"We do the time," he'd silently ground out to himself as the steel prison doors buzzed closed behind Jax as he'd squinted into the blinding sunlight facing down his newfound freedom. "That's what we do."

Jax had damn sure done his.

Now, the V.P. of SAMCRO was all too ready to head home but they'd ridden the slower moving roads back from Stockton.

After well over a year inside, Jax hadn't really cared which route they rode as long as it took them far away from that overly oppressive hellhole. He was just relieved to finally be released from the harsh concrete walls and cold metal bars that had nearly entombed him within the stale confines of the correctional facility forever thanks to the liquid vengeance that viciously ran through the Russians' veins right down to the sharp edge of the shiv they'd ruthlessly buried inside him. However, with each passing mile of rumbling freedom they rolled over, the somber despair that had ridden bitch behind him through his hard stint in prison seemed to invite hopeful anticipation to take an eager turn warming his back instead. The lighter feeling was a welcome change until they'd passed the startling deforestation that had brutally raped the familiar land where Oswald's machines now savagely stripped part of Charming's formerly pristine and untouched woods bare as a newborn's backside.

In that instant, it became all too apparent that the home-fires wouldn't ever be quite the same again no matter what the Sons did. As if he really needed another glaring reminder of that painful truth, Jax silently cursed the housing development's jaunty billboard before begrudgingly moving on with grim resolution toward the clubhouse. Unfortunately, their progress was soon forestalled again by another unwanted change- a county fortified dick who needed to show everyone just how big his black nightstick was with grand standing blockades right in the fucking center of town- making it brashly apparent to everyone that there was even less of a veneer of illicit charm or a clever ruse of deceit covering his Club's actions.

Fuck.

He got it.

He really did.

But, he'd been so fucking over it that 'been there; done that' wouldn't even begin to cover it because Jax had been mentally finished with the altercation before it had even jumped off to begin with.

Impatiently, he wanted to be past all of the posturing bullshit and back on the road headed towards the first painfully awkward steps at recouping the tattered remnants of his life. Instead, the biker was forced to listen to some bogus, puffed up, spiel about gang colors and identifying clothing being worn in public. The Federal Government could kiss his white trash ass because they'd yet to prove the Sons were anything other than motorcycle enthusiasts even with their most recent weapons convictions. It was bad enough that he'd temporarily lost his Old Lady; there was no way in hell that Jax was going to prematurely surrender his battered leather to a squeaky clean Q-tip from the San Joaquin Sheriff's department as well so he'd just have to put his head down and shoulder through Roosevelt's jacked up harassment like he had his penitent time in Stockton.

The additional nuisance would roughly chafe his pride at times but Jax really didn't have much of a choice; certainly not if his most deep-seated wish was ever going to come to fruition. He'd spent the last fourteen months trying to decipher a pittance of hope and a worthwhile message from Tara's continued silence and Jax thought he'd finally cracked the elusive code to regaining her heart but that meant he had to keep his nose legally clean as far as the authorities were concerned. He needed to be free of any more charges and without any parole violations hindering his new life plan going forward because his Old Lady might think they were done but Jax knew they were so far from fucking over that he could barely think straight at times but, somehow, he'd remained singularly focused because of the one promise she'd faithfully kept to him.

Even if she'd done it mutely, Tara had remained in Charming.

For him.

And, especially, for his boy.

Despite acting as if they were virtually strangers of no consequence, Tara had dutifully brought Abel over to Stockton for weekly visits even if it had been his best friend who'd actually carried his boy inside the correctional facility to see him. In some ways, it had been pure torture knowing that Tara was so close, just outside the prison walls, but her proximity had mattered little when his woman was so emotionally distant from him and, yet, it would have been so much worse if she hadn't even been there at all.

Since Tara was still angry enough to drive the spiteful stake of her last words in deeper by doting on his son but essentially ignoring his own existence; Jax knew that they still had a shot at reconciliation. Slim, but, there. If the Doc had really been through with him, she would have irreversibly severed her connections to his world with such surgical precision there would never be any going back. Instead, his woman had purposefully ensconced herself even deeper within the sheltering love and solid protection of the Sons' extended family.

And, she'd done way more than her fucking part while he'd been away; that much was made abundantly clear.

There'd been little club news that hadn't involved his estranged Old Lady in some manner or another both before and after Gemma had been able to march a free path through Charming and reassume her reign as Queen. Tara had even been instrumental in sliding Lyla out from under the camera's all too revealing eye and into the hard packed drawers of Teller-Morrow's office, a bold move that had satisfied both Op's barely concealed distaste for his future wife's former profession and the Club's more immediate need at the time for capable hands at the garage's front desk.

If an Old Lady could make or break a club; Tara had become a daily testimonial to the truth of that adage while she'd been the glue that helped ensure the Mother Charter's stability while they'd been away. She'd proved that the V.P.'s woman could patch up the holes left by many of their absences around the clubhouse just as well or better than she could mend a stray bullet wound or fix an infant's ailing heart. Yet, it was small consolation to know that Tara was so fully accepted and trusted now that she'd seemingly turned her back on him but it still made Jax inherently proud that the ink of his crow over her steely backbone was wholly merited and truly indelible.

Tara had become SAMCRO in a way that nobody- not even he or his conspicuously tutoring mother- had been able to properly foresee or predict. There'd been a time, when Abel had been missing that he had ruthlessly tried to push Tara away from finding her place at his side for her own protection but those foolhardy days had past. Now Jax was more than ready to embrace Tara in every part of his world if his stubborn woman would only let him and, more importantly, he was willing to carve out a new niche for himself in hers as well.

Of course, that was assuming he survived whatever less than ideal homecoming Tara had planned for him.

He wasn't stupid; his woman had always known how to make him bleed long before she'd ever learned to wield the precision tip of a scalpel.

Whether it was another dose of the soul numbing cold shoulder she'd ruthlessly doled out from her own hospital bed the last time they'd talked or just the sharp incision of her piercing tongue; it wouldn't matter. Jax would willingly take a lethal dose of her retribution just to actually see her in person again after all of this time. After today, he wouldn't have to settle for only envisioning her in his vividly haunting memories or just staring at her within the smooth, flat lines of his cherished photograph of her. That solo picture of his long absent woman that had become extremely well-handled after Gemma had all too knowingly slipped it into his achingly greedy fingers on his mother's first visit to Stockton off of house arrest to help keep him even on the inside. Yes, soon, Tara would be a firmly defiant woman within his desperately yearning grasp again.

Finally.

At least, he'd be able to land the heady, raking feel of his heated gaze upon her tender flesh if nothing else. Fourteen months of banked anticipation coiled heavily around his spine straight down to his needy balls as they pulled into the Teller-Morrow lot and rolled their bikes back into line amid the whoops, hollers, and cheers of eager well wishers. The happy greetings were a nice sentiment but the only homecoming that truly mattered to him was embodied within a certain doctor's feminine charms. As he trudged across the concrete pad with his leather clad brothers, Jax knew that he should be falling into her loving embrace, being welcomed back into the circle of his eager, young family, and holding Tara close as she nestled his second son in her maternal embrace but, instead, his only living child scampered toward him in a solitary toddler procession. Alone. There was no brunette surgeon trailing him as a diligent maternal shadow in sight anywhere.

Just a smattering of useless, easy, and wholly unwanted pussy.

Hell. Jax knew that he was to blame for the broken road he'd laid between them, that he'd be in for a bumpy stretch toward reconciliation but, damn, it hadn't kept his beleaguered heart from hoping for just an inkling of even the teeniest nod of recognition from her today.

Jesus.

As he scooped up his boy in a warm, exuberant hug, Jax immaturely brooded. He'd have bargained with the hounds of hell for Tara to even blatantly ignore him as she stomped off across the lot to leave in a perfectly timed departure to his arrival just like she would have done back in the day before she'd ever left Charming. Maybe, even, have her trying to flaunt some slickly heeled medical hotshot waiting on her or some such bullshit just to rile his temper.

But there was just nothing which was far worse than the grueling radio silence they'd been maintaining the last fourteen months.

He bit down on the insides of his lips as Jax reminded himself; he could only point the deadly trigger of blame at the bullseye of stupidity that stared back at him in the mirror every day as he pulled Abel even tighter to a chest filled with a raging sea of regret.

Gemma saw her boy's eyes dart around surreptitiously before settling once again on the toe headed tyke charging at him.

The biking maven couldn't help but smile with gratitude as she watched her son and grandson snuggle and bond free of the fetters and restraints formerly put upon them by the state at Stockton for the first time in fourteen months. Thankfully, he'd made it through alive, if not completely whole, without Tara.

The guys had all thought that Gemma had been pissed after finding out about Clay nailing that little Cherry tart from Nevada when she wouldn't let him bail her out of jail but they hadn't seen a grudge the likes that Tara could carry. Op and Miles had kept the worst little detail of Tara's ire under wraps so far but she already knew how much the doctor's contrary nature was going to hurt her boy when he finally figured it out. It would be harder for Gemma to watch Jax face this additional pain and not act to protect him if she didn't think the little slut deserved it to some extent especially after the almost fucking his own half-sister incident. His continually wayward dick had left Tara unprotected while they'd been in Ireland trying to recover one grandson and it had cost them all the other one under the most tragic of circumstances.

As she registered Jax's lips still pursed in remorse, trying to bite down on his own bitter pain, Gemma relented a bit, "She's tending to Nate."

Jackson's gaze locked on hers desperate for any excuse for his woman's absence other than the obvious as Gemma further explained, "Since I still can't leave the state yet Tara had to go to Oregon for me but she did real good taking care of Abel."

"Yeah, I know," Jax distastefully accepted the unintended but still harsh reminder of his currently solo reality, a state her son so obviously needed to be only temporary, as he roughly grimaced, "she did great with him."

"Yeah, baby, and you're home now," she affirmed with maternal pride that overlaid a finality of understanding between them. "You'll find your way back to her."

"Thanks, Mom," the bolstered smile that suddenly emerged from her son's temporarily shaken but renewed confidence was enough to remind Gemma of the treacherous route they were all going to have to unwittingly navigate going forward.

Jax didn't know it yet but while Tara had remained under his roof to care for Abel; she hadn't set foot inside their bedroom since she'd been taken by that Calavaras scum. The burn of that self-barring move certainly sent a message all on it's own; one her son would not like if and when he realized it. Trying to mitigate that damage and not wanting to write out another dose of the good doctor's temper in advance of his homecoming, Gemma had cleaned Jax's room up herself in preparation of his arrival and gotten things ready for his release while Tara had been coordinating her father's latest battery of tests and results with the nursing home.

It was fortuitous that she had too because that meddling Irish gash had tried to reach across the Atlantic and ruin everything once again by having J.T. speak from the grave through those damn traitorous love letters she'd shoved in Jax's unpacked rucksack. She was pretty sure that Tara hadn't read them but she'd ruthlessly keep that little whisper of doubt and unease that chilled her spine to herself; Gemma wouldn't even allow herself to think otherwise.

For to do so would just hurt them all in the end; for once, Gemma wouldn't go burning her world down to nothing but bloody lifeless cinders without real provocation first. She loved Tara too much for that but, mostly, she loved her boy even more.

And, to hurt Tara simply destroyed Jax.

She couldn't do it; he was still suffering far too much from her last attack. Those wounds weren't even close to healed yet.

Just then Gemma saw the flash of the snazzy blue paint of the smart new SUV Tara had purchased whizz by unnoticed by her boys but not so by another brother who'd been lingering on the outskirts, watching, just waiting for his chance for a while now. Bracing, she wondered just how long it would take Jax to pick up on all the subtle and not so subtle changes surrounding the dark haired beauty who'd owned his heart since before her boy had even become a man.

Maternal instinct never died. Even if he deserved the damage; Gemma would never allow Jax to actually suffer it.

With a resigned sigh, she moved to head off the latest shit storm before her future daughter-in-law could unintentionally kick it up as Tara steam rolled forward in her simple but still slightly edgy way.

There was denim, cotton, and lace. An innocent camisole and simple jeans and, then, there was the stunning visual artifice of Tara's seemingly thrown together ensemble.

Soft, supple, broken in just right and stretched tight over the all too feminine curves that still beckoned to Jax like a siren's song. Calling to him with every sultry note of her movement; the lilting strains of her smooth pale form threatened to drown him with the suffocating need of his own body's tormenting want as waves of desire immediately crashed over him as Tara slowly settled her sunglasses atop her head. The frames tossed the loose, chocolate layers away from her face in the same manner his calloused hands would have if his fingers were roughly nestled within those curls to slowly drag her toward him as he slipped a warm, wet, and all too thoroughly delicious welcome between his tongue and hers.

He could almost taste her sweetness; his body overly eager to reacquaint itself with all things Tara as he surged forward to join her and Gemma as they talked.

It was harder to tell who was more anxious to have Tara's attention now; him or his son, as Abel nearly leapt from his arms into her surprised embrace. The brilliant smile that dawned across her face nearly made him jealous of his own fucking kid for a moment as she tickled the little monster who'd launched himself into Tara's arms making them both softly giggle with such a bond of overt devotion between them that it nearly left him speechless.

But not quite.

He just couldn't help it.

Jax had to get her attention somehow as he broke into their intimate moment of sunny revery, "Tara, I know you didn't need to help me but, Babe, thank you."

Her whole body stiffened at his words; her gaze slowly shifting and narrowing in that way that made Jax feel like she was abruptly seeing him as less than a man, a sudden enemy, wary prey even, something that either needed to be furiously run from or purposefully hunted down and killed with no quarter all while his son sat happily perched on her rounded hip oblivious to the tension mounting between his two favorite adults.

What the hell had he just done?

Tara was going to eviscerate him; her deadly look clearly said it all. She'd just mentally green-lit his ass.

In a deceptively even tone after squeezing Abel even tighter to her, Tara stood her ground and stonily offered, "Glad you made it through your time, Jax. Everyone was worried after the pay phone incident."

"Yeah," he acknowledged uncertainly. He wanted to remind his woman that she'd been part of that concerned group but Jax didn't think he could handle her blunt deflection of her specific concern right now in front of everyone even if he already knew that she'd called the infirmary for updates on his condition every hour. Instead, Jax took another bold step into her space, shamelessly taking advantage of Abel's proximity to get close to her again as he asked, "See you at the wedding later?"

Currents of need sparked over his body like lightning strikes in a sudden summer storm as their skin brushed for the first time in way too damn long when he grabbed hold of Abel's wiggling form, her unexpected gasp was the only recognition of their heated contact before Tara stepped back from him and recovered, "Yeah, I'll be helping Lila get ready since I'm her maid of honor."

Grabbing her hand before she slipped away from him completely, Jax meaningfully stated, "We should go together."

Ruefully, she tugged her hand free of his claiming hold before Tara killed him without so much as pulling a trigger. "You should really call Ima or Wendy if you're looking for companionship," she flatly whispered with far too much knowledge about his last relations with his ex-wife showing in her eyes as she continued, "I really don't care whose face you see or where your dick lands on a rough night anymore."

As he watched Tara walking away with Kozak trailing eagerly behind her like an obedient puppy nipping at her heels, Jax turned to Gemma with a wary glare of silent demand.

"The sting of that betrayal ain't gonna fade any time soon," his mother balefully replied.

"I know," he muttered rife with self disgust.

"If you really want her back, I'd make sure it doesn't happen again," Gemma cautiously surveyed the bevy of scantily clad Crow Eaters eagerly eyeing him now with heavy meaning, "because she'll know if it does."

Angrily, he spied Kozik close the door on Tara's shiny new cage like his brother was her new keeper. Tara might not understand what that shit meant but there were a few others assembled who were quickly catching more than a few clues as to the latest war about to be waged within the Sons. Kozik might be all happy go lucky chums with Tig again but as the dirty blonde sauntered back toward their group after seeing Tara off there was suddenly a cold wall of disapproval aimed in his direction.

Lovingly, Gemma slipped an arm around her two generations of Teller boys as she lowly informed her son, "Kozik has been respectful so far, clause or no clause, but that's mostly because Tara hasn't seen him as a free dick yet. If she ends up crying on his shoulder now that you're out, it might just be one time too many."

That was a hard lump to swallow.

A really fucking hard one.

Jax had always worried about losing Tara because of his brutal and bloody biking lifestyle never to someone else within that same brotherhood. Nodding his completely unwanted understanding, he gruffly replied, "Thanks, Mom."

"No problem, Baby," his mother softly patted his cheeks before kissing them, "you just put your family back together."

It ain't gonna be business as usual. There was something in the hard glint of Kozik's normally affable gaze directed from the long end of the table earlier in chapel that had just rubbed Jax completely the wrong way and had made that claim echo down through the heavy pit of his blackening soul.

He'd known it before but that knowledge pumped at an all too molecular level now that he was walking through his unbending front door for the first time. A quick glance around the place revealed that very little had changed; there wasn't a single Harley mirror or Maxim poster out of its original designation. The only things missing were the small feminine touches that Tara had started to grace his house with as she'd slowly made it her home.

As he walked down the hall, Jax almost stopped dead outside the first bedroom.

He hadn't thought that things between them could have gotten much worse until Jax saw a sliver of the cake of retribution Tara was serving up to him on his best friend's wedding day through the small crack in the door. His woman had never been mean or vicious before but she'd learned how to coldly bake a level of brutality into her revenge that should have made even his own mother proud if that iced cruelty wasn't currently directed at him.

"I didn't expect you to be here," Tara nervously explained as she hurriedly shouldered past him with her dress bag in hand. "But the prospects forgot this in the closet when they moved my stuff back to my Dad's place."

"You were using the spare room," he roughly questioned not wanting to believe the truth that was hitting him like a steel pipe to the head.

"Jax, don't," Tara swiftly rebutted. "There's nothing for us to talk about anymore. I was only here taking care of Abel. That's all."

"That's not all you were doing here," he denied with a sincere gruffness that used to have her clutching tighter to him. "You know that, Babe," he pressed only getting more distance from her both physically and emotionally. The chasm between them suddenly looking deeper than the Grand fucking Canyon and taking just as long to wear away her new found resistance to him.

"Things are going to be better," Jax vowed to her retreating back as she made to leave. "Different," he added, "I promise."

Idly, Tara paused at the entryway to coolly study him like she was dissecting a failed experiment. Her features so beautiful but so brittlely hard now as she perused him from head to toe as if she saw his every flaw with magnified detail and horrifying clarity.

Finally, Tara's quiet words leveled excruciating judgement before his woman slipped out his front door, "You're only saying that because you just got out."

She didn't believe him.

And she sure as fuck hadn't forgiven him.

Yet.

But, she would. Eventually. Otherwise, why the hell had she stayed in Charming?

As he stood across the ceremonial platform from Tara with so much more separating them than the few scant steps between them, Jax knew that they should be sharing secret smiles of anticipation for their own nuptials instead of uneasily balancing along the terrifying edge of this lonely precipice.

He remembered the stilted conversation he and Op had had after the Russians had attacked him while he was waiting in line for the payphone when his best friend had told him that Squiggy was now watching Tara and Abel. His brows had quirked in question when he'd mentioned that Kozik had been doing that. Op's grizzly tone had matched his fierce beard when he'd replied, "Trust me, Brother, Miles is the better choice for your family right now."

Yeah, in hindsight, Miles had certainly made a better choice then but, now, he was the best choice. The only option that his woman was gonna get especially in that dress.

She was purely hell on heels in that strapless thing.

Tara had made the devilish need inside him an ironclad deal long ago that would make him burn for only her into perpetuity; Jax was certain that he'd never want another woman with the bone deep desire that pulsed through him with every beat of his aching heart because Tara's name had been inked over every inch of his soul since he was just a teen.

If his Old Lady still knew; she no longer seemed to care that Jax felt that way but he sure as hell did.

Jesus.

This wedding was going to be harder to endure than he'd originally thought because all Jax could do was remember the last time Tara had worn a dress. That scant bit of frothy nothingness had draped over her sweet young body with a wider, fuller, shorter skirt that had floated out behind his bike like party streamers before happily celebrating her graduation night bunched around Tara's waist but this one was too figure hugging to shimmy up her supple legs even if his woman would still allow him such free reign between her absolving thighs again.

And, yet, his cunning imagination was already wickedly devising a multitude of sinful and all too tempting ways where Jax could still have made that happen if Tara wasn't more likely to actually land him in the morgue now than give him a wholly satisfying death within her heavenly walls.

Gritting his teeth against the sudden rush of sexual need that would always swell within him if Tara was near, Jax looked down at his feet to try and regain his flagging composure before the ceremony began only to be thwarted by the seemingly innocent blush of her toes peeking out of Tara's strappy sandals. Jealousy suddenly pumped thick and hard through his veins as he guardedly followed the slender bands of leather along the dainty curve of her arch up toward the sleek turn of her ankle and back down again over what Jax had previously considered his exclusive right to Tara's one purely feminine vice but his private treasure was now prominently on display for any of his fellow bikers to see.

Once it had given him a dominant, all too proprietary air, to realize that he was the only guy in Charming lucky enough to know that Tara's sexy little piggies were always primped and polished to utter perfection under the confining clunk of her heeled boots or the soft but sturdy shield of her hospital sneakers. Yet, now, any of the men present could gluttonously revel in his once private delight and one dirty blonde in particular was avidly eating up every nuance of Tara's party outfit right down to the tiny bit of color splashed across her nearly naked feet.

Fuck.

Jax didn't like it one bit as Kozik's hungry gaze greedily drunk in every heady sip of the finely aged brunette before them right down to his damn pedicured toes in a manner that was not friendly, brotherly, or anything other than distinctly interested man. There was no longer any doubt in Jax's mind that his Brother truly wanted his woman but Kozik was shit out of luck. He'd have to be cold, dead, and rotting in a shallow grave somewhere before Jax would ever let that shit happen and, even then, he'd haunt the fucker until Kozik became butt fucking besties with the reaper right along with him.

As the crass wedding vows were expectantly chanted around them, Jax pinned down the other man with a lethal glower and silently promised, No way, Brother. No, fucking way. You try that shit with my girl and you won't even be able to seat your Harley.

She'd danced with his mother. She'd danced with the bride. She'd even danced with Piney.

Wisely, Tara had demurred when Kozik had tried to sidle into the old man's place after they'd taken care of the Russians with a feeble excuse about needing to make sure everything was checked off of Gemma's reception list. Otherwise, they might have one more body to dispose of tonight because Jax was bloody furious.

He'd have liked to cut a slow rug with Tara; to hold her tight against him as they gently swayed in the soft midnight air, hip to hip, and arms all entwined. Instead, he was about to cut a brother as he demanded, "What the hell do you think you're doing with Tara?"

"That's none of your business," the Tacoma transfer railed back at him seemingly without fear of the consequences.

"You can't have her, Kozik," his jaw crossly dropped to underscore the vehemence of his words. "It's not gonna work that way."

Smugly, the bastard shot back, "That's not your call anymore V.P.; it's hers."

"Really," Jax instantly challenged. "Is that what you think?"

"Doc's a friend of the Club and not your Old Lady after the way you broke things off with her before Ireland. Even so," the blonde taunted, "you're not on the inside now so when I hook up with her there won't be any confusion, it'll be fair even without the prison clause."

His raised brows simply emphasized the lethal and undeniable truth of Jax's claim, "There's just too much history between me and Tara." With no room for rebuttal he roughly added, "She'll always be mine."

"You selfish little prick," Kozik exclaimed, "you never fucking deserved her."

"Careful, Kozik," Jax rightly cautioned, "or I might just forget you're a brother." His temper broiling, he lowly added, "You don't know a thing about me and Tara."

"Really, Jax," Kozik argued back, "I know a lot more about Tara than you do now. I know that she didn't just lose the baby, Salazar's attack messed something up, she probably can't even have kids now." The blonde pompously needled his rapidly fraying temper, "Did you know that?"

His brother verbally pushed, "Did you?"

No.

He hadn't.

She hadn't told him.

"That doesn't matter," Jax gritted out in denial. "Because she's mine."

"Really," Kozik demanded incredulously. "You think it doesn't matter to Tara?"

The other man drilled him incessantly, "You think it didn't matter to her after you broke her heart; stealing Abel from her just as much as that Irish fucker ever did?"

"No, of course it doesn't matter to you because," Kozik pushed up on him, "you had the stones to ask her to take custody of that very same kid you ripped from her arms by denying that she was family while Tara was still healing from being stabbed. Doc," he humorlessly smiled, "she did it though, knowing she was nothing but a glorified fucking nanny to that boy because she's loyal."

"Yeah," Jax couldn't help but agree even though he was bleeding inside, "she's always been loyal."

"You miserable bastard. Tara knows," Kozik spit out as they lunged for each other, pieces of their cuts knotted in fists, their ties of brotherhood ready to break. "She knows what an asshole you truly were and the only Teller male that Tara's heart is faithful to now is your son; she doesn't trust you worth a damn anymore."

Rage pumped hard and fast through his system as Jax tried to remember that it wasn't his brother's fault that things with Tara were such an epic clusterfuck but it wasn't working.

"Hey," her soft voice hesitantly interrupted their near brawl, "what's going on here?"

"Nothing," both men instantly gritted out amid the taut silence of the brothers that were hurriedly surrounding them; watchful and wary.

Heaving a huge breath, Jax uneasily released the other man as Tara cautiously looked back and forth between them. Obviously, his woman didn't like whatever she saw simmering beneath the surface of his lapsing control when her gaze skimmed over him again and landed straight on Kozik with her request, "You still following me back to my place since I'm keeping Opie and Lyla's kids tonight."

"Sure, Tara," his brother suddenly turned nemesis smirked triumphantly at him, "be right there."

As his woman carefully walked away over the uneven ground in her heeled sandals, Kozik leaned back toward him and lowly warned, "Don't even think of using your kid to pull her back in again, Brother, or I'll kick your ass six ways to Sunday. You've hurt her enough."

Tired, exhausted, totally wrecked; Jax slowly crawled into the single, austere bunk and wrapped all that he had left of his woman around him like a cocoon hoping to emerge from it in a better state with the morning sun.

Tara might have remained in Charming; stayed there at his house all this time but never in their room. No, she'd put up this small bed in the spare room that should have been a nursery for their second son but hadn't changed anything else. Anywhere but, apparently, her heart.

There wasn't any of her chic shit now, not even something as impersonal as her favorite brand of toothpaste in the bathroom. Tara couldn't have made it more abundantly clear that she didn't consider herself part of his life anymore if she'd built a fucking brick wall between them but the plain cotton sheets still smelled of her.

Soft. Sweet. His.

He'd learned long ago, that his house wasn't his home unless Tara was there sharing it all with him.

Raking a despairing hand down his face, Jax lay there in the pitch black and realized that his days would all soon turn to that same consuming darkness if he couldn't somehow turn this around. The stone barricade he'd needed to put around his heart for protection while in Stockton started to crumble as the tears silently flowed down his face. Oh, Babe, he desperately cried to himself, his body finally wrought with utter grief, What had he done?

Jax had been so sure that he could fix this; now, the doubt couldn't help but seep in and cast long shadows behind all the ghosts of things left unsaid between them.

Sniffles darted toward the edge of the bed as Abel sleepily cried, "Want Ta Ta."

Biting back the razor sharp pain those words whipped across his heart, Jax pulled his boy into the narrow bed and lowly soothed, "I know, Son."

Roughly, he whispered, "I want your Momma too but I messed up bad. I'm so sorry, Little Man."

So damn sorry.