They stand like that in complete silence for another long moment, before Jax raises his right hand up to her face, tipping her chin up so she'll look back at him again. "Look, you're probably sick and tired of me saying this, but we need to talk this through. We need to try to figure this out."
"I know," Tara replies, nodding her head in agreement, but then side steps away from him, out of his grasp so she can dare a peek into the living room at their sons.
She folds her arms once again and looks back at Jax from her position by the door now. "Not in front of the boys though. I don't want them to see us fight." She says, her voice so low, it's barely above a whisper.
"Who says we're gonna fight?" Jax asks, daring a couple steps toward her again.
Tara tilts her head to the side as if she is assessing him, before giving him a pointed look and stating the obvious. "We both know we're gonna fight."
She dares another glance in the living room, her eyes on the kids when she adds. "The boys are so happy to have you back. I don't want to ruin that for them." A deep sigh escapes her when she looks back at him to add. "If I can help it, I don't want them to see us arguing. Ever."
Jax nods, swiping his hand down his face, before looking back at her and raising his eyebrows in question. "Any suggestions? You think Mrs. Ellie could take them for a little while?"
"Maybe," Tara replies. "I just worked so many late hours in the last two weeks, I feel bad asking her to give up her Sunday too."
"Tomorrow's my first day at work. I'm not sure when I'll get out of there." He tries to explain, the meaning obvious, he doesn't want to wait another day.
He steps up beside her, his eyes shifting from her to Thomas and Abel laughing out loud at something they drew, and he can't help but smile at the sound of their laughter. His sons were seemingly oblivious to the turmoil their parents were going through. "We could put a cartoon on for them, and at least try."
Tara closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose in obvious frustration before she takes a deep breath. "Let me ... let me call my friend Christy. She might have time to watch them for a little bit."
Jax nods and watches as Tara steps into the living room just long enough to get her purse and returns back to the kitchen, fishing her cell phone out along the way, ready to make the call.
X
"Thank you so much," Tara says again, pulling on her Jacket. "You're a lifesaver." She reaches for her purse, slinging it over her shoulder.
"We really appreciate this," Jax adds as he opens the front door.
"Don't worry about it," Christy says and looks back at Abel and Thomas, both of them busy driving matchbox cars along the floor. "We'll have so much fun. I'll spoil them rotten for you."
"I bet you will," Tara says with relief in her voice that her friend seems okay with this. "See you later."
Jax starts to walk out the door, Tara right behind him, and Christy follows, ready to close and lock the door as soon as they leave.
"Tara?" Christy says, taking a step out into the hallway, and waving her friend back toward her. "I forgot to ask you something." She adds as a way to explain.
Tara looks from Christy to Jax, and gives him a nod. "Go ahead, I'll be right out."
Jax nods and gives Christy one last grateful smile before he disappears down the staircase, his truck keys jangling in his hand.
Tara takes a couple of steps back to her apartment door, and tries not to smirk at Christy mouthing the words 'holy fuck' in her direction.
"That's your husband?" Christy whispers when Tara is finally right in front of her, pointing a finger in the direction where Jax just disappeared to.
"You've seen the picture on my desk, of him holding Abel," Tara whispers back, trying to act like she didn't know what Christy was so worked up about.
"Well, that picture does not do him justice," Christy replies before she adds. "I mean, those blue eyes, that smile, and that body. He looks like the secret love child of Chris Hemsworth and Brad Pitt. "
Tara tries not to laugh out loud at that, but Christy's face is just too much.
"Listen." Christy glances at her wristwatch before reaching for Tara's arm. "It's only four. Plenty of time to reconcile if you ask me, and if things go well between you two, just give me a call and I'll stay the night."
Tara shakes her head and scoffs. "That's not gonna happen."
"It might," Christy replies with a smirk on her lips, her dimples digging deep into her cheeks. "You should see the way he looks at you when you're not looking."
"It's not that simple." Tara's smile fades. "I've told you some of the things that happened." She'd given her friend the very -very- abridged version of events.
Christy nods. "I know you did, but he's here now, for you and your kids."
She lets go of Tara's arm and gives her friend a gentle nudge toward the hallway. "So go talk things out, get a bite to eat, a couple of drinks, and get a room somewhere. I can have Jason bring me my toothbrush and a change of clothes. I gotta be at work at nine tomorrow morning, so I can stay until eight thirty at the latest. So go." She ushers Tara even further away from the door. "Go get laid." She giggles, winking back at Tara before stepping back inside and closing the apartment door in Tara's face.
X
Jax pulls his pickup truck into the empty gravel parking lot and shuts the engine off.
Tara digs through her purse, fishes out her cell phone, and puts it in her pocket. She tries to hide her bag under the bench seat but realizes there is no room.
She looks at Jax, holding up her purse. "Got a place to put this out of sight?"
"Yeah, sure." Jax nods and grabs the bag from her, before opening the door and sliding out of his seat.
Tara gets out as well and steps around to his side just in time to see him move some things around to hide her handbag under the backseat bench instead.
"Thanks." She nods, pulling a hair tie from her wrist, and tries to gather her long brown hair in a loose bun as she watches him close and lock the doors of his truck.
"How do you even know about this place?" Jax looks around. They were outside of town, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. His eyes follow the gravel-covered trail that clearly leads into a heavily wooded area.
"Christy told me about it ... and I went running here a couple of times."
"Out here? Alone?" Jax says as he follows Tara toward the forest ahead, the weeds waist high to the right and left of them. "By yourself?" She can hear the suppressed outrage in his voice as he digs a cigarette out and quickly lights it, shoving his lighter back into his jeans pocket.
Tara shrugs, neither stopping nor looking back at him, regretting already that she was stupid enough to let it slip. The annoyance is obvious in her own voice now. "Yes, Jax. Alone."
She momentarily considers mentioning that she'd felt safer running through these woods by herself than she'd felt in Charming during the last couple of months she's spent there, but she realizes that that was just adding salt to an open wound, so she bites her tongue instead and ventures on deeper into the forest, with Jax following her every step.
A silent moment passes, but she hears the gravel crunching under every heavy step he takes and she can feel his presence closer to her now, he's obviously walking faster to walk up beside her instead of behind her.
She tries not to smirk at the thought that his pristine white sneakers are probably already covered in a little bit of dirt by now too.
The air is a tad more humid here, but still refreshingly cool, and it's dimmer now too that they're surrounded by threes and other foliage. The treetops high above them are touching, nature's canopy made of branches and a few remaining leaves that haven't fallen yet, even though they're red and brown already, just dangling in the breeze.
The gravel path they're on grows wider when he finally reaches her side, and they can comfortably walk side by side now, with even a little room left to spare between them. Just their elbows barely touching every now and then.
He exhales the smoke through the right side of his mouth away from her, flicking the ashes off of his cigarette between his fingers. Turns his head, watching the small glimmer in the ashes hit the wet ground, making sure it goes out all the way, not wanting to leave a fiery inferno behind them.
He looks over at her then, his eyebrows raised and his forehead a row of horizontal lines, when he asks her out loud, albeit a rhetorical question. "You know how many women are kidnapped, raped, or murdered daily?"
He wasn't thinking, that much is obvious, and the moment the words leave his lips he already regrets them.
Of course, she fucking knows.
She's lived through every scenario and the thought is making him angry and sick all the same.
And then an involuntary image of Darvany Jennings flashes before his eyes, and the guilt and self-hatred comes on in full force, like a solid punch to his gut. The regret of what he'd done makes him sick to his stomach once more. He has to look away from Tara, trying to blink away the image of the woman he had taken and had murdered.
He takes a long drag from his cigarette, hoping the nicotine will help with the nauseous feeling that is rising up in him.
Hypocrite! Hypocrite! The voice inside his head is screaming at him, over and over!
Tara rolls her eyes at him and looks away momentarily, completely oblivious to the pained expression that now graces his unshaven face.
"I can handle myself." She says almost flippantly, hoping that he'll drop it and they can move on to the things they really need to discuss, instead of wasting their time with his ludicrous outrage of her going alone on a run.
She wouldn't have been alone if he'd left Charming with her, she wants to point out, but again, she doesn't.
He wills himself to bury the guilt he's feeling. Trying his best to shake away the thoughts and images in his head and focus all his attention back on the woman by his side instead.
Wants to be in the here and now with her!
It takes him a moment to catch on to what she said, but he finally gets his wits back and manages to continue their conversation. "Meaning what exactly?" Another drag from his cigarette and he slowly exhales.
"Meaning I know how to defend myself now." She looks up at him then and sees the quizzical look he gives her.
She hesitates a moment before she clears her throat and focuses her attention back on what's in front of her instead. "Right after I moved here I took some self-defense classes, and I got a CCL too. A concealed carry license." She explains further.
"I know what a CCL is, sweetheart." He replies with some amusement in his voice now.
Darvany is forgotten, buried away again in the back of his mind, with his deepest, darkest, and most heinous crimes. If he's honest with himself it scares him to death how easily he can push that darkness in him away and pretend it isn't still there, hiding, lingering beneath the surface.
He steps a few feet in front of her, walking backward to face her, careful not to trip, and looks her up and down, his cigarette hanging loosely from his lip as he raises an eyebrow at her again.
"What?" She asks, stops walking for a moment, and puts her hands on her hips, wondering what that scrutinizing look he's giving her is all about.
He raises his hand to take the cigarette that's hanging from his lip, exhaling a cloud of smoke to his left, tilting his head a bit to the side and making a show of looking her up and down again. "Just curious where exactly you're concealing that gun, Babe."
She can feel her cheeks flush slightly at the way his eyes linger on her. She folds her arms then and starts walking again, not wanting to like how his attention on her is making her feel.
She manages to smile though, yet tries to hide how flustered she is. "Well, at the moment it's concealed in my purse under the backseat of your truck."
He lets out a chuckle, before grinding out his cigarette and falling back in step beside her.
"You're gonna get me thrown back in jail." He adds, but there's clearly amusement in his voice as he shoves his now empty hands in his pockets.
"For what?" She asks back, her voice also carrying a hint of amusement as well.
"Possession of a firearm while on federal release." He says without missing a beat and smiles back at her.
"Right." She dismisses him. He's clearly fucking with her. He's teasing her, she's sure of it.
"The gun's in my truck." He says, and it's obvious that he's enjoying the lightheartedness of the conversation, despite the topic.
"Yeah, but in my purse, somewhere between my little makeup bag, some hair ties, and a couple of tampons," Tara replies, smiling herself now. "I'm pretty sure they'll believe that it's mine."
"Besides." she looks up at him then, a knowing look in her eyes. "I'm not buying it. Jackson Teller has never been unarmed a day in his life." It's an exaggeration of course and they both know it.
He shrugs at that, and smiles again, that boyish smile she longs for, the one she'd barely seen since he'd gotten released from Stockton. "I'm not armed right now."
"Really?" She says with doubt and she actually has to laugh at that, his smile reminding her of the boy she fell in love with and she's giving him a look that tells him she knows he's full of it.
"I'm serious." He says, still grinning ear to ear and pulling his unzipped black hoody wide open for her to see that nothing is hidden underneath.
She already knew he wasn't wearing his gun holster, but that didn't mean he didn't have a gun on him somewhere. Her eyes drift down to his feet, his ankles to be exact, and she nods her head in that direction. "What about that gun?"
Jax stops walking, pulling both pant legs up, exposing his ankles and half of his lower legs. "Nothing there either, Babe."
Tara looks confused back at him, disbelief in her voice when she stops short and grabs his forearm to get him to stop too. "You really don't have a gun on you?"
"I really don't." He replies earnestly for a moment, before the boyish smile returns to his face, his hands once more pulling his hoodie open. "Feel free to frisk me if you want."
She knows he's flirting, but she's too stunned to even acknowledge it.
She draws her eyebrows together now, clearly confused, and shakes her head. "W-Why? I mean, you've never been a stickler for rules and laws ... ever."
He pushes his hands in his jeans again, the look on his face almost abashed when he answers her. "I'm not takin' any chances this time. Not gonna give 'em a reason to ship my ass back to Charming or Stockton."
She nods her head in understanding, but the surprise is still written all over her face. She's speechless, doesn't know what to say to that, and simply follows in step alongside him again. Matching him stride for stride, while she's trying to hide the euphoria she's feeling at this newfound revelation of his.
She lets that happiness wash over her for a long quiet moment, but then the doubt comes rushing back in full force and she resents him for giving her this false hope. She has been lied to, one too many times, and she's lost count of the broken promises. She's scared to believe him, scared of being hurt again.
He interrupts her train of thought then. "Last night, when you bit my lip. Picked that up in your self-defense class?" He's not even trying to hide the smirk that appears on his face. His not-so-subtle way of flirting again and she knows it.
"Yeah, sure." She says, not a trace of humor in her voice though. She's no longer in a teasing mood and the way she folds her arms yet again makes that crystal clear.
He can sense the shift in her mood and of course wonders what could've caused it, but for the moment he refrains from actually asking her what's wrong.
They walk side by side with an awkward silence between them again for a couple of minutes.
Jax is the first one to speak up, and as much as he tries to think of how to approach this subject with her yet again, without letting his anger get the best of him, he's not sure that he can hold back.
"We need to talk about the guy you're seeing." There's a sentence he'd never thought he'd be saying to his wife.
Tara lets out a frustrated sigh. "There's nothing left to talk about, Jax."
"Like hell, there isn't." His voice filled with obvious anger now. "There's a guy out there bedding my wife. That shit has to stop!"
He's just about to open his mouth to say something else when Tara beats him to it. "It's over, okay. You got your wish. We broke up."
"What?" Jax asks, and that he's surprised is obvious in the tone of his voice and the way he keeps looking over at her.
She can't really tell for sure, since she refuses to look back up at him, but she'd bet her last dollar that he's smiling.
Tara knows that she owes him no explanation whatsoever, but she's just so incredibly tired of the constant back and forth between them.
She puts her own hands in her pockets now, mimicking him in a way, and Christ … now she's craving a cigarette to calm her nerves too.
She takes one last steadying breath before she lets it all out. "That's where I went earlier today. To see him. John. And ... and I told him what happened last night between you and me. He got angry, I mean, rightfully so, and we broke up."
She doesn't really know why her heart is racing in her chest, but it is, and she feels too nervous to look up at him to see his reaction. Instead, her head's down, and her eyes are trained on the gravel path in front of her as they continue to walk deeper into the forest.
Jax is the one speechless now, mostly because he hadn't seen that coming at all. Hadn't imagined that she'd actually confess what had happened between them to the other guy, to John, let alone that it would end things with him.
But fuck if that wasn't the best news he'd heard in God knows how long. It takes everything he has in him to not pull her against him, spin her around like some love-drunk teenager, and kiss her 'till they're both weak in the knees.
He knows better than to do that though, reaching with his left hand for her right one, literally pulling her hand out of her jean pocket and raising it up to his lips.
"Thank you." He whispers before placing a gentle kiss against the back of her hand, and the gesture finally draws her eyes up to meet his.
She knows his 'thank you' is very presumptuous, and, for a fraction of a second, she considers pointing that out to him. But then his eyes meet hers and she sees the hope he feels reflecting back at her, and the need to let him know that she didn't do this for him vanishes into thin air.
She's not sure how, but she manages to pull her eyes away from him and starts walking again, with him falling wordlessly in step right beside her just like before. Their hands drop back down to their sides, yet he's still holding onto her and proceeds to intertwine his fingers around hers.
Tara hesitates for a moment, then decides to return the gesture, wrapping her fingers around his hand.
A momentary feeling of contentment rushes over her, but it doesn't last and is quickly replaced by the sudden need to clarify things. "Him being out of the picture doesn't mean you and I are back together. You know that, right?" Looking up at him, searching his face to read his reaction to her words there.
He nods his head, looking down at her. He's neither frowning nor smiling, but there's that twinkle of hope in his blue eyes again when he solemnly replies. "I know, Babe. But it's a start."
She lets his words sink in as they continue to walk on, hand in hand.
She's emotionally drained and exhausted from the burden of the secrets, the lies, and the half-truths she's been keeping for what seems like forever.
And he's been so hell-bent on them talking this through, figuring this out, and who knows, maybe he's right, for once. So she decides to do just that, even if it ends up pushing them further apart, at the very least she'll have put all her cards on the table. Every single last one!
"There's something else I need to tell you." She breaks the silence and looks up at him. "A lot, actually."
"Okay." He replies and gives her hand a gentle squeeze, encouraging her to continue.
"It's about Otto." She starts off and swallows the lump in her throat.
X
Author's Note: Please let me know what you think and leave me a few words. I appreciate all of your reviews so much and it keeps me motivated to continue with the story. Thank you!