Everything Has Changed

Talk To Me Now

*I am a woman by birth
and after nineteen times around I have found
they will stop at nothing once they know what you are worth
talk to me now

It's been two days since Jax's return and two days since anyone has seen or heard from him. Tara, still livid about the whole thing sits on a wicker chair in her backyard watching the sunrise. She can't remember the last time she's slept, though she supposes it was two ago. Inside she can hear the hustle and bustle of Chibs getting the kids ready for school and day care. Abel and Thomas are getting so big. Abel knows something's up. He keeps asking about the man at the clubhouse. She knows sooner or later she'll have to explain who Jax is.

Nothing made sense anymore. Not only was Jax out of prison, apparently he'd been out for years and Chibs knew. He knew! It made her sick to her stomach to even think about it. How could he have hidden this from her? She had always been honest with him about all the times she still refused to believe that her and Jax's love story ended this way. The thing that made it easier was that she had no choice. That there was no talking to Jax while he was on the inside, but that one day when he got out he would come home and they would deal with it all. Now, well it felt like a slap in the face that the two men who she loved and claimed to love her had kept this huge secret.

She kept replaying it over and over in her mind:

"Jax..." She had barely gotten the words out before he took off. This was bad. Really bad. She turned to Chibs, "Filip?"

The scot shook his head. He didn't even know where to start. Tara knows instinctively by this silence that there's something she's missing. She asks Juice and Bobby, who are trying to peer in the now open doorway, to take Charlie, Abel and Thomas and closes the doors to chapel behind them. Through it all the man she is currently living with refuses to look her in the eyes. It scares her and Filip has never scared her. Not even when she was a teen. He simply struck her as a good man and until this very moment she has never doubted that assessment. She sits down in what was the V.P. Chair. She is probably the only woman ever allowed in church let alone to sit at the table for any reason, but she wasn't just any woman. She has earned her spot in the club and if women were allowed to patch in she would have been a full fledged member and man/woman(?) of mayhem already for all she'd done for this club.

"Well?" She questions with more then a little annoyance. It was starting to really piss her off that he was saying nothing.

"Aye don know what to say. I think it's quite obvious that Jackie boy is out."

"Sarcasm? Really? That's what you want to use right now?"

Silence.

Trying to reign in her anger she gets up and paces the room.

"When? And why didn't we hear from Lowen when he was being released?" This too was followed by silence. "God damn it Filip say something!"

He runs his hands though his prematurely salt and pepper hair and knows that the shit he is in is about to get deeper.

"I did hear when he was released..."

Tara cuts him off, her fear and frustration getting the better of her. Keeping her cool was never really her strength. "And you didn't think you should tell me??!!"

She's yelling over him and she thinks she hears him continuing to speak and stops dead in her tracks. She is not sure she can trust her own ears, because if she heard him correctly she thinks she might need to sit down.

She looks at Chibs and he nods his head as if to confirm what he said. " Ya heard me correctly mo ghra." He says, his accent thick as he says the last words.

" No. No. NO! You did NOT just say 5 years ago!"

" I did. I don know all the details but he was released two years into the sentence."

The brunette is pacing uncontrollably now. This was all just too much. Too much. "How?"

"Like I said I don know the details.."

" No," she cuts him off. " How do you know? Did he just tell you?" The dreaded silence is the only answer she gets. "Did he!" She yells, her hands landing with such force that it shakes the redwood table where Chibs sits, demanding his attention.

Filip was not a man that had been afraid of much in his life. He hated but was never afraid of Jimmy O, not Fiona, not the Cartels or the rivals MCs, but right now he was terrified to look into her beautiful green eyes. He did so only when he knew he had no other option and the hurt that already reflected in them was about to get so much worse.

"No. He called me after he got out." And right then he saw the color of her eyes change. Not that you could say the shade was different but the light that was always a part of the smile she gave him disappeared.

"Wow" was all she could get her mouth to say. It was actually quite surprising considering the amount of profanity swimming in her mind.

I played the powerless
in too many dark scenes
and I was blessed with a birth and a death
and I guess I just want some say in between

" Mommy?" The adorable voice of her middle child, Thomas broke her out of her memory.

" Hey there little man? You ready for school?"

"Uncle Chibs said to come give you a hug." He says as he runs over and jumps in her lap. All of Jax's children were undeniably a Teller. Their hair and completion all screamed Jax but Thomas has her eyes and she can read them like a book.

"What's wrong buddy?" She asks as she sits him in her lap. He just shrugs. "You know Mommy can make everything better right?" He nods again.

"Are you ok mommy?" He asks.

"Why would you ask that? " she inquires of her sensitive son.

"You just look sad." He answers and apparently he can read her eyes as well.

"Well I am a little sad baby but it will all be ok."

"You know I can make it all better." He says mirroring her words. His little face serious with worry lines etching his adorable scrunched up forehead.

She wants to laugh but doesn't want to offend his earnest response. Instead she says you "You can? How?"

The little blonde in front of her leans in and kisses her on the forehead the way Filip always does to her when he's being sweet. The action brings tears to her eyes for many reasons. Looking at this little boy who no doubt is going to be a total heartbreaker when we grows up she can't help but break into a big smile.

"You know what?!" She says in mock shock.

"What?!"

" You were right! I feel better. Thank you for fixing it!"

"I got this," he says in all seriousness

She can't help but smile a real smile, the first one in two days.

"Come on laddie we have ta git ya ta school." Chibs walks onto the patio and sees Tara's smile. It's a real one. It melts his heart and breaks it at the same time. That smile is for her child and while it's well deserved and beautiful he wonders if there will ever be a time that she will smile for him, at him, because of him again.

He knows it's wrong to love her. He never planned it. He just knew it was a comfort to have her and the kids home where they belonged. He smiles down softly at Tara as he picks up Thomas and throws him over his shoulder. She simply turns her eyes back to the skyline in front of her without a word to him at all.

don't you understand
in the day to day
and the face to face
I have to act
just as strong as I can
just to preserve a place
where I can be who I am
so if you still know how
talk to me now

Lyrics from Talk To Me Now by Ani Difranco