Chibs had always been a kind of subtle observer. It was in direct opposition to how unsubtle he was in the world. The Glasgow Grin, the nasty goat, the cut, the blades, the boots, the bike, the snarl. Strange how he had been less seen and more understood in Ireland, here stateside, he was definitely seen and not understood at all. He snorted - crooked grin, one eye closed - just thinking about the dichotomies that had begun to gap his life open, an unstitched wound that was healing hard with scar tissue.

No matter.

He had been quietly observing Jax for years but now he had turned the focus of his steady gaze on her. If you studied the man you couldn't help but see the woman, notice her. So, turning his keen narrowed gaze on Tara had just been following a lesson, researching, turning over bloody leaves, and hunkering down to get as close a look as he could. Without being seen. And the last handful of hard months had made him an ace student, learning her body posture, her facial expressions, changes in tone, the vulnerable injured look that was quickly masked with false hardness.

All that looking, all that speculative observing, his awareness of her, had begun to simmer inside the cauldron of his blackened heart. He would wake in the middle of the night shivering like a horse rode hard and put away wet. He would pull himself upright, sit on the edge of the bed in his trollies and suck down filter-less smoke after chained filter-less smoke until his head went hazy with the nicotine and he could lie back down, curl around himself, and think of anyone else. Anyone else but her. Then he'd wake with the weak sunlight and a cigarette hangover and thoughts of her would boil over and double him up with wanting, needing, longing. In the cold bathroom, he would take a shower and jack himself to completion and let her name be whispered like the damning secret it was into his cupped hands.

Tara.

Then he would supplicate his palms beneath the faucet head and let it all sluice down the drain. Get dressed, still warm and damp, kick the bike to life and head out into a new Charming day to work shoulder to shoulder with the man who got to claim the woman he wanted more than he had wanted just about anything in about as long as he dared to remember.

***

Jax had changed, was changing. They all had but the Prince was twisting in a devilish wind, turning on the gibbet of a gallows he had built himself. Chibs wanted nothing to do with it. Not anymore. He felt a fool for having believed so fiercely in the lad. True colours were being bled out and the ground was sticky as tar beneath their feet. A lifetime of sitting at the knees of Clay and Gemma had broken the boy's back apparently. He was bowed and shaped in the direction from which he had sworn he would never go, staggering into the mayhem.

It was making Chibs sick. Sick to his stomach, sick at heart. It was tearing him into pieces, smaller and smaller bits of shredded purpose. It was destroying him. He felt as though he were in the centre of a whirlwind, anything that could be grabbed out of his grasp whipping away from him. A maelstrom that would break them all on the rocks, haul them down into the depths.

He had tried talking with Jackie. Talking soft and steady, then yelling loud. He had put his hands on the boy, holding back his own desire to push the young King through a wall. Shaking him like a bitch with an errant pup in her jaws. Nothing was getting through; nothing was accomplishing a thing of worth. It was all wasted effort.

So, he refocused. The new Queen pricking at him, pulling at him, dragging his attention away from all the things he had been knighted to protect. He had a new allegiance. He sat on the picnic table outside the clubhouse, swung on the swings, lay on his bike, and he waited for her. He turned his back on the table, his brothers and let himself be pulled into another world.

Her world.

He would see the SUV pull into the parking lot and he would climb to his feet as though it were a lazy effort but his blood singing in his veins. He would open the car door for her and let her smile dazzle him. Help her with the boys, follow her, push swings, set up forts, encourage consumption of milk and peanut butter sandwiches. Walk the baby, chase the toddler, and keep a hot lingering gaze on her.

And he knew she knew. He'd wait for her to watch him from the corners of her beautiful, feline eyes, then smile and shake her head. He would laugh low in the back of his throat and his heart would skip a beat as though his body were keeping score.

***

"Man," it was Tig leaning over him, a bottle of single-malt in his hand, filling their glasses again. "Man oh man, Chibs." He shook his head, face set in serious repose.

"You gonna keep "manning" me or you gonna spit out whatever it is you're choking on, brother?"

It was just the two of them awake, seated at the picnic table right outside the clubhouse door. Four a.m. and keeping watch on lockdown. Fucken Irish Kings.

Tig caught his gaze and held it hard. Chibs raised his brows expectantly and downed the whiskey with a skilled toss. "Choke for all I care."

"I see you, Filip." He held up a long finger. "I see you, man."

"You don't see dick, my brother."

He leaned conspiratorially close and Chibs allowed this. Tig whispered her name, "Tara."

And Chibs felt his heart stutter but kept his face schooled. He hadn't, afterall, cycled up the Liffey on a bicycle. Slowly he raised his gaze to meet Tig's accusing glance. His left hand fisted and he breathed out quietly. Tig nodded and started to speak again. Chibs cut him off.

"Don't fucken say her name again, Tiggy." His voice was a snake, menacing and full of venomous fang.

Tig raised both hands. "I don't see harry tom or dick, my man."

A long silence stretched between them and both had another half glass of whiskey.

"It's a bad idea." Tig again.

Chibs nodded. "Let's say I actually know what in hell you're on about."

"You know," he was whispering again. "I loved a Queen once. I did. And we got close to doing it. Stepping over, you know, a line. It's a bad idea."

Chibs stood, hands loose at his sides now, palms prickling, the back of his neck licking flames up into his skull.

"I see you watching her. See the way you look at her. You think no one's seeing you but I do. I see you, Chibby boy. I see so much around here, damn. It's crazy."

"Fuck this noise." The only thing he could think of in response. The bravado, the puffed up chest, the swagger. He knew he shouldn't walk away, should sit back down, kill the bottle, distract Tig with the story about the donkey show they caught in Mexico during a long boozy weekend.

But another three drinks and he would be tasting her name on his tongue, whiskey flavoured, thick and sharp and intoxicating. He could feel the edge of a staggeringly dangerous cliff, leaning into it, wanting to leap, make Tig his confessor, get absolution from the biker priest, and it was so insane that he took one impulsive step back, away. He turned and let the dark swallow him.

***

So, Jax had a hard-on for the prostitute madam. Chibs took this knowledge and it was the weight of a loaded clip in his front pocket, a lethal edge on a sharpened knife under the ball of his thumb, the detonator button flashing red.

It wasn't anything he could actually use, though, and he knew that, but it was a catalyst. The knowledge that destroyed all the rules, the walls, the lines, the loyalty, the law. For him. He could breathe, both labored and easy. He might just be able to have something all his own. Something he knew how to care for, how to nurture, how to love.

If Jax was going to blow the whole MC to kingdom come, then he, Chibs would grab and run. If Tara wanted another life, he would find a way to carve it out of his own flesh and bone for her.

He pressed himself closer to her. Teasing in the quiet way he knew he possessed. The gentle recognition of someone else's worth. The appreciative glance that celebrated her femininity. The casual smirking laugh that signaled his understanding of her words, her humour, her perception. And she responded. Seeking him out first, looking across crowded rooms to find his gaze, setting a hand on his arm, rubbing her knuckles down the shivering length of his spine. Smiling into the promise he was making to her.

And then, the stars aligned, the planets convened, the skies opened. It was as simple as a late night smokes run.

The supermarket was closer than the corner five and dime. He hung his helmet on the handle bar, shrugged his cut into place, and walked through the wide doors. Artificial light and endless aisles of food. Might as well grab a case of beer and a bottle of booze, he factored and walked into the refrigerated aisle, mulling over choices of poison. And there she was, staring hard at a shelf of tequila.

He sidled up beside her and that concerned him. She was totally unaware of him. He felt momentarily guilty for interrupting her but did it like it was a job. "Didn't figure you for a fan of the worm."

She startled but it was such a small movement as to be almost unnoticeable. He noticed.

"Sorry, Tara, love. You should be more aware of yourself, you know. Your surroundings."

"Sure, Filip. I should. Yep."

It was a mood. "It's like that?"

She turned to face him fully. Studying him, her gaze on his, then lingering over the scars, flicking down to his throat, ignoring the VP patch pointedly. "I'm sorry. That was rude." She sighed.

He shook his head, wondering if she could hear his heart hammering. "S'okay."

"No. It's not. This isn't me." She cast her gaze down at her hands twisting inside one another. "You wouldn't even believe the real me."

She was a heart surgeon, surely she would pick up on the fact that his heart was going to burst out of his chest and flop onto the lino like a hooked fish. "Yeah? I bet I would. Believe, you know."

"Do you want to get drunk?"

That was it, his heart stopped.

She had clocked the change in him. Maybe her surgeon senses had finally begun to tingle. But his heart had, actually, begun beating again. Traitorous organ. He would live to see this through.

"Sure," he said casually.

"Great. Gemma has the boys. Jax is wherever god and the devil are. And you and I are going to get drunk."

She reached for a mid-shelf Tequila and he winced. "No, lassie. Not that."

"No?"

He brushed past her, his arm rubbing her shoulder, and she moved up against him and matched his strides. They stopped in front of the locked glass shelf. She leaned forward and peered in. "Vodka?"

"Single-malt Scotch Whiskey. Hammer of the gods."

She smiled slowly, then bent her face towards him, and the smile widened. Her eyes crinkled and he could not for the life of him remember the last time the world had just simply fallen away.

"Yeah. Whiskey." She said this laughing, her white teeth showing.

He pressed the call button for a clerk, turning away from her to keep himself from tearing his heart out and offering it up to her lips.