really, what the hell—it's not like she hasn't earned a good night.

"Think you could give me a ride? My dad's out of town, took the Cutlass."

"No problem. See you in two hours?"

"Yeah, thanks. See you."

Tara hangs up the phone and when she's done with her shower and has dried her hair and pulled it back into a low ponytail, she stares into her closet, considering. It's still warm outside so she pulls on a pair of cut-off shorts and a faded Doors shirt that had belonged to her mother years ago. Her mom had always had a thing for Jim Morrison.

Tara thinks she probably would have liked Jax too.

The thought fills her with a sadness that's both quiet and all encompassing in its strength. She's thinking about what her mother would have said about Jax and suddenly she misses her so much it hurts, so much that her heart restricts in protest at the pain that fills it. Tara doesn't care what her mom would have said about Jax: if she would like him, like Tara suspects, or if she would hate him and his cockiness and warn Tara off of him. She doesn't care. She just wants her here.

A quick honk outside signals Donna's arrival, so Tara shoves her feet quickly into her favorite pair of worn-in cowboy boots and gives the picture of her mother on her bookshelf one last parting glance. "Love you," she whispers, and hopes that she can hear her.

The party is okay. She and Donna meet up with the boys soon after getting there and they spend most of their time in the backyard, taking advantage of the free beer and sneaking joints when David's not around. Tara's gone off to the bathroom for a minute and when she comes out David is hanging around, looking serious.

"Hey," she says slowly. "Good party."

"Thanks." He pauses, shuffles his feet. "You here with Jax?"

Tara cocks her head sideways at him. "Well, he's my boyfriend, so…"

"You're too good for him." The words come out all in a rush, like his mouth his incapable of holding them all in. "My old man's a judge and if you knew what I did about the club, Tara…it's bad news. You shouldn't get yourself mixed up in it."

First she feels annoyed. She likes David, but they're not really friends, and he doesn't know enough about her or her life to give her advice on it. But his concern is, in a strange way, touching.

"I appreciate it," Tara says carefully, "but I'm dating Jax. Not the club."

David stares at her and he looks sad and serious and suddenly old. She wonders what it is that he knows about the club. What his father's passed on to him—if it's bullshit or if David knows any truths that she doesn't.

"I hope it stays that way," he tells her. "For your sake."

Tara looks after him for a second before starting off, feeling more melancholy. She's almost made it back to Jax and the others when she feels someone collide with her back.

"Sorry," she says automatically and turns around to give whoever it is an apologetic look. When she sees Emily with that smug look on her face the apology is forgotten. She rolls her eyes and turns back around.

"You're a real rude bitch, you know that?"

Tara levels her with a look of disbelief. "What?"

"I got you a drink and you didn't even say thank you."

Clearly Emily is in the mood for some sort of verbal catfight that Tara couldn't be less interested in. "Whatever you say," she says dispassionately, moving to leave.

"Don't leave without your drink," says Emily, and throws a cupful of beer in Tara's face. For one moment she stares at Emily and blinks through the alcohol dripping from her eyelashes and then she processes the beer soaking through the front of her shirt. Her mother's shirt.

"You stupid bitch," Tara says. She has half a second to savor the appearance of fear on Emily's face before her fist cracks her nose and sends her down to the ground. Tara climbs on top of her and straddles her, keeping her down. It's not like she's ever fought anyone before so there's no technique guiding her here, just a blinding rage that's directing her to hurt. She feels Emily's hands clawing under her shirt and her nails dragging across her skin but hardly registers the pain. Then there's someone pulling her up by her arms even as she tries to kick out of their grip. But the hands are gentle enough that she knows immediately, without looking, that it's Jax so she lets him pull her away. As they go she takes in Emily's face, the tear tracks, the blood leaking from her nose, and spits, "Talk shit to me again and I'll finish it."

"Jesus Christ," she hears Jax say under his breath. But he's laughing while he pulls her into an empty room. If she's not mistaken, he sounds a little proud.

"My little hellraiser," Jax says good-naturedly. He's inspecting her back, where Emily's nails had caught at her skin, ripped across it while trying to fight her off like some twisted lovers' embrace. His hands skim over her skin and Tara hisses. "Shit," he says, "I didn't know she got you that good."

But it's not the scratches that hurt; it's the bruises his knuckles are pressed into. And suddenly Tara doesn't care. She just doesn't care. She's just fought someone and she feels like she's been fighting her whole life, keeping this secret, and Tara is so exhausted she thinks she could cry. Suddenly it's not the shame that's the hardest part; it's the lying. So she straightens her shoulders up and pulls a blanket round them and steels herself and mutters, "She didn't."

"I know you're tough," Jax says, "but your back's all fucked up, babe."

Tara stares forward out the window, out into the street, through the windows of the house across the street where a woman is sitting in front of a television. She watches the smoke curl up off of her cigarette and feels a strange sense of disconnect, a slowing of time, like her soul is clawing itself up out from her body and filling the space around it and Tara is just drifting up into the air with the seams of her body torn open. "Yeah, I know. She didn't do it."

She's not looking at Jax but she can feel him tense. His hand falls still on her shoulders. She feels the tips of his fingers draw up with his clenching knuckles. "The hell do you mean?"

"My dad isn't overprotective." Tara says it quickly but hears the hollowness in her own voice. Jax is silent for a moment that seems to drag on interminably, and when he finally speaks his voice is flinty.

"How long?"

"He used to take it out on my mom, but since…" she trails off.

"Holy shit," Jax says slowly. And it's insane but she feels gratified to hear it, that note of shock and rage brimming beneath the surface, because after years of bearing it alone she can't even describe how relieving it is to have someone else acknowledge the weight of it. She knows with the way he's looking at her now that he's seeing her with new eyes. But it doesn't scare her. Because for the first time she can see what she is.

Strong.

"I'll kill him."

"Jax," she says quietly.

"I ain't gonna let him hurt you, Tara—"

"You can't do anything about it." She shrugs one of her shoulders half-heartedly. "I'll be eighteen in less than three years, Jax. I'll be able to go to college, get away."

"And in the meantime, what? You'll let him whale on you?"

She leans into his chest. Tara can hear his heart beating, the reassuring thump of it, fast and strong. "It's worse now. She died this month. It'll ease up…it always does."

Finally, Jax says, "All right."

"Jax," she says again. She feels old and young and scared and brave. She feels like a mess but when she's with Jax it all makes sense, all those warring parts of her. Jax looks down at her and she watches his face change in a million different ways when she says, "Take me home."

In her bed he undresses her with a reverence she didn't know he possessed and kisses every bruise. She's not ashamed of any of them. Tara comes with her mouth against his neck and whispering I love you I love you I love you into his salt-soaked skin. It's the first time—the night is full of them. When it's over she lays splayed against his chest with his hands playing at the tangles of her hair. And Jax says, in that quiet, straightforward way of his that makes everything sound a little more poetic than words alone could, "You're the first person I've ever loved." He pauses; Tara feels her heart stop. "I'm going to love you for the rest of my life."

Tara knows the feeling.