AN: Thank you, as always, for the lovely reviews and support. I appreciate all of it.

Then later in the evening I hear trumpets ring
I stretch out in the dark and I am listening
Studying the sadness in your perfect limbs
Move them under mine until they learn to blend
And I will keep repeating 'til they understand
My dove, my dove, my lamb

—'My Dove, My Lamb', Phosphorescent

It's May and almost the end of her junior year when Tara is called into the guidance counselor's office. She's not worried, not really; even with the three brief stints in county at her back her schoolwork hasn't been affected. She's not sure her teachers even know.

She gives two sharp raps on the open door and when Mr. Cameron looks up at her he smiles, almost too-wide.

"Come in!" he says, and she closes the door behind her when she does. Tara folds herself awkwardly in one of the uncomfortable chairs.

"There's a few things I wanted talk about with you. Your SAT scores came in," he says. "Fifteen-seventy. Tara, really, that's incredible. With your scores, with your grades, with your extracurriculars—you have a shot at your pick of schools."

"Yeah," she says, lamely. For the past few years she's known in a dispassionate sort of way what she's accomplished—she'll be valedictorian, probably, and she's thought about going to college, but she's never considered it with the urgency of imminent choice biting at her heels. It's been an idea, a fantasy, something to think of in the far-off while she gets her shit together now. But she's not sure she's done that. She's not sure she's ready.

"There's just one concern I have," says Mr. Cameron, and his face is serious. "You've had some trouble outside of school, haven't you?"

Tara feels her face drop, her cheeks go hot. "Sorry?" she says lamely.

"You have a record." He wields it bluntly, like the broad side of a weapon. He holds up a flimsy collection of paper, stapled together, and—no. That's not her face. That's not a booking photo. That's not the bullshit she's tried to put behind her. (Has she? Has she really tried? She spends more time with Jax, with the MC, than ever, even if she's avoided drinking to excess. She knows that's not the root.)

She opens her mouth, but no words come out. There's a buzzing in her brain, a heaviness at her temples, and the creeping chill of humiliation crawling up her spine. School is—school is not this. School is a safe place, a place where she doesn't think about what her boyfriend does when he's away from her, a place where she is in control, where everything comes easy and her teachers respect her. This isn't where Tara has to prove herself., and it's not where she feels ashamed like she does at night when there's no one to drown out the white noise of worry.

"But I don't have any—I don't have any convictions," she whispers, hating herself for the tears pooling in her eyes and the choked-rough quiver in her voice. Right now, in this moment, and maybe in all the other moments too, she is pathetic. "That matters, right?"

Mr. Cameron gives a heavy sigh. "I understand that. And you're right—you only have to report convictions on your applications. That doesn't make it a wise choice."

"I know—"

"Do you? Tara, say that the past is in the past. Say that none of this," he says, and slams a book on the stark evidence of her bad decisions, "matters. What do you do going forward?"

"I don't understand."

"You're seventeen. You have leeway. Kids get room to make mistakes. But soon you're not going to be a kid. Soon this will matter. Do you want to be making the same mistakes at eighteen? At twenty?"

"No," she says, quiet, like a child, and she watches his face go soft with sympathy.

"You are so smart," he says with real conviction. "I think you could do anything, and I want to help you do that. I am here to help you do that. But you have to want it." Mr. Cameron slides a thick stack of pamphlets across his desk. She takes them with shaking hands and sees that they're college brochures. She makes eye contact with him, just for a second, and she feels it like from on high when he says, "Straighten up, Tara."

Tara leaves school early; she only has AP Bio left and she could sleepwalk through that, and besides, she's too shaken to sit through class. She considers walking home, but that's a minefield she doesn't want to trip into, so she decides to go talk to Jax at TM.

The past few months with Jax have been—they've changed her. She thinks of him all the time, even when she's with him, even when he sleeps. She stares at his restless eyes under their waxen lids and she thinks of all the things he's dreaming of until she feels like she's seeing them through her eyes too. And it occurs to her that she doesn't know the half of what he does. That he's getting further from her but closer too. She doesn't know who he is when he's wearing that cut; he's changed from the outside in. Even so, there's a desperate pull between them now, as he grows into the club and she is growing into something else too, maybe, and he's not even aware. It is her own secret, and she has so many of them.

Tara has told him she wants to get out, but has he heard her? Maybe she hasn't said it loud enough to convince even herself. It must be easy for him, she thinks, to put her out of mind when he locks that church door behind him. She wishes she could do the same, if only to quiet her mind.

She turns the corner into the lot. A quick scan of the bays shows that business is booming, but she doesn't recognize any of the working mechanics as patched members. Just hangarounds, friends of the club. But she sees Gemma's silhouette in the office window, and steps up to it with little trepidation.

At first Gemma tolerated her, but she seems to like her now. Tara knows better than to voice her fears around Jax's devoted mother, so maybe that has something to do with it. She is the dutiful girlfriend, helping with family dinners, showing up to support the club on charity runs. Even if Jax thought she were serious about going away, he'd never tell his mother. For that, she's grateful: Gemma Teller-Morrow's affection is a tool, but her approval is a covenant, and it's one she would have broken a thousand times over if Gemma honest-to-God knew her.

"Hey, Gemma. Jax around?"

"Hi, baby," Gemma says, giving her a cool kiss on the cheek. "No. Boys aren't back yet."

The meaning doesn't register. "Back?"

"Ah," says Gemma, succinctly. "Shit. Jax didn't tell you?"

"Guess not." There's heat behind her eyes. Tears or anger—she doesn't know. She just wants to talk—she needs to talk—and Jax is gone. Again. And she knows that the conversation they have won't be a two-sided one. She'll tell him about Mr. Cameron, about the humiliation and the reckoning of it, and he will tell her nothing.

"Sort of a last-minute thing," Gemma says breezily. "They'll be back tonight, sweetheart, don't you worry. Why don't you stick around and help me with some of this paperwork."

It's an order, not a request, but Tara is surprised to find she doesn't mind. It's nice to be here, peaceful, with all this movement and life around her—it reminds her that being without Jax doesn't have to mean being alone.

Tonight turns into days.

Gemma doesn't seem worried at all, but of course she's more informed than Tara is. Tara, who isn't informed at all, because her piece of shit boyfriend doesn't tell her anything, like that he might completely drop off the grid with no warning. When she sees Donna, she finds out that Opie had at least told her they were going on a run, even if he hadn't shared any details. That makes her unreasonably upset, because as evident as the love between Donna and Opie is, she's always privately thought that she and Jax had something that surpassed that—that surpassed everything, really, with the way they know each other like they live in the same bodies. That makes her feel like a bitch, so she puts it away to commiserate with Donna about their unreliable, unpredictable boys.

Tara hardly sleeps; when she closes her eyes she sees Jax and his ubiquitous white tee gone scarlet with gushing blood.

Finally, after three days, Tara shows up early Saturday morning—so early she beats Gemma to the lot—and watches Gemma pull up and climb out of her Caddy with an aggrieved sigh. "Oh, come on, Bambi," she says, and snaps her fingers at Tara so that Tara follows her into the office. Gemma turns, hands on her hips, all reluctance. "Listen, they're okay. They ran into a little trouble in Nevada and Bobby got hurt. They've just been staying with him until he's okay to ride. They're safe up there with Jax's Uncle Jury. Probably having a lot better time than you and I are, sweetheart. Now, for Christ's sake, get some rest. You look like you haven't slept in a week."

"Sounds about right," Tara mutters.

Gemma's voice is uncharacteristically teasing, sweet without the bite of malice behind it. "You sound like a real old lady, you know that?" Tara whips her head up, surprised, but Gemma just slings an arm around her shoulder and leads her to the clubhouse. "Look, get yourself something to drink and I'll fix a room up for you. New sheets." She snorts. "No trace of booze and stale pussy, right?"

"Thanks," Tara says drily, but she lets Gemma pull her into her side in a hug, and she closes her eyes when Gemma presses her lips to her temple.

Tara wakes up feeling disconcerted. There's noise outside, and the light through the window is still blue, barely—she blinks until the neon digits on the clock resolve into something recognizable. Just past eight PM. Jesus. She'd slept nearly twelve hours, straight through the day.

She sits up, rubbing the bleariness out of her eyes, and tenses when she feels the weight shift next to her on the bed. She is shacked up at the clubhouse, after all, and she's afraid to see who's crawled into bed with her.

But of course it's Jax.

He's sleeping, looking as exhausted as she feels, and she feels her heart thrumming to see him again. It's like she'd forgotten him when he was gone, although of course that's ridiculous, but he seems changed and familiar all at once, laying here chastely above the covers in boxers and a t-shirt. Tara drinks him in, greedy, the slight lankness of his hair and the nasty bruise on his hip she can see where his shirt's ridden up making him foreign in his vulnerability.

She is mad at him, but oh, she loves every part of him, and the damaged parts that are a secret between them especially.

Tara lowers her mouth to his hip and presses her lips against his bruised skin. Jax is hot with sleep and maybe with fever but he comes alive at her touch, groaning and pulling her up to lie beside him. He rolls over, trapping her beneath him, still hazy but dropping a kiss on her jaw. He is heavy on top of her, a comforting weight.

"Don't do that to me again," Tara says, and is surprised when tears spring into her eyes. Maybe he can hear them in her voice, because he raises his head to look at her, and he seems shocked at the wetness on her cheeks.

"I won't." His voice is so low it sends a thrill through her. "I promise."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Jax kisses the tears away from her eyes, more gentle than he is usually. "Don't worry."

"I do worry. I worry all the time." She palms the bruise and digs the tips of her fingers in, and he hisses against her skin. "I worry about this. About you."

"I'm fine."

"I'm not."

Jax stills. He raises himself on his forearms, looming above her, a shadow she is comfortable in. "I worry about you," he says, very seriously.

Tara tilts her head. Her eyebrows knit together. "Do you?"

"If you get so far away I can't find you."

Her hands tense where they're splayed on his ribs. "I'm right where I've always been. Waiting for you."

"I know that ain't always gonna be enough." He dips his head into his neck; his voice is muffled but she feels the vibrations against her own throat. "Shit, Tara, you're all I think about. I count the hours 'til I see you. When I don't it feels like my goddamn heart's ripped open."

She is silent for a moment and then, into his hair, she says—quiet, teasing—"Says the guy with the heart defect."

Tara feels him shuddering against her and smiles; feeling his laughter is almost better than hearing it. She tugs his shirt from the hem and he helps her pull it off easy. She is relieved to see that, from a quick once-over, he's not hiding any more bruises, and she hooks one leg behind his knee and pulls him down. Jax's balance shifts and with a short, wordless exhalation he falls on top of her, in her arms again.

"I missed you so much," she says into the hot skin of his shoulder, feeling the sharp bone beneath it with her teeth. She can't believe the volatility of her own feelings, the weight of them. She'd missed him like he'd been gone months, like they'd turned into strangers, and she knows it's unhealthy to need someone this much but she's lost to it now. "You're the only person I wanted to talk to—"

"About what?" Jax is working her jeans down her hips and she kicks them off to help him. He looks at her, expectant, but she loves the wicked fire in his eye too much to snuff it out with worry. Tara grabs him by the back of the neck, delights in the heat of his skin and the feel of his hair caught between her fingers, and smiles at him. It doesn't escape her, the irony of it, that she has agonized over Jax and how he dances around her fears when all she wants is honesty between them, and here she is at the same place, sacrificing truth for the chance to be close with him again.

"I don't want to talk now," she says, and so they don't.