CHAPTER TEN

"Hey." Jay gets Henry's attention as she walks into the living room, and he turns his head as he's putting his shoes on. "You're going running, right?"

"Yeah. I run whenever my work schedule gives me the time." He tells her and then gets to his feet.

"You mind if I tag along?" She asks. "I had started running with Elena most mornings, but I haven't been able to here 'cause I'm not familiar with the area yet."

"Sure. I'll show you my route, and you can run it while I'm working." He says. "Are you ready to go?" He asks, and she nods.

"Gross, you too?" Kim shakes her head as she walks into the living room. "Who runs for fun?"

"I run to stay in shape, thank you very much." Jay tells her. "But you enjoy your donuts."

"M'kay." She mumbles, her eyes half closed.

Henry laughs as he looks from his sister to Jay. "Come on, kid." He motions toward the door, and she follows him out of the house.

He shows the teenager his usual running route, which consists of a lot of dirt paths and some back roads, but she doesn't mind it at all. Jay likes looking at the scenery as they go, it's a welcome change as it's a lot different than what she's used to seeing back in Mystic Falls. There it was all houses, here it's trees and nature.

And since it's his day off, Henry takes her to a hiking trail through the woods that's close to the house. After taking the hike, they head back to the house. The two of them make it to the end of their street, and Jay tries to race him home.

A loud bang gets Kim and Jeremy's attention, and they both turn as Henry basically falls into the house once he opens the front door. Jay walks in behind him, panting as she laughs at the older boy. He lays on the ground, staring up at the ceiling as he tries to catch his breath.

"What was that?" Kim asks as she looks between the two of them.

"That was Henry hurling himself at the front door so that I wouldn't beat him." Jay explains as she goes to get herself some water from the kitchen. After chugging a glass of the cool liquid, she sets a plastic bottle on the floor next to Henry.

"Thanks." He sits up and grabs it so that he can down the contents. "We should probably take water with us if we're gonna be out that long again." He says, and Jay nods in agreement.

"You wanna shower first?"

"No, you go ahead." He shakes his head as he pushes himself off of the floor.

Half an hour later, Kim walks back into the room that she's now sharing with Jay, and she sees her roommate laying on her bed. Jay's dark hair is still wet, but she couldn't care less. "Do you have any plans for today?" Kim asks as she sits on the edge of her own bed.

"Cutting off my legs." The little brunette's eyes are closed as she answers her.

"Then I guess we'll have to get you a wheelchair so that you can come to the beach with me."

"Beach?" She turns her head and looks at her. "In the middle of October?"

"Perfect time to go. Not many others will be there...but my boyfriend will be." She tells her. "I did hear you say that you wanted to meet him, right?"

"You couldn't have mentioned this before your brother tried to kill me?" Jay questions.

"You guys left at six-thirty this morning. I was barely functioning." She shakes her head. "Do you wanna come or what?"

"Damn you." She mutters, and Kim laughs.

An hour later, Jay's laying on the sand at the beach rather than on her comforter in her bed. Her friend chuckles as she glances over at her, but then continues throwing the football back and forth with Jeremy. The little brunette's drifting off to sleep when she suddenly hears Kim squeal, so she props herself up onto her elbows.

There's a rather tall and muscular, shirtless boy with tan skin spinning her around, his arms locked around her waist. Another boy, dressed identically to him, walks past him, going to introduce himself to Jeremy. Jay lays back down, closing her eyes once again.

"Come here." Kim takes her boyfriend's hand in hers and drags him over to Jay. "Get up." She nudges her friend's leg.

"I can't. I think I died. Am I dead?"

"She went running with my brother this morning." She says as she looks up at her boyfriend, and he nods. "They were gone forever, now her legs are sore and she's tired."

"I think this is a form of murder...or maybe just torture." Jay says.

"They almost broke the door when they got back."

"Excuse me, but that was your spastic brother. He was losing our race so he, like, launched himself forward." She argues. "And then he was beating the crap out of a punching bag when I got out of the shower and he was fine when we left. Is he even human?"

"He works out like that a lot." Kim explains. "I guess his body is just more used to the strain than yours." She reasons, and Jay scrunches her face in annoyance.

"Jay, get your ass up." Jeremy says as he walks over to them with Kim's other friend.

"Who died and made you king?" His sister questions.

"Ric."

"Funny boy." She mutters, and the other two boys exchange a confused look.

"Okay, anyway..." Kim shakes her head. "Jeremy already met Paul, and this is Jared." She motions to her boyfriend.

"Hey, how's it going?" Jared reaches out and shakes Jeremy's hand.

"Not bad." He nods. "I like it here."

"And this sand lump is Jay." Kim nudges her hip with her foot. "She's Jeremy's younger cousin, er... Are you guys calling each other siblings now?"

"It's complicated." Jeremy shrugs.

"Me. I'm the complicated one." Jay raises her hand. "And I really should get up at some point."

"Well, there's no time like the present." Her brother grabs her hand and pulls her to her feet.

"Ow, ow, ow." The little brunette whines as she stands, feeling a burn in her legs. "My calves are on fire. Can I kill Henry?"

"I'd prefer it if you didn't." Kim says, and she snaps her fingers.

"Damn." She mutters and then looks at Kim and the tall Quileute boy who's standing directly beside her. "You're Jared, right? The boyfriend that she never shuts up about?"

"I hope it's me that she's always talking about." Jared smiles as he wraps his arm around Kim's shoulders. "You're the angry girl who yelled at me through the phone the other night?"

"Did I do that?" Jay looks at Kim, who nods. She chuckles. "I guess first impressions aren't really my strong suit. Sorry about that, I was probably just tired."

"Don't worry about it. I thought it was funny." He tells her. "And not at all intimidating."

She nods. "Yeah, that sounds about right."

"Hey, Gilbert!" A male voice calls, and they all turn to see a few of the guys from Forks.

"You suck!" Jay punches her brother.

"Ow! Why?!" The older boy questions as he looks down at her.

"I can't sit with Angela because she's always with Jessica, but you can invite Mike to the beach?"

"We're gonna play football. You can go with Kim." He pushes her into the other girl, and Jared steadies them both.

"Mike's the one that you said flirts with anyone with boobs?" Kim asks, and she nods.

"He thinks he's being cute, and then Jessica glares." Jay tells her. "I swear, if looks could kill, there'd be no girls left at our school." She says, and Kim chuckles.

"Just stay with us." Jared tells her, and she nods.

"Hey, aren't you guys cold?" She asks as she looks between the two boys. "Never mind that you're the only ones not wearing a sweater, you're only wearing shorts."

"No, we're fine."

Paul looks down at Jay, and his brown eyes meet hers for the first time since she started talking to them. He freezes as his body suddenly goes rigid, and her expression turns to a mixture between confused and concerned. He looks stunned, or maybe awestruck is more accurate, as he holds eye contact with the teenage girl.

"Are you alright?" Jay asks, and her question immediately gains Jared and Kim's attention.

Kim easily recognizes the expression from Jared's first day back at school after he'd skipped a bunch. He ran into her in History class, and the second his eyes met hers, he looked exactly like his friend does now.

Jay breaks eye contact with Paul, and his gaze immediately falls to the sand. She looks at her friend only to find her smacking Jared for the remarks he's making under his breath. Jay's eyebrows furrow as she looks back at Paul; he clears his throat as he lifts his gaze back to hers.

"I'm fine." He says. "Sorry."

Jeremy calls the guys over then, and the two of them go to throw the football around with the others. Jay sits back down on the sand and she pulls her sweater tighter around herself as Kim sits down with her.

"What was that with your friend just now?" Jay asks as she looks at Kim.

She smirks. "Maybe you're so gorgeous that he was stunned by your beauty."

"Yeah, right." She scoffs. "Guys don't even know I exist."

"What about Mike?"

"Mike doesn't count. Put a bra on a rock, he'll flirt with that too." She says, and Kim laughs.

It doesn't take very long before the guys no longer want to be out there, claiming that it's getting too cold as the sun goes down. Mike, Tyler, and Eric drive back to Forks, and Jared and Paul go back to Kim's with her, Jay, and Jeremy. Jay jumps on the couch as soon as she walks into the living room and curls up in the corner as Kim heads into the kitchen. After finding a note saying that her brother got called in for work, she declares that they're ordering pizza for dinner.

"Can we watch a movie?" Jay asks, and Jeremy sits on her. She starts punching his back, and he laughs as he tells her that it tickles.

"Maybe you should work a little less on your cardio, and a little more on your upper body strength." He says as he gets up and goes into the kitchen.

"Somebody hit him for me. I can't move anymore."

"Hey, can I ask..." Jared sits in a chair close to the couch. "What did you mean before about being complicated? And you two being cousins or brother and sister?" He motions over toward the Gilbert boy, who sits in the other chair.

"Oh, yes, do explain." Jeremy chuckles as Paul sits on the other end of the couch that Jay's on.

"My biological half-sister is Jeremy's adoptive sister, but I was raised as their cousin. We didn't even know that Elena and I were related." Jay says. "Elena didn't know that she was adopted."

"Yeah, I'm still confused." Jared says, and Kim walks into the room after ordering their pizzas.

"Okay, uh... My biological mother — Isobel — got pregnant when she was fourteen, and her friend brought her to his older brother, who was a doctor. The doctor delivered her baby, a little girl, and then Isobel just disappeared. She left the baby with them.

"The doctor and his wife had been trying for a baby, and it wasn't happening, so they decided to raise her themselves. The baby is our older sister, Elena. And then they had Jeremy a few years later, but they never told Elena that she was adopted.

"When Isobel was seventeen, she got pregnant again, and she went back to my uncle, Grayson. I was born, and she left me with them as well. At the time, Grayson and his wife had her younger sister living with them too, and she helped take care of me because them dealing with three kids was a little overwhelming. She became my mom, and when she moved out years later, I went with her. I've always known that I was adopted, and I've always called her Mom."

"And Grayson is your dad." Jared points to Jeremy, who nods. "That's why you called each other cousins first — because your moms are sisters."

"After we found out about Elena being adopted, and the girls having the same biological mother..." Jeremy shrugs. "We've all always been close anyway, it just makes more sense for all of us to call each other siblings. We're family, that's all that matters."

"Oh! I left out the best part." Jay regains their attention. "Isobel's friend who brought her to his older brother is Elena's biological father. For seventeen years she called him Uncle John. He was a great guy. Never mean to my mom." She adds the last bit sarcastically.

"He told me that Jenna hated him because they used to sleep together." He tells her, and she makes a gagging noise.

"Like I needed to know that about John and my mother!" She chucks a pillow and him, and he starts laughing.

"At least you weren't eating just now. I almost choked on my food when he told me." He quickly defends. "And then Jenna threw a loaf of bread at him... Are we sure Jenna isn't your biological mother?" He asks, and she smiles.

"I wish. She was so much better than Isobel." Jay says as she settles back into the couch.

"You met your biological mom?" Paul asks, and she nods as she looks at him.

"Isobel was a raging bitch. Only reason I was upset after she died was because she was one of the only people who knew who my father is." She tells him. "Now I'll never know."

"Maybe it was John." Jeremy says, and she shakes her head.

"No, John said that he hated my father, called him a self-righteous jackass." She says as she looks at him.

"What did Isobel say about him?"

"That I should be glad if I never meet him." Her gaze falls to her hands in her lap. "But she also called John a pathetic waste of teenage space... Like I said, she was a bitch."

"Did Jenna know anything about him?" Jeremy asks, and she nods.

"Yeah, but all she said was that she'd tell me who he is when I was ready... After meeting Isobel, and finding out that John never said anything to Elena or his brother for seventeen years... I was kinda afraid of what she would tell me. I mean, if Isobel's choice of man said anything about his character, I..." She shakes her head.

"Do you know if Jenna ever told Ric about him?"

"She didn't. I asked him a few days after her funeral. Ric doesn't know anything about him." Jay says, and he nods slowly.

"Do you want to find him?" Kim asks from where she's sitting with Jared in the large chair.

"I honestly don't even know." She shakes her head. "My mom said that he doesn't know that I even exist, and if that's true... Do I really wanna drop this on him? But what if he's like John, and he knew, and he didn't want me? Is that really something that I wanna know?"

"Jenna knew him?" Jeremy asks, and she nods.

"She said that they were all friends at one time."

"Then I'd trust what she told you." He says, and she looks back at him. "Jenna didn't lie to you, it's not who she was."

"So I'd be dropping in on whatever life he's built for himself and disrupting it?" She shakes her head. "No thanks. I'm happy with the family that I've got."