"I love you!" He simply whispers into her ear, his own voice heavy with tears of joy now.

"I love you!" Tara replies through her tears. Hoping she hasn't just made another mistake!

They remain like this for a long moment, clinging to each other, and wiping their happy tears away. Tara's arms wrap around Jax's torso, her face nuzzles into the crook of his neck, and his arms are just as tightly wrapped around her, holding onto her with everything he has as the reality of what this actually means begins to settle in for them both.

But what did it mean?

"Tara?" His voice is filled with need as his hot breath in her ear makes her shiver in anticipation of his lips against her neck, but this is exactly what she can't allow to happen. It is too soon to go there, too soon to even think about that.

Just because she caved and decided to give him and their relationship another chance, doesn't mean she would just forgive and forget. She doesn't trust him with the matters of her heart, and therefore they needed to take this very, very slow. Baby steps!

Tara gently but firmly pushes away from him, her palms flat against his chest, leaving Jax no choice but to loosen his firm hold around her so she could look up at him and meet his pleading eyes.

"There have to be some ground rules, Jax." She says, having found her firm tone of voice once again.

"Ground rules?" Jax repeats, with raised eyebrows and a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he eyes her curiously.

His hands slide around her waist and fingers intertwine behind her, not letting her back away too far from him. "Like what, Babe?"

Tara feels awkward standing like this while having this conversation ... a conversation she had not actually planned on having at all. She was supposed to make him see reason, that they are no good together, that there is no working this out. At least not as lovers.

Instead, he once again said all the right things at just the right time while looking at her with such heartache and determination in his baby-blue eyes that she simply couldn't deny him.

A small part of her feels pathetic for letting him have such control over her once again, yet the other part of her holds onto the same hope and faith she's heard in his voice just moments before, telling her that they could maybe have it all if they just tried. They could be happy!

Tara takes a deep breath, trying her best to pick her brain for the appropriate rules an estranged married couple who decides to try to work things out should have. To her own horror she is drawing a blank again, and the way he looks down at her and smiles a little wider with every passing second she doesn't reply, doesn't help her make her case one bit.

That's when Tara finally averts her eyes from his and pushes against his chest once more, successfully stepping out of his grasp, as she tries to make sense of what she is trying to say. "Let me think." She demands, needing a moment, some space, and air that doesn't smell like him!

She needs to distance herself from those welcoming strong arms and skillful caressing hands if she wants to be able to form a coherent thought at all.

So she backs away some more but stops when her butt bumps into the table behind her, and folds her arms in front of herself.

"First" She starts, and wishes she knew how to keep her cheeks from reddening at the memory, "What happened here -in this kitchen- Saturday night, that can't happen again." She shakes her head along with the words to emphasize how serious she is about this.

Jax cocks his head to the side and grins back at her, licking his tongue across the tiny scab on his lip, the remainder of her love bite. He is clearly amused and by the look in his eyes, it's obvious he is reliving Saturday night's events in his head at this very moment.

But before he even has a chance to utter some smart-ass reply, Tara manages to resist his tempting smirk and actually frowns at him, "I'm serious, Jax. I'm not ready to let you get that close to me, and honestly, I don't know when I will be. You said you'd let me call the shots, and you would follow my lead, well, that means we need to take this really slow."

She shakes her head at him before she adds, "And what if Abel has gotten out of bed again and walks in here while we were ...?" The words die down on her lips, but it's obvious what she means.

He clearly hasn't thought of that, but the thought of what Abel could've possibly walked into still doesn't completely wipe the smile from his face when he nods at her in agreement, "You're right."

"Also, you can't be parading around here in nothing but a towel." She adds as a vague memory of him fresh out of the shower from this morning flashes before her eyes.

At that, he actually lets out a small chuckle and dares to step closer to her once again, invading her personal space, untangling her folds arms when he reaches for her hands and brings them both up to his lips to press a gentle kiss to the back of each one, before he sheepishly replies, "For the record, I got no problem with you walking around in just a towel ... or nothing for that matter."

It's not his actual words as much as his delivery that causes her to shake her head at him. She has to avert her eyes from him, downcast and despite her best efforts she can't completely contain the smirk that creeps onto her lips for a fraction of a second, no matter how hard she tries, but she quickly catches herself and gives him an annoyed look instead when she finally raises her eyes back up to his.

"Jax." She says with a warning tone of voice and newfound concern in her eyes, shaking her head once more, "Don't do that. This isn't going to work if -"

"If you set boundaries, I ignore them." He huffs as he finishes the sentence for her.

His smile from a second ago is replaced by a serious expression, as he tugs on her hands to get her to take a step closer to him now. "Look, Babe, I get it, and we will figure this out, however long it takes."

Jax gently tugs on her hands again before he presses one of her palms against his chest, right above his heart, "Just know that you with everything I've got, Babe. You're it for me, you're the one." He can't contain his own smile now at his cheesy line, but he doesn't care because he means it.

Tara looks up at him, wanting nothing more than to believe him, but this time she needs more from him than just sweet smiles and words of love and devotion. His behavior and his actions would be what could win her over, nothing else would do.

"We don't need ground rules, Babe. If I overstep, you put me back in my place, it's as simple as that." He presses another kiss to her hands, his eyes never leaving hers until she nods her agreement.

"Okay." She replies, hoping that he respects the boundaries she would be setting, because she wasn't entirely sure how much willpower she could muster herself to enforce them when temptation would strike again.

Just then, Jax glances over his shoulder at the clock. "Shit." He curses. "I gotta get back to work." He frames her face and presses a kiss to her forehead once more, not letting an opportunity to touch or kiss her slip by.

But just as he pushes past her to pull on his Jacket, Tara reaches out and tugs him back by his shirt. "Wait." She says, and he raises his eyebrows in obvious surprise when he froze under her touch. "What exactly happened last night?"

Jax looks puzzled by her question. "At the bar?" He tries to clarify what she means.

But Tara shakes her head, "No, I mean ... between us? In my bed?" Her cheeks flush just a little in embarrassment that she can't truly remember and this nagging voice in her head insists that she needs to find out.

Jax eyes her intriguingly for a long moment before he raises his hands up to her shoulders, massaging the stiffness away when he realizes that she is holding her breath, and shakes his head at her, "Nothing happened, Babe. It is late, Christy and Jason crashed on the couch, I bunked with you. We just ... cuddled." He adds the last word with a smile which Tara returns when she sighs in obvious relief.

"Besides." Jax simply can't resist and adds with a smirk, "I've got no doubt you'd remember if more has happened."

"Right." She suppresses the urge to roll her eyes at his cocky innuendo and clears her throat. But still, some things just don't quite add up in her scrambled mind.

Folding her arms again, not done with her inquisition. "It's just, ... I wasn't wearing any underwear, and my hair is -"

"Babe!" Jax interrupts her before she can finish her sentence, trying his best this time to keep a straight face to make her feel more at ease. "I helped you take a shower, kept our underwear on. Then Christy changes you out of your wet undies into PJs, I had nothing to do with that. We just went to sleep, that's it."

"And I needed a shower because ...?" She asks, waiting for him to supply the reason.

"'Cause there is puke in your hair." He says and eyes her intently to see if this would ease her worries.

He lets his hands drop back down to her waist, tugging her closer to him once more, and bites his lip as he tries hard not to smirk before he speaks. "I was a perfect gentleman. Everything was very G-rated, trust me."

"G-rated?" She repeats trying not to scoff at him, and this time can't help herself when she rolls her eyes. "I bet."

X

Over the next three weeks, they not only find a way to coexist in the same apartment but also slowly begin baby steps in the right direction to rebuild their relationship with each other.

It has proven to be much harder than both of them anticipated.

For Tara, it is hard to let down her guard around him, not ready to give in to the constant temptation of his presence in her life.

Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.

She continues to remind herself of that and that she needs this time around to be different, for it to have a different outcome.

So she vows to take things slow and not jump back into bed with him like so many times in the past. No matter how sweet the kiss feels that he presses against her forehead every time he leaves for work, or how nice his arms feel when he wraps them around her in greeting when he comes home every night.

Instead, she's grown to expect the continuous affection from him and braces herself for the feelings his touches evoke.

The pain of his betrayal with the other woman still stings deeply every time she allows her mind to go there, but this time she found a way to use that pain to her advantage, to fuel her determination to not let him that close again just yet.

He has to prove himself to her. Prove that this time around he's a man of his word. Someone she can really count on and eventually trust again.

But she also sees the efforts he makes to be there for her and their sons.

The boys are incredibly happy to have their father in their life again, which in turn makes Tara happy that he is here as well. The devotion in his eyes when he helps her care for them, more than he's ever had before in all the years in Charming, warms her heart with a new love for him.

And Tara has to admit that those are the feelings that prove much harder to push back as she quietly retrieves alone to her bedroom night after night.

The love she felt for the teenage rebel over a decade ago is nothing in comparison to the love she feels for the loving and caring father he's turning into now.

Jax struggles too in his own way, as he is trying to not only find his place in the boys' life again, but Tara's as well.

Over the last few weeks, he's only worked late a couple of times when it couldn't have been avoided, but for the most part, he rushes home as soon as he can to reclaim his position as the husband and father of their little family.

Being the father that Abel and Thomas deserve came quite naturally to him. His boys adore him and love him, and it is easy to bring a smile to their little faces by simply being there day after day.

Tara on the other hand is such a different matter altogether.

She is still guarded around him more times than not, and he uses everything he has, everything he could think of, to tear down those walls she has built around her that are supposed to keep him at arm's length.

Yet Jax remains persistent in his plan to make her fall in love with him again, and to make her trust him again.

Whenever he is home, he makes it a point to make the most of their time together. He loves the way her eyes light up whenever they spend time with Abel and Thomas, and at first, it seems to be the only time she allows herself to really relax around him.

But lately, after the boys go to bed they forfeit sleep to just sit and talk about their busy days at work, upcoming things in their life, like Thomas' third birthday, or everything else under the moon.

It is during one of those late-night conversations that Jax discovers once more just how much he's missed and loves the sound of Tara's uninhibited laugh, or more precisely how much he loves being the one to get such a carefree sound to escape her luscious lips. After all the tears he's caused her, making her laugh has quickly become his new high.

But besides his quest to find a way back into her heart, the simple truth is that he wants her. Every day he aches for her with every fiber of his being.

His body hums with anticipation of being near her as soon as he puts his truck in park outside the apartment building. When he walks through the door, he always seeks her out first instead of his sons, needing to wrap his arms around her and pull her close.

Back in Charming, after working hundreds of different angles for the Club all day, he savored the ride home on the back of his bike. He would take the long way home to clear his mind of all the heinous things he had to do for the sake of SAMCRO before he was ready to come home to her.

But now, away from the life, he slowly begins to realize how much he's truly changed in such a short amount of time, when after a long day at the garage he impatiently climbs into the cab of his pickup to take the shortest and fastest route home, simply because he doesn't want to waste another minute being away from her.

And when he dares to actually think about it, somehow it all comes back to Tara almost dying. No matter how he looks at everything that has happened, it always comes back to that horrible yet pivotal moment in their lives.

He's come so close to really losing her that it has once and for all opened his eyes to what really matters to him. Tara and my boys!

So nobody could really fault him for eventually turning his back on SAMCRO after that night, and for planning his own escape from the life to follow her and his kids after they had already left Charming.

That he would follow her had never even been a question, it had simply been a matter of when he'd leave.

X

Tonight would probably be a late night at the shop, Jax thinks to himself as he leans further over the engine compartment to get a better angle with his wrench. He wordlessly works the bolt loose enough to unscrew it with his hand as his mind wonders if she'll still be awake by the time he makes it home tonight.

Jax is pretty much getting along with all of his coworkers, however, he's found himself most comfortable around another reformed gang member named Greg.

So tonight, he and Greg have been sweating away over this piece of crap for hours now, trying to get the motor running again the way it is supposed to, and still have quite a bit of work left to do.

Greg, much to Jax's dismay, is one of those guys that likes to kill time by talking. He insists that it makes the time run by quicker and makes the work less repetitive.

In the short amount of time that Jax has worked at Baker's Automotive, he's heard Greg's entire life story, right down to the tragic death of his brother which ultimately made him leave the life of crime behind.

And since Greg has begun to run out of things to talk about, he has been trying to get Jax to talk instead.

Reluctantly Jax shared some details of his life, and if he is being honest, bending a brother's ear about how to fix things with the woman in his life is one of the few things he misses about the brotherhood he's left behind. Ironically, hadn't it been for that brotherhood, he wouldn't have been in hot water with Tara in the first place.

So now he dares to stew over his shortcomings as a husband to the one guy he bonded with in this town, in hopes of getting some suggestions of how to get back into Tara's good graces, but so far to no avail.

Trina, the only female mechanic in the shop, is also working late, but on a different car in the bay right beside them, and at this point, she simply can't bite her tongue any longer. "Jesus, why don't you just ask her out?" She blurts out in frustration.

Jax's head snaps to the right when he realizes that Trina has been listening in on their conversation, "Thought you were listening to music?"

That's when Trina makes a show of pulling her headphones from her ears, "My iPod battery ran out over an hour ago, I've had no choice but to listen to you two bitch and moan over your baby-mama-drama."

"She's my wife, not my baby mama," Jax replies in obvious annoyance as he focuses his attention back on the work ahead.

But Greg looks over at Trina somewhat intrigued, "What were you sayin'?"

Trina again stops what she's doing and looks over at them both, while Jax tries his best to look disinterested and ignores her. "I said he should ask her out?"

Greg nudges Jax to get his attention as if he isn't standing a mere foot beside him, "Did you get that? Ask her out?"

Jax shakes his head at the idiotic suggestion, and turns to look back at her, "Like I said, she's my wife." He repeats again.

Trina scoffs at him, "And?"

"And we're married," Jax adds, wondering why that concept seems so hard for her to grasp.

"Seriously, dude." Trina gives him a dumbfounded look. "You realize you can still ask her out, take her out on a date even after she says 'I do'!" Then she adds, "Putting a ring on her finger shouldn't be the end of romance, you know."

"Shit, man." Greg replies before Jax can think of anything to say, "She's got a point there."

Jax shakes his head at his own stupidity this time, as he wonders why he hadn't thought of that himself, and looks back at Trina once more, "Since you seem so invested in my affairs, got any date night suggestions?"

At that Trina let out an amused chuckle, but shrugs her shoulders, "I don't know ... maybe try to recreate your first date with her, … you know, something like that."

"Huh." Jax sighs, but can't keep the smile from his face, "I'm not sure asking her to the drive-in would do the trick, and besides, our first date started out as somewhat of a disaster."

"What happened?" Greg pipes in curiously.

Jax smiles again as the memory begins to replay in his mind, "Well, for starters, she didn't realize we were on a date until a good twenty minutes into the date."

Trina can't help the laugh that escapes her throat at that. "Boy, you must've been one smooth motherfucker." She teases him sarcastically.

Under different circumstances, he'd probably take offense to her teasing, but as his mind is bombarded with the details of their first date he can't help but smirk. Yet still throws a faux offended look back at Trina, "Hey, I have moves."

She giggles some more at his expense, and sarcasm drips from every word when she adds, "Right, I bet you do, Teller."

X

Jax quietly steps into the apartment, making a mental note to remember to oil the front door since it has begun to squeak every time they open or close it.

It is pretty late by now, the boys have been asleep for hours and since the entire place is dark, he assumes Tara is asleep as well.

Jax turns on the small lamp on the end table beside the couch before he shrugs out of his Jacket, and toes out of his shoes.

He makes his way to the bathroom to quickly clean up before he goes to sleep, when he realizes that the light in Tara's room is still on. He freezes in place right in front of her door for a long moment, before he dares a quiet knock, rasping his knuckles across the wooden surface.

"Babe?" He whispers, trying not to wake the boys, "You still up?"

Tara quickly opens the door, sleepily smiles up at him, and whispers as well when she asks, "You just got home?"

"Yeah." He replies as he fights the urge to hug her this time, since his clothes are dirtier tonight than usual and she's already slipped into her pajamas.

"So I was thinking, did you wanna go to the movies sometime this weekend?"

Tara furrows her brow as if in deep thought for a long moment before she replies and shakes her head, "I don't think there's any kid show coming out this month."

Jesus Christ, Jax thought in irony, this is playing out just like the first time he asks her out, and he can't hold back the chuckle that escapes his throat, "No, babe, I don't mean all of us. I mean just you and me. We get a sitter for the monsters."

Tara gapes at him for far too long before she actually replies, her voice sweet as sugar when she teasingly asks, "Wait ... are you asking me out on a date?"

"Yeah." Jax clarifies, doing his best to ignore the way the idea seems to amuse her. "It doesn't even have to be a movie, we can do somethin' else. Whatever you want."

"Okay." She suddenly replies in a much more serious voice and nods. "I'm not sure what's playing, but a movie could be fun."

"Alright. It's a date." Jax nods and leans in to kiss her on her forehead, before they both whisper "goodnight" to each other and Tara closes her bedroom door behind her.

Jax smiles as he steps under the hot stream of water and begins to daydream about how this movie date with Tara could potentially end. He'd be more than happy if it ended similarly to their first one all those years ago.

X

Author's Note: Jax is much 'sweeter' in the last couple of chapters, but I promise you that he hasn't completely lost his edge yet as you'll see in chapters to come. Please let me know what you think. xoxo, Skater