The Convenient Wife
by Kelly

chapter 39

The door had opened, Jax had taken one look at her, and she was
enveloped in those long muscular arms. "What the hell did he do to
you?" he'd demanded.

Sobs had overwhelmed her tiny frame preventing speech, and Jax had
simply held her against him, cradled against his big body on the sofa
until she'd quieted. For a long while, the silence was only broken by
the occasional whisper of his soothing words and the hiccupping sighs
that were the remnants of her tears.

"Can you tell me about it now?"

For a moment longer, she burrowed against his strong chest, sinking
into his strength and relying on him to hold her steady as he'd done
so many times before.

"Alexis?" he prodded. "What did that thug do to you? If he's hurt
you, I'll kill him!"

"Oh, Jax," she hiccupped against him. "It w-wasn't him. It was m-me.
It was what I did."

He leaned back from her a bit so that he could peer down into her
tearstained face. "You? What happened, Alexis?"

She swallowed. "Kristina…my baby…she's his."

Jax's jaw slackened as he took in this information. "Sonny's the
father? What about Ned?"

"He—he lied to help me. I d-didn't ask him to. He just kind of did it
on his own and I-I went along to protect myself. To protect my child."

Jax eyes lit with understanding. "Now I get the things Ned has done
to you. And why he's been acting like such a jackass towards you for
far too long now."

Alexis sighed raggedly. "S-Sonny found out today. In court. In front
of the lawyers. In front of the judge. In front of Ric. Oh god, I
hurt him so bad."

"And I take it he exploded."

Alexis shook her head. "No. He just—he went inside himself…so deep I
couldn't even reach him. And then he just left. Which means the
police will pick him up and everything will get worse, so much worse.
God, what have I done?"

Her sobs were renewed as she pressed her face into his chest. His
embrace tightened. "Shh, baby, don't cry. You had absolutely no
choice. You had to lie to him. His life is unfit to have children in
it, you know that. You were right to keep your daughter from him.
That's why she's safe today."

"I've missed that so much," she mumbled against him.

"Missed what?"

"That unconditional love you've always offered to me. That assumption
that I'm in the right even though I know for sure that I was wrong."

She felt Jax smile against her hair. "You'll always have that from
me," he avowed. "Especially since the idea of keeping distance from
Corinthos could NEVER be wrong to me."

She looked up at him sadly. "That's not fair. I didn't trust Sonny
with the truth when I was pregnant because there were things that
were going on in his life that I couldn't accept. But after, when
things calmed down, when I began to trust him again, I should have
told him. Maybe we could have kept it a secret from the world for a
while. Maybe we could have worked something out. I don't know. But I
never gave him the chance. He was someone I loved, and I never gave
him a fair chance. That was wrong."

Her mouth began to tremble. "And the thing is I don't know if he can
ever forgive that."

The sound of the front door quietly closing behind them startled them
out of each other's arms. She stood and stared, wide-eyed, at her
husband in the doorway. Jax got to his feet as well and placed his
body in front of her protectively.

"How many times am I gonna have to see you in the Candy Boy's arms,
Alexis?" Sonny demanded huskily.

She tried to read his eyes to gauge his emotions, but found them
still shuttered off behind his cool mask of control. It made her
nervous. Her hands knitted together in a knot in front of her body.

"I—I called Jax because I was upset," she explained softly.

Sonny rubbed his neck wearily with one hand. "Guess everyone returned
to their exes tonight," he whispered.

The surge of pain in her gut at that statement was immediate and
vicious. So he'd rushed right over to Carly's. And she supposed the
young woman had comforted him in the world's oldest way and had sent
him back here before the ankle monitor got him thrown into jail. Bile
once again rolled in Alexis' stomach.

Of course the little bitch hadn't admitted that she'd known about
Kristina for months now. She'd probably taken every opportunity to
slander Alexis, though.

"We need to talk," he said simply.

"Yes," she agreed.

"Alone," he said and looked pointedly at Jax.

Her ex-husband sought her gaze. "You sure about this?"

Sonny rolled his eyes. "Jax, whaddya think I'm gonna do: put my hands
on her?"

"I have no idea what you'd do, Corinthos. But you excel at trashing
women's lives. So forgive me for being overprotective of someone who
means a great deal to me."

"Last time I checked that was my ring on her finger, not yours."

"No sham marriage is ever going to separate me from Alexis. She is
part of my life and I, hers. There's nothing you can do to change
that!"

Sonny stepped closer to the man, menace in his eyes. His voice
dropped two decibels. "You have no idea what I can do when motivated."

Jax, never one to back down, stepped forward as well. "Try it and
see. You hurt her again and you'll meet another side of me that I
doubt you'll like, Sonny."

Alexis slipped between them anxiously.

"Jax, stop," she whispered, placing her fingertips against his lips
gently. She could feel the tension radiating off of his body in waves
and knew this conversation would spiral into something even less
civil in about two seconds. She couldn't take any more scenes
tonight. She was exhausted.

"I—I'm sorry but we need to be alone," she implored, her heart in her
eyes. "Would you mind leaving us, please?"

He stared at her for a moment, clearly torn between what she wanted
him to do and what his head and heart told him to do. At last, he
relented and sighed. His hands found hers and squeezed them
gently. "You call if you need me. Anytime."

Alexis nodded. "I will. I promise."

And she watched him walk out of the apartment. Sonny shut the door a
little harder than necessary. The room was pitched into an abrupt
silence that stretched awkwardly between them for long moments.

Finally he broke it. "Should I put him on the list of my wife's
admirers right under Mac Scorpio?"

Alexis tried a smile but it faltered under the strain of her
emotions. "Jax is a friend…a close friend."

"Yeah, well, I'll never understand what you see in him," her husband
grumbled.

She shrugged. "And he'll never understand what I see in you."

His face grew suddenly serious, and his dark eyes, deep and wounded,
lifted to hers. "What do you see in me, Alexis? I need to know right
now. Because I'm telling you… you stomped on my heart tonight…and it
might not ever recover. We might not ever recover."

She bit her lip to stop its renewed trembling, and stepped closer to
him, close enough to touch. But there was no actual contact. And
instinctively she knew that her whole world was spinning on the axis
of this very moment. She would open her heart and tell him what he
needed to know. The truth, finally.

She just prayed that it wasn't too late.

chapter 40