⌜ chapter seven ⌟

"What the hell are we even doing out here?" Marie chuckles as she and Jay wander through the woods.

"With any luck, making Ric mad because I'm out past curfew."

"I thought he was out of town."

"So?" Jay smirks as she stumbles over tree roots. "My mom will tell him that I didn't make it home when I was supposed to be back, and he'll be mad."

"It's adorable how you annoy Papa Ric." Her best friend muses, but then they hear a noise that makes them both stop in their tracks. "What was that?"

"Not a growl." She shakes her head, but then they hear it again.

The two teenage girls immediately take off running, and Jay trips over a large tree root, causing her to land on her hands and knees in the dirt. She was already having a hard time walking because she was drinking at the party by the swimming hole, and her fear is only making the current situation that much worse.

The brunette looks around and realizes that she lost her friend, but then she hears yelling not too far away. It sounds like Matt, so she pushes herself up and runs in the direction that it came from. When she finds him, she sees that Caroline has him pinned against a tree and she's biting his neck.

"M-Matt?" Jay watches them, confused as she tries to make out what's happening through the haze in her mind. "Care?"

There's a blur of motion, and then Stefan's holding the blonde back as he yells at her to stop fighting him. Matt collapses, his back sliding down the tree, and then Jay runs over to see if he's okay.

"What the hell?" The brunette puts her hand over his bloody neck, then she turns to look at the two behind her. "Were you... Did you bite him?" She questions, seeing the blood on Caroline's remorse-filled face.

The wooded area morphs into a school parking lot, and then Jay and her older sister run out of a building looking rather panicked.

"Vicki, no!" Elena yells as she and Jay look at the older girl with Jeremy.

Vicki turns to them, pushing Jeremy to the ground, and then she attacks Elena. She throws her into a broken pallet after Elena tries to hit her with a large piece of wood.

"Ele— Oh my God." Jay's eyes widen when she sees the veins under Vicki's eyes, then she backs up toward Jeremy as he inches closer to them. She sees the blood on him and knows that it's his blood on the older girl's mouth.

Vicki then attacks Elena again, this time feeding on her, and Stefan stakes her. Everything stills around them as the youngest two cling to each other, watching as Vicki changes, her body turning entirely gray before she collapses to the cement in the parking lot.

"Vicki!" Jeremy screams as he pushes away from Jay, and Stefan holds him back so that he can't run to her as she dies.

Paul groans as he rolls over in the twin-size bed in his room, and he takes a deep breath as he stares up at his ceiling. His eyebrows furrow, not understanding the dream that he just had, but then he sees Jay sitting on the porch railing outside his window.

The shapeshifter pushes himself up before opening the window, and he looks out at her as she sits unmoving. She's watching the dandelions sway in the breeze of the early morning, but he can still see the tension in her shoulders.

Paul then gets out of bed, and he makes his way through the small house before opening his front door and stepping outside. He sees the younger girl still sitting where she was before, and he shuts the front door before leaning against it, not wanting to make her uncomfortable by moving too close.

"I got those memories back after I woke up in transition." The little brunette finally speaks up, and he gives her time to get her thoughts out. "Caroline compelled Matt and I to think that it was an animal that attacked him that night. And Damon compelled Jeremy and I to forget what happened to Vicki all together. I wish I still didn't know that I watched her die." She tells him.

"You're not gonna become them."

"You don't know that." Jay shakes her head as she turns to face him. "I'm not hiding from you, and the only reason I'm here is to make you understand that."

"I'm not afraid—"

"I am." She cuts him off. "But not of what you think I'm scared of."

"I don't understand."

"I know that you're not Matt or Jeremy. I know that if I ever hurt you, you'd heal faster than them and you'd forgive me as fast as I forgave Tyler." Jay tells him. "That's not the point. The point is that... Caroline hurt the one person that she never wanted our shit to affect, the one person that she wanted to be kept out of this. And Vicki... Vic turned into something that she wasn't, and she hurt Jeremy, who she loved.

"I'm not keeping my distance because I don't know what to think of the imprint bond. It's not because I'm insecure about the things that you said in the past. It was those things, a little, but it's not anymore... It's not about you, Paul. It's about me.

"I got all of these memories back when I turned, and I'm trying to make sense of them. And I'm trying to make sense of my feelings, about everything — all of which were heightened when I turned... I don't know what's gonna happen to me, and I'm scared. And I know you wanna help me, but you can't. Not with this."

"But the Cullen can?" Paul asks, seeming more confused than hurt by her words. "Why him?"

"You really wanna understand why I spend so much time around Emmett?"

"Yeah, I do." He nods. "You're living with Stefan and Damon; I thought they were helping you."

"They are, but it's different with Emmett." She takes a deep breath. "He doesn't have this image of me because of who I was before I turned. He just knows me now. And he knows how hard it is to deal with being a new vampire, with these heightened emotions, with fresh grief. He had to leave his family after he turned, so he understands what I'm going through in a way that no one else does... And it helps that he doesn't try to coddle me like the others do."

"I'm sorry, Jay." He says, and her eyebrows furrow as she looks up at him. "I'm sorry for the way that I reacted when the Cullen jumped across the river. I didn't mean to upset you... But you have to understand that it's about more than what he is."

"What do you mean?"

"We were all normal teenagers before the Cullens moved back here. Then they showed up, and our lives got flipped completely upside down." He tells her. "Yeah, it's in our blood. And yeah, it gave Sam and Jared Emily and Kim...and it gave me you...but none of us wanted to be the protectors of our tribe. Now, we turn into huge wolves and we have to control our tempers...and you've seen what happens when we lose control.

"We are what we are because they moved back to Forks, and I'm angry because I had enough shit to deal with before my anger issues came with this set of consequences. So, it wasn't about him being a vampire when I got angry that day. It was about what his presence did to us."

"I guess we both have a lot that we have to sort through." Jay says as she looks down at her hands, her mind running over everything that they've said this morning.

"Yeah, I guess we do." He nods. "And I think we'd both do it better together than apart... Why don't you come inside?"

"P— You know I don't want to be invited—"

"My imprint should be able to walk through my front door." He argues, and her jaw tightens as she looks up at him. "I spent long enough trying to hide my feelings and my life from you. I'm not doing it anymore. You are in my life, Jay, and I want you to be comfortable with me and with us. We can't get to that place if we're never together."

"And if one of us loses control? And the other gets hurt?" The brunette asks, and he can see the fear in her eyes as her voice shakes.

"Then we'll figure it out. Together."

Jay inhales sharply before letting out a deep sigh. "I guess we have to start somewhere." She agrees, and he nods.

"And I vote we start with breakfast." He says as he turns for the front door. "Coffee or orange juice? You were always switching between the two every morning." He asks, and she pauses for a moment before following him into his house.