Fly By Night | Sons of Anarchy Fanfiction | Jax Teller x OC

Chapter Thirty-One

A/N - Happy Wednesday! Please take note of the rating, if you haven't done that yet ;) When I was writing this chapter, I was thinking a lot about the research I've done for work, and the fact that so many survivors say one of their biggest fears is feeling like their partners are going to treat them differently after they find out about the assault. So, I was thinking about that in this chapter, and how Allie might address that with Jax to show him that things don't have to change between them. This chapter has a lot of sex scenes in it, but the purpose was really to show how they're working through this together, both physically and emotionally. By the end, I think they end up a lot closer and more solid as a couple than when they started. Anyway, sorry for the long explanation, but I felt like I needed to explain ahead of time ;) Enjoy!

Allie slid into her tub, closing her eyes as the warm water wrapped around her and soothed her. She leaned back, letting her neck rest at the head of the tub and let her lavender bath soak work its magic on all her stress, all her aches and pains, and the epic dumpster fire that was this day.

She squeezed her eyes closed again and inhaled that calming lavender scent to push everything else away. Warmth and steam surrounded her, and she dipped a little lower into the water until her chin skimmed the edge and her shoulders were completely submerged. Now, she just felt like adding some bubbles, so she hit the knob with her toes to get a steady stream of water flowing again, and dumped some lavender bubble bath into the tub. Then she sank even lower into the warm bubbles, finally feeling the calm and the comfort she needed, and always managed to find in this tub when she needed it most.

Her run had helped beat the aggression and the anger and the frustration out of her, that was for sure. At one point, she was pretty sure she'd been crying and running at the same time, which was a strange feeling. It made her feel stupid too. Crying over something that had happened so long ago, something that she'd thought she had worked so hard to move past and set aside.

But having to sit on that bed today in Jax's dorm, with his hand on her back, and Opie sitting across from them with his eyes rooted to her feet, and say the words from start to finish, and relive it again, step by step, piece by sordid piece... she hadn't anticipated just how emotionally devastated she would feel by the end of it. So drained and spent, and just relieved.

Maybe she'd needed to say it. And maybe she'd needed to say it to him. Now that it was done, now that he knew everything there was to know, every terrible detail, she just felt better. The demons had been exorcised, and she'd come out the other side anew.

The real problem, she knew, was that up until today, she really had thought she'd worked past it. That it didn't rule her life or own her in any way. She'd seen a therapist for a little while after transferring to UCLA, and after a certain point, she'd gotten tired of that therapist droning on over and over again about how her trauma was manifesting itself in unhealthy ways. It hadn't sat well with her, so she'd stopped seeing that therapist. After that, she'd just continued on with her life as usual, closing as many people out as she could.

And now that everything was out in the open, she saw that while those coping mechanisms were maybe not the healthiest, they were still hers. Her chosen path to healing and redemption, and right or wrong, she'd dug her heels in and just kept on living.

Still, there was more to life than just that, and she owed it to herself to live a full and a happy life. She deserved that. She'd earned that.

And when she heard that familiar rumbling of a motorcycle engine bounce off her walls, she smiled to herself and dipped even lower into the bubbly water. She listened with bated anticipation as that rumbling engine grew louder as he rolled into her driveway, as the engine cut out altogether, as the garage door opened, and then shut about a minute later, and then she heard the door through the garage open and close.