"You know where the lot is? Or I can pick you up … all right … yeah, the door should be open. See you then." Austin disconnected the call and dropped the phone on the bed before running a hand through her wet hair. She had planned on calling Grace just before the guys got back in the hopes that Grace and Juice could cross paths, but then thought better of it. Maybe it was better to figure out what this girl's deal was without the distraction of anyone.

"Getting ready to go out?" Gemma asked.

Austin looked up from the closet. "Uh, yeah, I guess. With Grace. Jax wanted me to kind of feel her out, figure out what her deal is."

"That's not a bad idea," Gemma agreed. "I don't like her."

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" Austin smirked.

"I liked you right away," Gemma replied.

"Once you knew I was actually Kip's sister. And don't tell me you didn't have second thoughts after you found out the truth – don't argue, I know it's true. And it's okay. The point is, I'm in this now, Gemma, and whether this girl being here is bringing down the whole club or just Juice, I'm not going to stand for it."

Gemma nodded and smiled. "Couldn't have said it any better myself. Call me tomorrow."

Austin chuckled to herself, pulling a SAMCRO tank-top from the closet before digging a pair of jeans from a drawer. She added a pair of heels just to make the outfit a little girlier and got to work on drying her hair.

.:.

Grace took a deep breath as she stepped out of the cab that dropped her off at Teller-Morrow. She couldn't escape the feeling that she was stepping into the lion's den.

The clubhouse door was open, as Austin had said it would be, so she pushed it open and stepping inside. Three men she didn't know were sitting at the bar, and those three sets of eyes looked up at her as soon as she was in view.

"You lost, sweetie?" Piney asked.

Grace stumbled over her words before taking a breath and starting over. "I'm looking for Austin."

The three men exchanged a glance. Grace had a feeling they were sizing her up, and she was right. Someone they didn't know looking for Austin with all that had gone in the last few months wasn't going to sit well.

"I'm Grace," she continued. "I dance at Luann's club."

"Piney Winston," the old man said, holding out his hand to her. Grace shook it firmly. "This is Chibs and Opie."

The other two shook hands with her as well, and the one with the scars on his face – what did Piney call him? Chips? – held on a little longer than necessary.

"You're Juice's girl, aren't ya?"

Grace shook her head. "I know him from when we were kids is all. Our mothers lived across the hall from each other."

"Chibs, relax with the third degree. That's my job," Austin spoke up as she walked into the main room. Her tone was teasing, but Grace's guard was up. "Hi Grace."

"Austin," she acknowledged. "Nice to meet you."

"Likewise. Are you ready to go?"

"Going out without escort, Aussie-girl?" Chibs asked.

Austin rolled her eyes. "We'll be fine."

She kissed each of the three men on the cheek before motioning for Grace to follow her out to the parking lot. Grace took a seat in Austin's Charger, buckling herself in. She held her purse on her lap and tried to find a way to break the silence.

"Where are we going?"

"There's an Italian place not too far. My brother and I go there sometimes. It's quiet, not too busy. That all right?"

Grace nodded. "Fine. Your brother is here?"

"He's a Son. They call him Half-Sack. Trust me you don't want to know the story behind that."

"I don't think I do," Grace chuckled. "It must be nice to have some family around."

"Well, when I first came here, Kip was the only family I had. It didn't take long for – well, let's just say they're all family now."

Ah, so that's what this was about. Luann had warned Grace about Gemma, and she had explained about how Austin and Jax came together. She had, however, neglected to mention that Austin could be just as protective as Gemma.

Grace kept her mouth shut until they were seated at the restaurant and had ordered their food. She sipped her water and looked around awkwardly; then she decided it was best to just pull out the knife and cut the tension.

"I know you're worried about me and Carlos," Grace said. "I'm sure that's what this little get-together is about. You need to understand that I didn't come here for him. I did come here to get away from Miami, but that's it. I'm not looking for anything else."

Austin sighed. "And therein lies the problem. You're new to even being in the environment surrounding club life, let alone being immersed in it. These men, Grace, they don't fall often, but when they do, they fall hard. You may not be looking for protection or anything else, but that isn't how Juice sees it. Juice is family. Luann told you about me so you know I've waited a long time to be part of a family, and I'm going to protect the one that I finally have. That's what this is about. I just want to understand what happened with you two before so that I can protect Juice."

Grace took a deep breath. It was none of Austin's business, what had gone on before. Juice was a grown man, he could decide for himself how he handled his life. She wasn't angry, but Grace did feel a little irritated; she'd come to Charming in the hopes of starting a normal life and –

"I know you're probably thinking this is none of my business." Austin interrupted Grace's thoughts as though she could read the girl's mind. "But I'm trying, in the nicest way I know how, to explain to you that when it comes to a member of the Sons of Anarchy, it's the business of everyone in the club. Gemma's not a Son, and neither am I but she's the wife of the President of the original charter. I'm with their VP. That puts us in a different sort of position – a position to find out what business needs to be taken care of."

"Fine," Grace said. "I'll tell you what you want to know, but you have to promise me I'm not going to get dragged into all this bullshit."

Austin smirked; this girl was already in further than she could possibly imagine. "Fine."

Grace gave a nod before starting. "I was born in Massachusetts. My parents were happy when I was born, as far as my mom tells me. They were young and unmarried – barely out of high school. My dad found work on a fishing boat. He was gone a lot, but we always had what we needed. To this day I don't know exactly what happened, but my mom just decided to leave him one day, and she took me with her. We moved to New York when I was ten. I hated it there. The kids were awful – they didn't like me because I wasn't from New York and I had an accent, but it was different from theirs. Then Carlos came knocking at our door. He'd kept his distance the first few days, I guess, till he could figure out if I deserved what I was getting or not, and told me he wanted to be friends. I had kept to myself so much, I didn't even realize he was in my same class.

"We were pretty much inseparable after that. Carlos was my best friend all through middle school and high school. I think it was about our sophomore year when we decided we weren't going to live with our mothers forever. We started planning and saving to live on our own after high school. We were going to get a place together, he was going to work in a garage, and I was going to go to nursing school."

The waiter brought their food then, so Grace paused her story. She took another drink of water and stared down at her plate. Suddenly, she wasn't very hungry.

"Carlos was always interested in two things: motorcycle and computers. He figured out how to hack into shit and we looked up everyone: our moms, our friends. We even looked up my dad one day. He was married with a new family. That really sucked. Carlos though, he told me that my dad didn't deserve me. That I was too good to be the daughter of some guy who could just abandon me. He always made me feel like I was worth something, even when I didn't think it was true.

"Finally, senior prom came around. I forced him to go with me, and we had a blast. After prom, he told me that he wanted to go ahead with all of our plans, but he didn't want it to be just between friends. We'd both been in love with each other for who knows how long, and it took us until then to admit it to each other. We graduated and went on with our plans. We were really happy together. Then, he heard about some motorcycle club in California and wanted to come out here. I couldn't leave my mom – I was all she had. And she was a good woman. She didn't have a lot but she took care of me. We got in a really big fight, and he left without me. That was the last time I saw him, until that day I came out here."

"So you were his first love," Austin surmised.

"I was his first of several things." Grace smiled as she remembered it. "I missed him a lot, and I was so sorry about the fight. I had no way of getting a hold of him. I never let him get far enough in the discussion to tell me which MC he was going to find or even where in California it was. Short of knocking on every clubhouse door in the state, I didn't know what to do. So I stayed in New York and went on with nursing school. A few years after he left, my mom died. I met a guy, moved to Orlando with him, then Miami. That obviously didn't work out, so I'm here."

"Well, Juice hasn't forgotten about any of it, that's for sure. I was with him that day he saw you on the lot – he was really torn up. The last couple of days it's been worse."

"Yeah, that's my fault," Grace sighed. "He came to the club the other night and I went home with him afterwards. We were just supposed to talk, but we ended up sleeping together. I told him I didn't think it was a good idea to spread the word about that – and I'd appreciate it if you didn't either. I didn't mean to hurt him. Things have just changed so much."

"Some things change, but some things will always be the same," Austin told her. "I think you're all right, Grace. I understand you didn't come here for Juice, but you have to really make him understand that. I know you two think you can be friends again, but based on what I know about Juice and what you've just told me, I just don't see that being an option."

"I know," Grace replied. "I really don't want to hurt him, but I can't just jump back into what we had. Maybe I can't ever go back."

"Maybes and what-if's aren't going to get you anywhere," Austin assured her. "If I've learned anything in life, it's that. Whatever you decide, do us all a favor and decide it quick."

Grace nodded. She would try her best, but it wasn't so easy as to simply decide. She wasn't even entirely sure what the decision was.

.:.

Austin dropped Grace off at the strip club after they ate, sparing the girl a second clubhouse experience in one evening. Grace thanked her – talking had been good. She still wasn't sure if she could consider Austin a friend or not, but at least someone knew the whole story now. Well, most of it.

She readied herself for work that evening, but couldn't shake the memories from her mind. Memories of her childhood with Juice, memories of their night together here in Charming. Maybe she didn't know how she felt about him specifically, but he never failed to show her that he thought her beautiful and loved her.

Damn it. She wasn't going to be able to work with these images and thoughts. The best way Grace had found to get through these night was to separate herself from what she was doing – if she was going to feel anything, it couldn't be anything related to Juice. If she pictured him or thought about him while she was stripping off her clothes for men she didn't even know, she wasn't going to be able to go through with it.

She couldn't jeopardize this new job. She needed to be here, all the way across the country from Tyler. She needed a fix, and she needed it fast.

Grace grabbed her purse and rushed for the bathroom. Locked in the tiled room by herself, she tried for a moment to talk herself out of this, but once the idea was in her head, there was no going back.

The pill bottle was, of course, easy to find. She took one out and then found the small pill crusher at the bottom of the bag. She crushed the pill to a fine powder, then found the flat, square piece of glass she kept in a side pocket of her purse. Laying it on the counter first, she poured the powder from the pill crusher to the glass. She worked it into several thin lines, found a dollar bill she could roll up, and did what she needed to do.

It hit her fast; that was the way she liked it. She was dizzy for just a few seconds, and leaned back against the cool tile. Not much longer and everything would go away. She wouldn't have to think about Juice or her mother or her father or Austin or the Sons of Anarchy. She would go into auto-pilot and do her job.

But maybe she would do another one, just for good measure. Grace crushed it up, put it into lines, and snorted it. The second pill hit harder. She stumbled a little as she put everything back in her purse. Suddenly, she felt nauseous; she leaned over the sink trying to breathe until it passed – until her mother's voice no longer played in her head.

"We're going to be so happy here, Gracie," her mother promised. "I know the first few days have been rough, but it's going to be all right. You'll see."

"Maybe," ten-year-old Grace replied.

Kelly Morton smiled down at her daughter. Those green eyes, so much like Eddie Callaghan's, they were hard to look at. Even though Grace had her father's eyes, Kelly was convinced her daughter was better off without the man – that the both of them were.

"Just the other day you were ready to walk back to Attleboro," Kelly replied. "Now we have Carlos and his mom to be our friends. We just needed a new place to be. We're here now and it's all going to be fine."

Finally, the nauseous feeling passed. Grace chanced a look into the mirror and recognized the woman looking back at her; she just looked like her mother. Except for her eyes. Her mother had never let her forget that she had her father's eyes. Somehow, that gave her a little hope.

"It's all going to be fine," she whispered before picking up her purse and heading back to the dressing room.

A/N: I forgot to mention this in case anyone hasn't already read Let It Be Me, that this story is a spin-off from that one. It takes place after Let It Be Me and before the sequel to LIBM, which is the continuation of Jax and Austin's story. It's isn't really necessary to read it before this one, but it might be helpful to explain some things since Austin and Jax are present in this story.

Thanks for the alerts and reviews! Now that school is out and I'm not taking classes over the summer, I'm hoping I can get chapters up more frequently.