Chapter Text
“Does your majesty not realize that this forest is crawling with outlaws and brigands?”
“I know it sounds a bit bizarre, but in Camelot, Camelot, that’s how conditions are. The rain may never fall till after sundown. By eight, the morning fog must disappear. In short, there's simply not a more congenial spot for happily-ever-aftering than here in Camelot.”
"Shall I not be on a pedestal, worshipped and competed for? Not be carried off, or better still, cause a little war? Where are the simple joys of maidenhood?"
Tara looked at Jax with shock. “Hank is Henry Lin’s cousin?” Jax looked at her with barely concealed anger. “Yes, he’s Lin’s cousin. His last name is Lin. There aren’t many Chinese around here, and almost all of them are Lin’s. The prospect said he kissed you while you hugged him.”
Tara started to get pissed. “Well, the prospect needs to learn to either ask questions or shut the hell up until he has all the information.”
She was livid.
“Hank and I went to college together in San Diego. We were in the same pre-med class. We ran into each other at a gas station. For Christ’s sake, Jax, not everything and everyone is a sinister schemer in a Shakespearean or Arthurian tragedy. Well, your mom could definitely be Gertrude/Morgana le Fay/Madame Mim. He was a good friend in college and I will not apologize for having friends.”
Jax looked furious. “We are in it deep with them right now. How do you know he wasn’t tailing you? You can’t be talking to random people, even if you went to college together, Tara.”
Tara was shocked at the audacity in his statement and laughed. “Are you serious? Not everything is about you or the goddamned club. It was a completely random chance encounter.”
She was on the verge of tears.
“Hank was visiting family in the area and is an attending in orthoplastic, hand, and orthopedic neurosurgery at Stanford University Medical Center.”
Her anger was barely contained.
“I don’t give a shit if he’s a Triad Lin or not. He saw my hand and wants to meet with both of us to discuss some experimental procedures that may help restore nerve function and range of motion in crush injuries like mine.”
Over a year’s worth of coldness melted in that moment and Tara saw the Jax she had been in love with for half her life. He quickly schooled it but it was just enough to give her hope again.
"How to handle a woman? There's a way, said the wise old man. A way known by every woman since the whole rigmarole began.”
When Jax was told by the prospect that Tara was hugging all over one of Lin’s men he lost his shit. How the hell does she even know any of them? Is she having an affair?
Since the desperately faked miscarriage, he had tried to harden his heart against her. He understood why she did what she did, but he was not sorry that being with him took her to that place. That was the place he lived in for eleven miserable years and if it took him putting her through that same hell to keep her he would never apologize for it. He told himself that she was his wife and that her place was at home. When she caught him with Collette he knew he had broken her completely.
Then she turned the tables on everyone with her transformation from Old Lady to First Lady. She was his Guinevere, or Jackie Kennedy, and he didn’t know what to do.
She was so refined and gorgeous.
He knew how to handle trashy women, but this Tara was an enigma, and he realized she always had been. The only way he knew to handle that was to put her in a gilded cage. He would come home every night and bury himself in her. She was all his and he was hers. He was so desperately in love with her that he gave her anything she wanted. She had to stay so he could build a kingdom for them. He could fulfill his father’s legacy now that she was with him.
He had to keep her. If she left him again he wouldn’t survive. So he built a fortress around her and shamelessly used their boys as his bargaining chips. Then she gave him Eva and he knew he would literally die for her. All he had ever wanted from the moment he danced with her at Homecoming was to have her with him forever.
He had a prospect with her at all times. If she left the house with him, no one dared to look at her too long; no matter how beautiful she was, and she was absolutely beautiful. This Lin couldn’t be blind and even without meeting him he knew that he was no exception.
“I’ll meet with him for you.” Clay was dead but that didn’t give her hand back. He at least owed her the chance to get it back, and maybe figure out how this Lin fit into the chess game between the Triad and Sons.