Ryder Teller never wanted to step foot back into her home town of Charming California, she had been hurt too many times, and the club that her husband, brother, and father all belonged to ruled everything including her law career. But when her husba...
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Five
"Are we going to talk about this?" Jax asked going back into his wife's childhood bedroom after putting their daughter down in the pack-and-play in Opie's old room.
"Talk about what?" Ryder returned as she pulled one of his old baggy SAMCROW shirts over her head. He could see the outline of his crow that danced up her side and the other small tattoos that she had gotten. His hands stole to her waist and he pulled her towards him.
"Jax." Her voice was soft but she didn't fight to get away from him.
"About Abel.' Whatever fight that Ryder had in her in Tacoma had drained out of her body and she just slumped against her husband's torso.
"Can we talk about it later?"
"No baby." He started as he scooped her up and carried her to the bed that barely fit them when they were teenagers and would probably break if they put anything more than their weight on it.
"We need to talk about it now. Just in case anything happens."
That caught her attention and she sat up straight, "What happened?" He pulled her back down to lie with him.
"The gun warehouse got blown up." Ryder turned her head to look at him causing waves of red hair to fall into her eyes.
He laughed and brushed out of her eyes. It seemed easy to slip back into their old habits and she caught herself.
"That's all I can tell you without going into much detail.'
"Probably best, don't want that bitch ATF agent digging into anything else."
The way his arm tightened around her made her assumption about Juice telling him and the rest of the club.
"She is probably looking into the slim balls I defend." She mused as her fingers caught the bullet hanging from around his neck, "That was the first time in a while that I wanted to throw a punch at someone. The guy I was defending knew of her and said she was a real nasty bitch. But he thought I could take her."
"Of course, you can darlin'," Her husband laughed, "I seem to remember you throwing down with Tara on more than one occasion."
"Don't bring her up." She had grown tense again, so he strayed from the subject, he would bring her up in the morning before they went to St. Thomas. "I had Gemma talk to Rosen."
"About?" She had propped her chin up on the palm of her hand watching him closely, almost curious.
"About having you named Abel's legal guardian if anything happens to me."
"Don't say that," she warned using her free hand to slap him lightly on the chest. She hated when he said things like that, Opie did the same thing, the last time was when she saw him in Chino and he asked her to watch over Donna and the kids.
"I thought about this all the way down." She said shifting to lay back on the mattress but he caught her and pulled her to where he was holding her again.
"How I would react to seeing him, knowing that you had him with someone else. How I would feel seeing you again, would it be like every other damn time we see each other? Where we end up naked before even talking about anything?"
The last time that had happened, she ended up getting pregnant with Harley and keeping it a secret from him for 5 months. "I don't want my heart to be torn into a million pieces again Jax, not with Harley and not with having Abel.'
Jax dropped a kiss onto the top of her head, he knew that behind the icy demeanor that she picked up from Gemma and Luanne, Ryder was tender-hearted and the thought of a baby being without a mother would kill her.
She sniffed back the tears that rose up, "But in here." She dug her fingers into the material of her shirt where her heart was at, "I knew I couldn't do it. Look at what happened to me and Op after Mary left. I don't want the kid or Harley growing up like that." *** "I am going to go see Ope at the mill before going to the hospital," Ryder said the next morning as Jax balanced their daughter in his arms, Gemma had found out that they were there and was demanding to see Harley right away, so Piney was going to take her to the garage. "I haven't seen him since he was in Chino. He didn't want me to come down or did he want to meet halfway."
"It's been hard on him being out babe, he and Donna are struggling." Jax returned, hating that he was ratting out his best friend.
"I know, I snuck and paid a bill for them while he was inside. Donna ripped me a new one when she found out that I paid two months of the back mortgage payments she missed."
"She tore into Gemma too."
He smirked, he had offered and even reached out to Kozik to see if he would talk to Ryder about it during the time that Ryder was furious with him. But she did it without being prompted to, she loved her brother, loved his wife and their kids.
Harley loved her cousins.
And she wasn't going to let them suffer.
"Still it will be good to see my brother.' She kicked the covers off and stood up stretching her back out with a groan.
"Gemma offered a spare room at her place for you and Harley."
He laughed as he placed down Harley who went running down the hall to the sounds of Piney's voice.
"I would rather have another c-section without pain medication before I stay with her and Clay again. And I won't go back into that house Jax.' She pointed her finger at him, "I will burn it down to the ground before I take our child in there."
He held his hand up before pulling the ringing prepay out.
"Yeah?" Turning her back to him so he wouldn't see the eye roll, Ryder sighed, "Go see your brother and then go from there." ** "Excuse me, ma'am, you can't go too close to the woodchippers.' The boss at the Mill said before turning to look at the woman that has just gotten out of the car.
"I am just here to see my brother, I won't go near the equipment.' She grinned, " "ey! Opie!" Opie turned quickly and dropped the tree clippings he had in his hands surprised, "Ryder."
