5

Little Toy Bikers and a Woman on the Run

Chapter 26 Lost

Tara knew the exact moment when she realized that she'd lost Jax. She and David Hale were walking around Charming's fair when they were brought face to face with Jax and his girl of the moment a slut named Scarlett.

She knew that if she ran into Jax there was a very good chance he would have some girl with him, so she hadn't been even a little upset that Jax was with a girl. She also wasn't upset that the girl was prettier with a more voluptuous figure. Jax could always have his pick of girls. It only made sense that he would pick the hottest.

When she and Jax were together in high school and after, there were prettier girls with better bodies always trying to get with him. He told her she was beautiful and that a relationship was about more than appearance whenever she needed reassurance, which, looking back, happened too often.

Her insecurities played a big part in her decision to leave Charming. No matter how great things were going with Jax, she always believed that she was going to lose him. She never felt she was good enough for Jax and it was only a matter of time before Jax realized that. This belief haunted even the best moments in their relationship.

When she left Charming, she felt free. The worst had happened. She didn't have to worry about it happening anymore.

She had been so foolish then. Her insecurity cost her the only man she'd ever loved. She always thought she was so damned smart when she was completely clueless about anything that didn't exist between the pages of a textbook.

When Scarlett made a point of leaving her and Jax alone while she talked with David, she was surprised. Most girls, once they got their hooks into Jax, stayed stuck to his side until he told them to leave.

As she was telling him about medical school and her surgical training, his eyes kept wandering to Scarlett. That was bad enough, but what put her over the edge was when she saw his reaction to David writing something on a business card and handing it to Scarlett.

Even after ten years, she recognized the anger on his face and then she saw an expression she'd never seen in Jax's eyes before—jealousy. That was the moment when she knew she'd lost him. Scarlett was more than a girl for a night. Jax had feelings for this girl.

In all the time she'd known Jax, he had never shown jealousy even when she tried her best to make him jealous. She thought he wasn't the jealous type. It turned out he was the jealous type; she just wasn't worth him getting jealous over.

After Jax and Scarlett walked away, she caught a couple of glimpses of them walking around the fair. He was always smiling and laughing with her as though he enjoyed her company. He hadn't been that way with her in a long time.

Those last couple of months before she left Charming had been rough. After a psych class in her freshman year at UCSD (University of California at San Diego), she came to the conclusion she deliberately sabotaged their relationship by picking fights with him, so it would be easier to leave.

When she was alone with David, he told her that Jax had only known Scarlett a few days. If she'd only run into Jax before he met Scarlett.

She skipped the BBQ with David telling him she had a headache and needed to go home. She knew he saw through the lie, but she didn't care.

She needed alone time because she had a lot of thinking to do. She just hoped this time her thinking would turn out better than the thinking that led her back to Charming.

Tara discovered that the goal she had fought so hard to achieve didn't bring her the joy she expected. Being a neonatal surgeon was a pressure cooker of a job. When surgeries went well, it was bliss. Saving a baby's life and telling the parents the good news was the high point.

Worse was telling parents that despite all the best medical efforts, the baby died. Every time it happened, she would second guess every decision she made. Some infants just had medical problems that were incompatible with life despite surgical intervention.

She knew she had to maintain some professional detachment, but the emotional side she kept hidden from the world caused her heart to break a little every time she had to tell parents their baby was dead.

Her work life just didn't make up for the fact that she didn't have friends or a love life. Her best relationship outside of Jax was with Joshy Kohn.

How could she ever have dated a man who called himself Joshy? That was projectile vomit bad. Even worse, he called her Tar Tar and she had thought it was cute. How the hell did she not see that relationship was going to go spectacularly bad? What the hell was wrong with her? Why did she keep asking herself rhetorical questions?

She loved Jax. She never quit loving him. When she discovered there was an opening for a neonatal surgeon at St. Thomas, she took that as a sign from above that she was supposed to go back to Charming because they were destined to be together.

Well, so much for destiny. Her destiny was to have her heart broken again. Making her mistake worse was the damage she was doing to her career by not working at a bigger hospital with more surgical opportunities.

As bad as it was to think she'd lost him to Scarlett, there was another thought that was even worse—she wasn't sure how she felt about Jax.

Seeing him for the first time in ten years brought mixed feelings. She was simultaneously in love with him and uncertain if she still loved him. She was a mental mess.

She loved the Jax of the past. There had been so many good times, but that was ten years ago. Was she in love with Jax the man of today or was she in love with the Jax of her memory?

Her feelings weren't clear. That bond that had been so strong seemed to be gone. She just didn't feel that connection. Maybe all they ever had was just a high school romance and it wasn't an epic love that would stand the test of time.

She was an idiot. Here she was trying to make a decision that she had to live with for the rest of her life based on less than three minutes with Jax. This was the kind of thinking that would further doom her to a life of hell.

She needed a different approach. Instead of trying to connect with the Jax of her memory, she needed to get to know the current Jax just like she would any guy she was interested in romantically.

As for Scarlett, Tara had been with Jax for three years. She knew him better. That meant she knew he had a short attention span when it came to girls. She'd been the exception.

While Jax may appear to have feelings for Scarlett, people don't fall in love in the span of a few days. It was all just lust and the excitement of being with someone new. Scarlett may have Jax, but it was only temporary.

She wasn't about to give up on Jax because he was hanging around with a girl he'd only known for a few days.

If she loved the Jax of now, she would get him back Scarlett or no Scarlett. As far as the connection and their bond, if she and Jax got to know each other again, that bond could be reestablished and strengthened.

Deep down, she still had a little faith left in her relationship with Jax and in their epic love story. While it looked like she had lost Jax for now, that didn't mean she'd lost him forever. There might still be a happy ending waiting for them.