"Are there other things you lied about?" Juice asked after a long silence. His voice sounded flat, almost distant. It felt like his emotions were about to bury him again and he desperately tried to block them. 

"I twisted around a lot of things, Juice. You really want a list?"

"Yeah. I do." He didn't look at her, he had bent back his head and stared at the ceiling, as if the white planes could ease his mind. 

"Fine. I'm twenty-eight, not twenty. My father didn't die in a car crash, he was at the World Trace Center when the building was hit. Everything else I told you about my past is true; my mother couldn't deal with the loss of her husband, became a drunk and hanged herself. Kip and I came to live with my uncle, where we started to work at his garage. I never finished school, when I was twenty-one I signed up for the army." She paused. He had turned his head back to her, although his face was blank. But it wouldn't take long before that would change, she knew. "Mila pretends to be my girl to keep the Croweaters away. Now and then we've kissed in the clubhouse, but that was only to keep up appearances. In fact, I'm single for over six years." She bit the ring in her lip, gathering the courage to unravel the last lie. Her shoulders tensed. "And the last thing I wasn't honest about, was the fact that I was stabbed by the Russians."

Juice narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"Come on, Juice, it isn't that hard to fill in the rest?"

He stared at her for a few seconds.

Rolling her eyes, she answered: "I couldn't fight in the ring, since I had to take off my shirt and everyone would have seen the chest binder I was wearing. So I told all of you that I was stabbed."

"You faked it?" His eyes almost popped out of their sockets.

"No, I stabbed myself."

Juice jumped up from the couch. "You did what?  Are you out of your fucking mind?!"

"Kinda, according to my last psych evaluation." She lifted the corner of her mouth. 

"You think this is funny?" he blew up at her. "Man, you're fucking crazy, huh? Stabbing yourself!" He shook his head furiously. "You could have killed yourself, damn it, your brother was killed that way!"

"I knew what I was doing," she answered coldly. "There was no other way."

"Of course there was! You could have..." With a grim face he trailed off.

"Well?" she insisted with raised eyebrows. "What would have been your genius solution?"

"I don't know," he muttered. "Not now. I can barely think anyway at the moment. But we could have came up with something. Together." His voice trembled as he added the last word.

"Together?" she repeated, shaking her head. "We just smoked one joint. We had one good talk. Or friendship might have grown fast, but not that fast."

"And it clearly wasn't as strong as I thought," Juice grunted, turning his head away.

Alex swallowed a sigh. She didn't know what to answer. 

"What do you want now?" she asked after a while. "You want me to stay? Leave? You wanna fuck off that chaos in your head? I can pick up a Croweater from the clubhouse?"

Juice stared at her. "A Croweater? I thought... that you had feelings for me."

She shrugged. "I do, but I'm not a whore who's going to cheer you up that way. Can't have sex anytime soon anyway, it still hurts like hell. I'm not going to pretend I like the thought that you are screwing another girl, but I'll get over it. If you need a fuck, you should have one. I've seen you bang someone right in front of me before and I survived that too."

A pink glow spread across his face. "After the lapdance?"

"Uh-uh."

Sighing, he scratched his neck, being silent for a while. "No, I don't want a Croweater," he said eventually. "But I neither want to be alone..."

"Fine. I'm getting used to your couch anyway."

"You can also..." He shrugged. 

"Yeah, let's not do that anytime soon. Things are complicated enough between us without ending up in your arms in the middle of the night."

He bent his head, not saying another word.

Alex bit the inside of her cheek. Had she been too harsh? But it was the truth. He was still angry at her, which made sense. He needed time to deal with everything that had been said tonight and sleeping together... they could better wait with that until things had settled down between them. She knew him; when he saw her face as he woke up tomorrow morning, everything would come back in one blow. His anger as well. She hadn't forgotten about his snarl earlier today. 

She filled two small glasses and sat down a little closer to him, turning to the side, with her elbow leaning against the backrest. He had placed his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands. She tapped against the tattoo on his head until he tore away from his racing thoughts and looked up. 

"How's it goin' in there?" She gave him the glass, which he slammed in one movement.

He shrugged his shoulders. "This whole day is just..." He heaved a deep sigh. "That talk with Roosevelt, the Man of Mayhem patch, the fact that I wanted to kill myself... and now you turn out to be a girl... It feels like something snapped inside my head, as if I'm having hallucinations." A tear shone in the corner of his eyes. "I just don't know what to do, don't know what I want anymore. I don't want you around but I neither want you to leave and..." Pressing his lips together, he rubbed his face.

His despair already told her what he really wanted, despite the fact that he couldn't admit it to himself because he knew he should be angry at her. But he wanted to be held, he wanted to feel safe, loved. She emptied the glass, scooted a little closer and pulled him in her arms. He leaned into her immediately, his cheek pressing resting her bosom. Warm drops wet her shirt as a few tears glided down his cheeks. 

That poor guy... She wrapped an arm around his shoulder, her left hand glided up and down across his neck. Dipping her head, she kissed his scalp. 

"You think I'm a coward?" he asked quietly, barely audible because he was murmuring against her shirt. 

"I don't." Soothing, she rubbed between his shoulder blades. "I just have the feeling that you are the only Son with a functional conscience. But you have to let things go now, Juice. The Russians, Miles... let it go. They won't get their lives back, you can't change what has happened and you shouldn't wish you could. They deserved a bullet." Again she pressed her lips against the ink. 

His hand arched around her side, his finger tips clawing desperately in her flesh. For a long time he was silent. His breathing normalized, but he kept leaning into the embrace. 

"I want you, Alex," he whispered after a while. "Whether you're Alex or Shane... I don't care anymore. You're the only one... the only one who can help me to get my head clear. If I hadn't known you, then I..."

"It doesn't matter what might have happened. It didn't."

He looked up, moving his hand to her face and gliding with his fingers across her cheek. They were shaking on her skin. He kept her glance, and again the brokenness in it made her shiver. Could she ever bring back that smile to his face? Would his eyes ever shine again? Roosevelt had pulverized something inside him, he had changed something for good. There had been more times that he had been burdened by his conscience, but everything that had happened yesterday, had been too much for him to bear. 

"Do you want me? Really want me? I'm such a failure, I..."

"Hey, stop it." Her thumb brushed his lips so he would stop talking. His eyes were wide, looking expectantly at her. She knew what he wanted, what he was craving for, but she knew that would only be a temporary solution. The men were used to obscure their problems with sex, but in the end it never solved anything. "I want you, Juice. You aren't my best friend because I feel pity for you. I fell for you the moment you left prison and showed that gorgeous smile of yours, and my feelings have grown ever since. You were there when I needed you, you made me smile, you are the only Son who really tried to get to know me. Every moment I spent with you, means a lot to me. The deal with Roosevelt, the fact that you wanted to kill yourself... that doesn't change a damn thing, okay? But you're confused now, there's still anger inside you because I have lied to you and you first need to sort out your thoughts before we can decide if we want something real in the long term."

"I want that," he said, his voice firm. "It's... It's the only thing I'm sure of right now." His dark, pleading eyes lit a flame inside her chest. "Please. Stay with me tonight. I just... I don't wanna be alone."

Alex knew she could never deny him anything as he looked at her that way. "Okay," she said, slightly smiling. "I'll stay with you tonight."

He hugged her again, burying his face in the crook of her neck. Against her skin, she felt him whisper "thank you". 

Alex rested with her chin on his shoulder, closing her eyes. Right now he was emotional, looped and high. Tomorrow he would probably look at the things in a whole different light. Then he would realize again what she had kept from him, and that having a relationship with someone who kept her identity from the rest of the world would only lead to problems. But she would worry about that later.

She stood up and took his hand. "Come on," she said softly. "Let's go to bed."

A few seconds passed by before he nodded, as if everything was still coming in slow. "Yeah. Okay."

. . .

Don't forget to vote and speak out your thoughts! I love to hear from you, silence is always making me nervous. How do you think/hope that Juice will respond to this the next morning? Everyone was so silent about the big reveal in the chapter before, I hope it did meet your expectations!  :)