Abel could blame it club shit as to why he’d been ignoring Wendy’s calls and voicemails for the past few weeks, but the reality of it was that he hated coming to see her. It sounded bad, like he had no love for his birth mom, but it wasn’t her (not exactly), it was the way she looked at him Abel could take that look from most people, but she wasn’t one of them. The look was related to disappointment and to his father, and it felt like an unexplainable amount of shame weighing down on him. It forced Abel to admit to himself that he was his father’s son, and not his own person there was nothing more that he hated than being compared to his father. Abel had hated the thought of him for most of his life still did, and now all people saw when they looked at Abel was Jackson Teller.
”And why would I want them?” His jaw was set, and his tone was ice. “Is that all you called me for? To give me some dead man’s shit?” He wanted noting but a last name connecting him to Jax. Abel didn’t want to form a connection to a dead man. It wouldn’t bring him back even if it would, he still wanted nothing of his father’s. “Take it back. I don’t want it.”
If there was disappointment in her eyes, it wasn't directed at him, but rather at herself. But, of course, there was no way for him to know that.
Abel's anger and bitterness was so familiar to her that it broke her heart to see it in him. And while she'd done everything she could to uphold Jax's last wishes about how he wanted his sons to see him, there was a point at which she had to simply say no. The hatred Abel felt was detrimental, it was hurting him, and she was faced with the prospect of dragging him, kicking and screaming, into a different perspective of a man he could barely remember. And she wasn't entirely sure it was even possible.
The scrapbook weighed heavily in her hands, and she continued to hold it out for him, even as he showed no intention of taking it. "Abel...There was more to your father than you know. There were sides of him..." Her voice fell away, eyes dropping as well, to the cover, lovingly put together by the love of Jax Teller's life, and she honestly had never looked through it- they weren't her memories, it hadn't been her life. But she didn't have anything left from her marriage to Jax, not even the wedding pictures, burned in anger when he'd first filed for divorce. All she had to give Abel, of that side of his father, were things that weren't hers.
"Your father had a big heart, Abel. He loved you so much that he was willing...he made us promise to tarnish his memory for you and Tommy. He needed you to hate him, so you'd be spared the life that took his. But you're old enough to understand that a killer, that a criminal can be a good a man. And he was a good man. A man who made mistakes, but he loved his family, and he is nothing you should ever be ashamed of."
The scrapbook finally had to be put down, on the seat next to hers, her fingers fidgeting, running through her hair, betraying how anxious the subject was making her, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, Abel. That you were left with just me. That you had to carry the idea that your father was a monster and your mother...nearly lost you before you were even born. That burden should never have been laid on your shoulders. But your father loved you. And I love you. And some day, you are going to have to accept that. But I'll keep these things until you're ready."
