The realtor phoned her with an offer. She would have preferred to meet him at her office in St. Thomas. It had respectability and with her lab coat on and stethoscope around her neck she had the authority to muddle through just about anything, without tearing herself into small pieces. But he told her it was time-sensitive paperwork. She could not stall him, so he came to the house. She attempted to dry her wet hair before he arrived, put ice packs on her cry-swollen eyes, press gently at the bruised skin around the white bandage.
Standing again in the clammy bathroom, she studiously avoided her reflection this time. She could not help but remember combing out her hair, standing glistening wet and nude, and how he had come up behind her, the dark specter of desire and male lust in the mirror, surprising the breath out of her. The shock of that had electrified each one of her nerve endings. He must have known because he moved quickly, without pause, slipping his arms around her waist, steadying himself on the sink, pushing her hard into the porcelain, her thighs bore blue bruises for days, fisting his cock and pressing himself into her body, grunting against her spine, and she had exploded around him. Then she raised her lowered gaze to the mirror and watched him come to his own completion, his eyes closed tight and his mouth smiling against the flesh of her shoulder.
She began to shake, grabbing for a washcloth, and sat on the lid of the commode pressing the cold fabric to her eyes. She would not cry anymore.
With multiple signatures and initialing, she sold the house her mother and father had bought before life unraveled them both, as though they were nothing more than thin thread wrapped on skeletal spools. She didn't want to touch another human being but the realtor shook her hand, all jagged shark-toothed grin, and then he was in his Prius and gone. She wanted nothing more than to walk through the house and smash every single window to throat-slicing shards. But she didn't.
Instead, she got the bottle of expensive single malt, and a half-empty pack of his brand stashed behind the toaster, and sat in the backyard drinking and smoking. She stumbled back into the house and pulled a bedroll out of the closet and returned to the backyard where she lay down, curled around her injured heart, and fell, like a body falling from a bridge, into a drunken slumber.
Her cell was ringing. With a heartbeat as slow as a funeral drum, she read his name on the screen.
"Filip?" she asked, her voice shaking with trepidation.
"No, Tara. It's Jax."
"Jax?"
"You need to come down to the clubhouse and get Chibs."
"What's happened? Is he okay?" Her voice became a broken whisper. "Please tell me he's okay."
"He's going to be fine. But you need to take him home. Are you coming?"
"Yes, of course. Yes. I'm on my way."
The phone went dead in her hand.
Her head was pounding, her mouth a dreadful dry tomb, her veins filled with uncomfortably hot blood. She swallowed two painkillers, drained the drinking glass once, twice, three times. Avoided her reflection and wondered if she might be walking into a trap. She narrowed her eyes, thinking about this. Back in her bedroom, she opened her panty drawer and fished out the small handgun in the back. Loaded. The weight of it in her hand a frightening thing, it wanted her to hurt someone, it was a steel promise made in the darkest part of her soul. She shivered and shoved it back into the corner of the drawer slamming it shut. The note on the bureau slipped and lay flat on the surface. She pulled it towards her with shaking fingertips.
She read it, squinting, read it again and then smiled. She felt simultaneously a fool and elated.
If SAMCRO was setting a trap for her, they would soon see the terrible damage a captured she-wolf could inflict if her mate was threatened.
She opened the drawer and tucked the gun into the waistband of her jeans.
She pulled into the Teller-Morrow lot, parking the Cutlass beside the clubhouse. It was so different and yet so very much the same. Two men she didn't know were sitting at the picnic table outside the front door. Inside, the lights were low. A man raised his hand when he saw her and she walked towards the group of them beside the bar. It was Kozik and Trager. Chibs was seated on a bar stool and Kozik was holding a blood-soaked rag to his face, Tig had what appeared to be an ice pack on his neck and with his other hand splay-fingered on Chibs' forehead, was tipping his head back.
Both men nodded at her and she stood very still, taking deep controlling breaths. "God, tell me it's not a gunshot wound." Trager shook his head. "Is it a laceration? Teeth? Nose? What?"
Kozik pumped his free hand at her, palm to the floor, the universal signal for dial it down.
"Tara's here," Tig leaned down and told Chibs. He was answered with a low grunt and an exhalation of pain.
She moved forward quickly then, reaching for his knee. His hand came up and found hers and squeezed hard enough to hurt.
"Let me see," she told Kozik and he lifted the rag. "Ouch," she winced. It was a broken nose.
"It won't stop bleeding," Kozik told her, lowering the rag again.
"Well, the ice was a good idea. Is that ice?" she asked Tig, who nodded. "We may need to set his nose and maybe cauterize." She put a hand on Chibs' shoulder and ran it up to the side of his neck. "Baby, I'm here. You're going to be alright now."
"He's also blind drunk," Jax said from behind them. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"
She nodded. "Tip his head back a little more. Like that, yeah." She leaned forward, into Chibs' face. "I love you," she said loudly and clearly. With conviction. Then she turned and followed Jax into the chapel.
"Did you do that to his face?" she was irate and frightened, her stomach turning upside down, her mouth flooded with adrenalin.
"Yeah. I did." He pointed at his own face and she startled, realizing that his left eye was swollen shut with a gash butterflied on his cheekbone. His lower lip was split, blooming a deep purple.
"I don't understand."
"He wanted to be punished." He was looking at her intently, turning his good eye towards her.
She gasped. "Don't you dare say that. Don't you dare."
He inclined his head apologetically. "I'm not saying he needed to be punished, Tara. He came looking for me. I don't think he needs to be punished for anything. He won. He got the prize. A royal fucking flush and I didn't even know he was playing." He paused. "He was the better man."
She covered her face with both hands, willing her body to let the anger and the fear go, drop away from her, a coat outgrown, threadbare, useless.
"Tara. I know you don't want to hear this. I know you don't need to hear this. But, I love you. I will always love you. And yeah, I get that we're not right for each other. We both stepped too far away from one another to come back. I've made my peace with that."
She looked at him, breathing out, calm now. His knuckles were scraped raw and she felt her heart fly to Chibs. The violence the two men had wrought on one another; the broken friendship, the crushed bones, the opened veins, the desiccation of brotherhood. Both wounded forever. For a brief moment she wondered what scars each would bear.
Jax continued, "You have to believe me when I tell you that I want good things for you. Last year, when all that went down, I felt I had to protect you from this." He waved his hand helplessly indicating himself more than the place in which he was standing. "I'm sorry if I hurt you, but I felt like I didn't have a choice. And I'm so fucking sorry that my mother did that to your face." He looked over her shoulder, out into the clubhouse where Chibs was seated. "You and Chibs. I don't know. I don't understand it entirely but I guess I don't have to."
She nodded and started to speak.
"Let me finish. I want you to have a good life. A happy life. Whatever that looks like for you, I want you to have it. And I know that more than anything, you need to feel safe. I don't know any man who's more solid, more loyal, safer than Chibs. He's stronger than you or me." He closed his eye. "He's a good man."
She was overcome, nodding, and wiping under her eyes with the heel of her palm.
Jax's expression had grown sad, his voice labored. "We're straight here, okay? SAMCRO. Chibs. He can leave. No hard feelings. You oughta take him and get away from Charming, get out of the state, start fresh. Make the life that you want. He wants it, too. Be happy. Both of you. Live the good life. You deserve that, Tara. And so does he."
"Thank you, Jax," she whispered. "Thank you."
