Thus conscience does make cowards of us all

"Yo, it's Jax. Leave me a message."

The last time he'd gotten married had been a goddamn mess from start to finish, beginning from the moment he'd thought a fucked up junkie wife would be a good balm for loneliness. Gemma had handled most of that wedding, not that there was much to handle. Wendy had gotten about as involved as picking the dress and then the rest of it had fallen to his mother. The reception had been a Teller-Morrow.

The only good thing from that woman had been Abel and Wend had very nearly fucked that one up too.

This time around...Holy shit. It's still simple, all things considered, but compared to the last time it's mission fucking impossible. Beach wedding, check. Get Tara's priest friend to do the ceremony, check. Force Neil to strike some of the more obscene parts of his speech, also check. But holy shit...now they're trying to figure out food and drink and God knows what else..

"How did we get through this last time?" he asks Tara, staring at the pamphlets that have migrated to their home.

Jax couldn't even say the last time he'd felt so much joy in life. There was so much that had threatened to tear into him, to sink claws into his heart and rip away the things that mattered. Those hard days made the good ones all the more precious. In the last six months, piece by piece, his life seemed to have fallen into the right order. He had Tara. He had his boys. They were far enough away from all the club shit that they finally had a real chance to start over new.

Every day made it a little more real. The dog, Macha, had been one of the first things. Then the ring. Then the offer on the house that had finally, really suited them. Maybe it was a little cliché, the 2.5 kids and the house with the white picket fence, but he didn't care.

For the first time ever, he'd been on the receiving end of Father's Day. He'd woken that morning to two smiling boys and Tara and they'd all had breakfast in bed. Maybe it was just toast and bacon, but he felt like he'd eaten like a king. The lull in the storm of moving and packing had been welcome, made him breathe a little easier.

In high spirits, he and Tara had dropped off the boys with a sitter so they could tackle the last bit of packing before they had to rent a van to take all their shit to the new, bigger house just outside of the city. Despite having only lived in that apartment for about nine months, Jax constantly marveled at the amount of shit that had accumulated.

Nearly overwhelmed by the seemingly never-ending packing, Jax had grabbed Macha's leash and said he was going to take her for a walk. The poor girl had been getting antsy anyway, already developing the famed energy that adult pit bulls possessed.

A half hour's walk had gotten him to feel a little more settled and Macha plenty worn out. Carrying her in his arms, Jax walked up to their apartment.

Then he saw the door hanging open and something dropped in his stomach.

"Tara?" he called. No response.

Dread building, he opened the door and almost dropped to his knees when he saw the kitchen. The nearly emptied room was now a wreck with dishes in need of washing thrown helter-skelter. The smell of old blood hit him full in the nose and mouth and Jax almost couldn't register the smears of blood all over the floor and pooled in the sink. Distantly, he noticed a large meat fork, dripping with old blood.

On the floor in front of him, there was a file that sent Jax reeling. Its file tab read, "Knowles-Teller, Tara."

It'd been a hell of a night, starting with Tara's many revelations, not least of which the lengths she'd gone to to make sure he'd turn against his own mother. All of it had transferred from clinging onto her back like a demon to sitting on his heart like a pile of stones. Even after a night alone, he still felt more confused the certain.

The things of which he was certain, however, remained clear. He loved his boys, loved them dear and would never do a thing to hurt them if he could help it. And he loved Tara. He hated the things she said she'd done and hated himself for being part of the vicious machine that had driven her to them, but he still loved her.

And somehow, maybe not today, they'd figure out where to go next.

It was the boys that brought him to the hospital that morning. They needed the routine and had made friends at daycare. Once they were squared away and kissed goodbye, Jax got himself a cup of cheap vending machine coffee and went to find Tara's office.

"UP!" Thomas demanded.

Jax rolled his eyes, laughing as Abel sat contently in his stroller and regarded his brother with that particular look of babyish disapproval. "Up?" he repeated to Thomas.

"UP!" Thomas insisted. Jax shook his head and unbuckled Thomas from his seat and hefting the toddler onto his hip. Demanding little monster, he thought, without any venom behind it. He would've spoiled his boys to the ends of the earth, but he felt like he really owed Thomas for those two years he'd missed.

He shifted Thomas in his arms and went through the store shelves, picking up some baby food and other sundries. There wasn't a whole lot he could get without a cart and it was hard to get a cart when he pushed a stroller in one hand and supported the clinging Thomas with the other. They'd have to wait for the big stuff when he could get a baby sitter.

It was hard not to think that, back home, it would've been Gemma taking care of this. She loved her boys and was more than happy to run errands while the men of the club dealt with other, more pertinent matters. They would have been hard-pressed to see a club member stuck on the nitty gritty of "daddy detail."

That was different here, as Tara amply reminded him. That didn't keep it from chafing, the knowledge that he earned less than Tara, worked fewer hours. It felt wrong, trekking from store to store as he picked up formula and cereal when every instinct of who he was and how he'd been raised told him that he should have been bringing home money so that Tara could buy these while he was at work.

Adjustment never came easy to him.

"Jesus you two," Jax said, rubbing his thumb into Thomas' back. "Impossible."

Caught up in navigating his boys, Jax almost ran the stroller into someone else. "Shit. Jesus, sorry."

Thomas nodded, delighted. "Shit!"

It used to be he would stay at the auto shop until seven or eight for those extra hours, but that was before he had two boys in daycare. Now, five on the dot, he was strapping his boys into their double stroller and pushing them down the hall. In his head, Jax was counting out how much baby cereal was left and what he'd need to spend versus what was in his bank account. Further back in his brain, Jax considered the money he'd been saving and the gorgeous new Harley he'd seen at the dealership.

There were so many things to figure out in the distance. Hard conversations with Tara seemed to come weekly at their most infrequent and usually far, far more often than that.

He'd been a dad for a while now, a single one at times, but he'd never felt it as deeply in his bones as he had of late.

"Jesus," he muttered to himself. Jax was getting morbid these days.

Shaking his head at himself, he changed the direction of the stroller to see if he couldn't drop in on Newt.

Five days in and Jax knew he'd need work. The money he was given was going to burn through real fast, especially with Abel at his side. More than that, Jax couldn't just sit around and do nothing. He needed his bike. He needed the club. He really, really needed Tara. None of those seemed too interested in showing up, so Jax's best option was work, keeping his hands busy where his mind wouldn't. It was the only kind of legitimate work he knew how to do.

He hadn't found a baby-sitter yet, so Abel was strapped into the stroller Jax had bought. Walking down the street, he could only imagine the picture he made. Jax Teller, walking along with a baby in a stroller, still proudly wearing his cut. Let them stare if they wanted. Abel seemed happy enough and that's what counted.

The auto shop was easy enough to find now that he knew the streets a little better. It wasn't Teller-Morrow, but some things were always the same in every shop. Jax found it sort of reassuring to be honest.

Hoping the proprietor wouldn't overlook his skill just because of his baby, Jax knocked on the office door.