I couldn't help myself. I really wanted to post a new story for you guys so here it is. Now this story is a WIP. So that means updates aren't on a set schedule. My goal is to post at least every other week or once I write a chapter, I'll post a new chapter as half of this story is written.

So I hope you guys enjoy this!

And also check out my tumblr under this same penname for updates on ALL stories of mine.

In all the years Jax has known Noelle and has become familiar with her anger and cold fronts, this is something he isn't used to.

He is scared if he breathes wrong that she might kill him or break down in hysterics. He thinks both are likely to happen by the end of the night. She hasn't looked at him once since she picked him up on his bail. She didn't offer him a hug or any type of greeting. All she did was wrap her arms around her small exhausted frame in her oversized cardigan. He thinks considering he was inside for two weeks for his hearing and the nature of his case, she had a lot of time to come to terms what this meant for her and their family.

And he knows the mature and smart thing to do would be to talk about what this means for them, but right now he just wants his wife. He wants to hold her and for the night to fuck away all his troubles. Yet, he knows that will be highly unlikely giving how tight she is gripping the steering wheel and the way her lips are pursed into a thin line.

God, she didn't even hug him as he was escorted out. Even when she was pissed at him she would hug him while slapping or punching the shit out of his chest. Now, she only looked at him while she held the paper that contained the terms and conditions of what it meant to be on bail. His stomach drops as he hasn't even been sentenced yet and if she is acting like this now, he imagines it is going to be worse when he actually begins his sentence. Rosen had already informed him that he would be doing some years. Years.

He thinks the 20 minute ride felt like an hour before Noelle is pulling into the driveway of their family home. Their recently purchased home for their expanding family. Everything seemed to be going good in his life and now this happened.

They wordlessly exit the Escalade and enter the house through the front door and he is instantly bombarded by his mother. Unlike Noelle, she clings to him and hugs him tightly.

"You okay?" She asks and he realizes Noelle has moved into the kitchen, but she is watching the scene with unseeing eyes.

He nods his head at his mother. "Just happy to be home." He tells with a grim smile.

"The kids miss you," she tells him and it does little to warm the cold from his wife. "I'm surprised I was able to get them to sleep."

Jax smiles at the thought of his kids. While he sat in county, he didn't know how he was going to do the time now. Before it was easy when it was just him or when it was only for a short stint, but with this charge he would be gone for a while. Years, he repeats in his head. He wonders how in the hell he was going to explain to a six and four year old that he would be gone for years.

Yet, his mom seems to feel the tension between him and Noelle as she doesn't linger and presses a kiss on his cheek and leaves the house.

Five years of being married, Jax knows he needs to tread carefully with Noelle. Because now he thinks that she isn't sad for him about to be locked up, but pissed. He is going to be leaving her alone with three kids all under the age of five and one of them just cleared of having a clean bill of health from the family flaw. He runs his hands down his face as he throws his hoodie and kutte onto the coat rack.

She's sitting at the kitchen table when he enters. He can tell she is exhausted as he looks at her face. There are bags under her eyes. She looks so small in her thin cami and oversized cardigan. He hates that he hasn't realized how much stress she has been under since the birth of their youngest child. Now he is just piling on the stress and he hates that he only sees it now how bone tired his wife is.

He takes a seat across from her and she can't even look him in the eyes. Her gaze is firmly set on the wooden table.

"I'm going to have to do 5 years." He hears Noelle's sharp intake of breath. "It is the best I can get for my first offence with a weapon. I have a chance to get off early for good behavior."

Her fingers come to her forehead and he watches as she rubs the space between her brows. It's a mannerism he has seen an awful lot in the past few months. He has seen it a lot as the doctors described what surgery their son would need now and maybe the future. He has seen it when their two oldest would get to rowdy for her to handle after she had already spent the night at St. Thomas in the hospital chair.

He hates that he can feel a distance between them. Even with the rushed nature of their relationship, they were strong together. They had a relationship built on communication. Yet, now he doesn't know exactly when she began pulling away from him.

She finally looks at him with exhausted blue eyes. Hers were more of a ocean blue unlike his cold steel ones. He was glad their oldest got her eyes. They were a much warmer version of his blue that he felt showcased his hard life he didn't want to burden his family with.

"Are you going to be serving it at Stockton?" She asks him quietly.

His stomach drops as he shakes his head. "Most likely Chino."

"Jesus Christ," she mutters.

"Rosen is trying to make an appeal considering –"

"It's five years, Jax." She interrupts. "Chino is six hours away."

"I know," he tells her.

"Do you?" She asks her eyes wide and scared. "We have three kids, Jax! AJ is only a baby! And you're telling me you're going to be gone for five years. Six hours away. For what? What the fuck did you do?" She asks hotly.

Jax knows that no one from the club would tell her anything because it wasn't there place. It was his. The two of them had full disclosure to a point. If she didn't ask, he didn't tell. Yet, if he needed to get something off his chest, she always listened. He folds his hands in front of him as if he was in prayer because right now he needed God on his side before his wife began the rapture.

"I got caught, Noe. Doing a deal. You know shits always brewing between us and the Mayans. They turned up at the exchange with the Niners." He tells her. Jax thinks he was lucky for even making it out alive at that meet but he isn't going to burden his wife with that knowledge. He was lucky he was wearing a vest.

"How in the fuck did you let that happen, Jax?" She hisses at him.

And he has nothing to tell his wife. Nothing.

And right now he doesn't want her anger. He wants his wife. He wants her to tell him that everything will be okay. They're family will be okay. That's they'll get through this a day at a time.

And he knows he should take a deep breath and mind his tongue. But he doesn't and he lets the slight anger that is in his gut that is really from not trusting his instinct in the first place with going to that meet and takes it out on his wife.

"Do you think I wanted this to fucking happen, Noe?" He asks her hotly taking her back. "Do you think I want to be locked up for five fucking years for this shit?"

But she doesn't let it faze her. She only folds her arms across her chest and stands in her anger. "You willingly patched into this shit Jax!" She refutes. "How could you not be more careful?"

"You think I'm not?" He retorts. "Everything I fucking do is to make sure I come back home to you and the kids not in a fucking pine box."

Noelle snorts. "Well you could've fooled me as it seems it doesn't stop you from sitting in a prison cell."

"I'm not dealing with this shit." He mutters as he moves up out of his chair. He should go back to the bedroom. Hell, he should go take a shower. Instead he walks out of the kitchen and grabs his kutte and hoodie and his keys.

Noelle doesn't follow after him. Doesn't even beg him to stay. It isn't until he walks out the door that he hears the shattering of glass. He knows he should walk back in. He knows that he shouldn't leave angry at her. As he leans his head against the door, he thinks he can hear her crying at the kitchen table.

He knows he doesn't deserve her or their family. He knows she is only with him because they were young and stupid and to in lust to think of consequences.

Those thoughts make it easier to walk off the doorstep.

Noelle had cried at the kitchen table until her baby boy woke up due to teething pain. Tending to one of her babies was an easy distraction. After getting her youngest back to a fitful sleep, she decided she should take a shower and even a nap before her other two woke up.

"Mom, I thought dad was going to be home," Addie says to her as she places her cup up on the counter to be washed.

Noelle looks at her middle child. Unlike her brothers with their blonde hair and blues eyes, Addie had brown hair and eyes. She looked like her Aunt Lena and her grandmother, Gemma. But Addie had Jax's smile and attitude.

Noelle scrubs the skillet in her hand harder at the mention of her husband. "He went to go visit grandma and grandpa." She tells her.

"When's he coming home?" Her four year old daughter demands in a perfect imitation of Gemma with the hands on the hips and arch of her brow.

Noelle sighs and is about to tell her daughter to go into the living room with her brothers when the front door opens.

Noelle sucks in her breath as her husband steps into view.

He is clearly hungover as he looks disheveled and hair is frizzy and matted. He staggers on his feet and she is surprised he even manages to catch Addie, who catapults into his arms.

"Daddy! You're home!" She exclaims as she gives her father a tight hug and nearly chokes him to death. "I missed you so much."

Noelle's heart breaks slightly at the sight of father and daughter. She knows Addie will hurt the most from the absence of her father.

"I missed you too, Addie." He tells her.

Soon, Noah, her oldest at 6, comes into view holding, AJ, her six month old baby, and almost runs to Jax, but remembers he is holding his baby brother. Jax beams at the sight of his three kids and Noelle finds herself unable to watch as the kids fawn over him.

She goes back to washing the dishes and ignores the burning gaze from Jax, who she never greets.

After the kids exclaim that he stinks, Jax detangles himself from his children and heads to the shower. Noelle burns with anger at the thought of Jax smelling like weed, alcohol, and possibly of another woman. She finds that it's too easy to get angry at Jax these days.

Knowing that she is eventually going to have to speak to him, she heads back to their bedroom where she hears the shower turn off. She picks up the clothes the litter the floor and she wants to be annoyed that despite 6 years of living together he still can't seem to put his clothes in the hamper. But she can't because soon she won't find herself doing this. She won't find this one mundane slightly irritating habit of Jax to remind her that he is home.

She lifts the clothes to her nose and she finds some relief she can only smell smoke and Jax lingering on them. She is throwing them in the hamper when he enters the bedroom.

"Sorry," he says sheepishly to her as he sees her.

"It's okay," she tells him as she closes the lid to the basket.

She knows she should apologize for last night, but she can't seem to find it in her too. Jax doesn't seem to be waiting on an apology either as he walks over to the dresser to get dressed. She watches him and begins to memorize his features knowing that in five years her husband will be a different man than the one standing before her. She memorizes how his muscles flexes with each movement and the dips in his muscular back with the large SAMCRO tattoo that decorates it. She smiles as she sees Addie's full name on his left forearm and Noah's name written over his heart. AJ's full name along with his footprint rests under Noah's along Jax's ribs. Her eyes trail his toned ass and the peak of one of his most prized possessions under a tuff of downy blonde hair. Yet, her eyes narrow at raspberry splotches on his thighs and her heart drops.

He is oblivious and her eyes go haywire and she wishes it is her overactive imagination, but her eyes trail back up to the tattoo that had surprised her when he got it. On the left side of his neck, her name is written in script placed next to an outline of her lips in ruby red and she finds a mark that does not belong there.

"Are you fucking kidding me," she whispers to herself, but Jax's hears her and freezes.

She refuses to cry today and especially over this.

"Noe –"

"You fucking bastard!" She seethes.

"Its not –"

"It's not!" She repeats hysterically not letting him finish knowing what words will follow. She approaches him and throws his towel out of the way and she grabs his thigh and looks at the marks that cover it. He grabs her wrists and she immediately removes herself from his hold. And creates some distance between them if looks could kill he would be dead.

He is at least smart enough to slide on his boxer briefs.

"I didn't, Noe."

"What the fuck do you call that?" She hisses.

"A very eager croweater that couldn't take no." He tells her dryly.

"And was that before or after she sucked your dick and you realized she left evidence." Noelle objects.

"I didn't do anything last night," he says defending himself. "I swear, Noe, I didn't."

"So what you just let a croweater do that to you for what?" She demands to know.

Jax clenches his jaw at her and runs his hands through his hair in frustration. "I did it because I knew you would be angry. After last night…I needed my wife and you weren't there."

He's caught by surprise when she throws the picture frame at him and then whatever else she can grab in her frustration.

"You stupid piece of shit," she screams at him.

"Noe!" He shouts over dodging various items that manage to hit him. Outside of a few punches and slaps on his chest for doing stupid shit, the two of them were never violent with each other. Now Noelle is showing a whole different side to herself. "I told you I didn't do anything." He yells at her.

"And I should fucking believe you." She asks on the brink of hysterics. She almost hates herself for being this wife. The one wife who always wonders what her husband is doing at odd hours of the night, and refuses to see the truths that are all but slapping her in the face, she has turned into that hysterical wife.

"Why would I lie about this?" He seethes after he dodges another item thrown and lunges at her grabbing her wrist again to stop her throwing things at him. She realizes she nick him in the cheek, which bleeds slowly.

"Because you're a fucking lying deceiving bastard." She hisses in his face. She knows she is hitting a nerve from the way his nostrils flare and he is clenching his jaw. "It probably wouldn't be the first lie you told me when you come home late while I'm raising your kids."

Jax lets her go and shakes his head. It was a familiar argument between them. One where certain insecurities with Jax would rear it's ugly head. Then she would let herself believe Jax's words to mollify her. Now with this staring her right in the face it wouldn't work.

He runs his hands through his wet hair. "I haven't been with anyone since I've married you." He tells her and now he just sounds exhausted. Maybe even a little bit sad.

Noelle shakes her head. She refuses to let herself believe his words. She knows that his lips are capable of the most beautiful lies. And she is too far gone in her anger to listen to reasons or explanations. "Married, right? What about before?"

He doesn't answer her and only looks at her sadly.

She sneers at him in disgust and goes to leave the room.

"Noe –" Jax starts and reaches for her again, but this time she reels back and slaps him hard across the face.

It leaves a red mark across his cheek as he clenches his jaw. She finds a sick satisfaction from it.

However any anger dissipates as she hears gasps of shock and she finds her children staring at them from the door.