It's all so different from everything she knew. Her childhood was a long game of hide and seek, though the rules never changed: her mother hid, and Astoria looked for her everywhere.
The summer after she finished her first year of university, the summer after she met her father, she asked her mother about it, and Veronika's response had just been that she knew how to love a child, but not how to like one. It took Veronika too long to notice that Astoria had gone silent, only to rush in with, "Well, now I like you!" like it would soothe the wound. Astoria didn't ask the question she wanted to ask: but do you still love me? She already knew the answer. It's an old story: privilege doesn't buy love, doesn't buy emotional connection. And she got it eventually (from her grandparents, from the uncle she thinks of more as a brother than anything, from her father and her stepmother and her sister), but the lack of it so young left her ruined.
(Her ex once told her, rather eloquently, there's scar tissue in place of where your heart should be. He followed it by telling her that he couldn't keep spending his life trying to rebuild what wasn't there anymore, but she barely heard it: for a moment she'd simply basked in the sensation of being understood.)
The thought of that kind of family, that kind of devotion, born not from obligation and duty but by a choice made over and over again, it's intoxicating. It's exhilarating. Before meeting Jax she'd have said it was a faery tale. And it's not just in the way he trusts her to calm his son, or in the way Clay asked her after Jax filled him in on her secrets if she knew how to shoot: it's in how they all interact with each other, each laugh and jab and explosion of anger followed by such quick and unconditional forgiveness.
"It would be a little bit of a mess to manage, what with the whole false identity thing. But for the recordβyeah." It's an insane thing to say, really: it's been, what? Less than a year since she arrived. A matter of mere months since she and Jax started calling this a relationship. Still, she supposes, when you know, you know. "I really do. I'd marry you tomorrow, to be honest. I mean, I wouldn't recommend that particular timing, all things considered, but the sentiment stands. And," she adds with a chuckle, "I love you enough not to hold you to any of this before we've talked it out after a good night's sleep for the both of us. Butβyeah. Worth having that out there, I think."
The question of timing brings her back to Donna and Opie. Some part of her wonders if she's pushing her luck by asking questions and trying to talk through it, but this is her life too, isn't it? And Jax has carried so much of this on his own that offering to help him shoulder the weight can't hurt. "If we can't answer that question, then, there are a couple others that need to be asked. First, if it's not Leroy, who has something to gain from making it look like it is? And second, if Clay's story doesn't add up, what does he stand to gain from lying about it?" She pauses, then. "Maybe this is a stupid question, but has anyone actually talked to Leroy? Not that I think anyone's going to just own up to it to set your mind at ease, but you'd think a declaration of war would be acknowledged, right? If that's what it was?"
