CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Startled by a loud noise, Jay sits up in her bed and looks around her dark bedroom. Elena's looking around as well, having heard the same thing that her younger sister had. The two girls look at each other and then both slowly, quietly climb out of their beds.

The light's on in the bathroom, but it's likely that Jeremy just forgot to turn it off before he went to bed. The girls see that hall light is on as well as they make their way toward the door, and it creeks as Elena opens it. Jay walks past her sister to look into Jeremy's room, since his door is also open a crack, but he's asleep in his bed.

Footsteps coming up the stairs startle both girls as they spin around, and they scare Ric, who's walking up carrying a bowl of ice cream. All three of them gasp, and then Jay looks up toward the ceiling when she sees that he's not wearing much of anything.

"Elena, Jay." Ric clears his throat as he uses his bowl to cover himself, as the only thing that he's wearing is a pair of boxers.

"We heard something." Elena says, and he chuckles awkwardly as Jenna quickly makes her way up the stairs as well.

"Mommy." Jay smirks, biting back her laughter when she sees how embarrassed Jenna looks because of the situation. The older woman's wearing Ric's flannel with only a few of the buttons done up, her legs are bare, and her hair's a bit of a mess — much like Ric's.

"That was us." The strawberry-blonde says as she pushes her hair back. "I'm sorry." She says, looking between Jay and Elena.

"We didn't think anyone was up." Ric tells the girls.

"But here you girls are...and here we are."

"We were just..."

"Uh..."

"Oh, Ma, I so don't wanna know." Jay shakes her head, and Elena laughs as she turns toward her sister, trying to hide the obvious amusement on her face.

"Chunky Monkey?" Ric holds his ice cream bowl out toward the brunettes, and both of them start busting up laughing.

"What's going o— Oh!" Jeremy immediately turns back around and slams his forehead into his now open bedroom door, which he's holding in place. "Where are their clothes?!" He questions, which only makes the girls laugh even harder.

"Well... I'm naked." Ric glances around awkwardly. "So, I'm gonna go." He rushes toward Jenna's room, and then Jeremy peeks at the girls.

"We're good? Nobody needs protecting?" The teenage boy asks, not meeting Jenna's gaze, and refusing to look at her entirely.

"We're good, Jer-Bear." Jay tells him as she and Elena start back toward their own room.

"I'm really, really sorry." Jenna says as she takes the last couple steps back up the stairs, her arms crossed over her chest because she's not wearing a bra.

"I'm going to bed." Jeremy then disappears back into his room, shutting the door completely behind him.

"It's okay, Jenna. Don't worry about it." Elena tells her.

"I know he's been staying over a lot. Are you— Are you sure it's okay?" The oldest asks as she looks between the two teenage girls.

"Seems like things are good." She says, and Jay smiles as she looks back over at her mom.

"They're extremely good." Jenna nods, a wide smile on her face.

"Hey, Mom?" Jay takes a step back toward her, regaining her attention. "Are you happy?"

"Yeah." She nods again, her smile seeming brighter than before. "Yeah, Jude, I'm happy."

"Then we're extremely okay with it." She tells her, and Elena nods in agreement.

Jay takes a deep breath as she stirs awake on the couch in her living room. The little brunette sits up and her journal falls from her chest to her lap, then she notices the large Quileute boy in the kitchen. She sighs as she looks back down at the journal, thinking about the last entry that she read.

"You okay?" Paul asks as he walks over, stopping a few feet away from the end of the couch.

"What are you doing here?" She doesn't feel like answering his question.

"Well, we chased the redheaded vampire off again, but Sam wants us to keep an eye on this place as well as Bella's — her scent's all over here too."

"That sounds creepy." Jay mumbles.

"How are you doing?" He asks, and she looks up at him.

"Are you asking because you actually care, or because that's just one of the things that people ask after someone dies?"

Paul takes a deep breath as he moves closer to where she's sitting. "I know that I'm not really good at...showing this kind of thing, but I do care about you. And I want to know if you're okay."

She nods. "Tell me something first, and then I'll answer your question."

"Okay."

"What did Kim mean when she called Jared her imprinter?" She asks, and he sighs as he looks down. "And why did she say that someday I'd understand?"

He sits on the couch by her feet and looks at his hands in his lap as he contemplates his next words carefully. "Imprinting is something that the wolves in our tribe do when...when we meet the person who's supposed to be... I guess it's sort of like soulmates. We look into her eyes and our whole world changes. Nothing's more important than her happiness and her safety... This bond is formed, and...and we'd do anything for her. We'll be whatever she needs — friend, protector, anything." He tells her. "Sam imprinted on Emily, Jared imprinted on Kim, and...and I imprinted on you the day that we met on the beach."

"And you just assumed that, like Emily and Kim, what I needed was a relationship?" She questions, and he shakes his head.

"Things got more complicated the more time I spent with you, when I discovered that I felt things for you that had nothing to do with the imprint. It wasn't just that your happiness was important, it's the fact that I want to see your smile and I like the sound of your laugh."

"So, the imprint doesn't mean that you develop romantic-type feelings."

"No." He shakes his head. "Though it does seem a bit inevitable...eventually. I can't put anybody else's happiness above yours, so it would seem wrong to be with someone else. Unfair to her. It's why Sam broke up with his girlfriend when he imprinted on Emily." Paul says, still not meeting her eyes. "That, and we understand it better now than he did then. He was alone then, didn't understand what was happening to him or why he suddenly felt that way about her."

"Paul, I like you. As in, I have feelings for you." Jay says. "But what I need has never been for someone to hold my hand and tell me that I'm pretty. I need someone to remind me that...that there is still good in the world. 'Cause right now I feel like I'm drowning in the bad." She tells him, and he looks at her when he hears her choking up. "I guess that's the answer to your question. How am I doing? I'm barely holding it together."

Paul scoots closer to her, lifting her legs from the couch and resting them in his lap. He reaches over and wipes a tear from her cheek, and she closes her eyes as she leans into his touch. It's more of a comfort than she would've thought, and it's not just the warmth of his skin against hers; it's that it's him who's sitting with her. Jay may not be able to imprint, but she still feels the connection between them — the bond that Paul described.

Jay takes a deep breath and then adjusts how she's sitting. She moves her legs so that they're situated under her rather than across Paul's lap. He starts to move away from her, back to where he was sitting before, but the feel of her skin as she rests her hand on his bicep makes him stop.

"You don't have to keep such a distance all the time." She tells him, and the corners of his lips tug upward slightly as his brown eyes meet hers.

Paul returns to his previous spot beside her, and then his gaze falls to the small book that's still resting in her lap. "Were you writing before you fell asleep?" He asks.

"Reading, actually." She says as she opens the book. "My mom always used to joke about how awful my memory could be. So, I started writing all the things that I didn't want to forget." She hands him the journal, open to the last entry that she read.

"I shouldn't read—"

"There's nothing in there that I wouldn't say out loud." She cuts him off. "If it really makes you uncomfortable, just read the last long paragraph. It's the reason I grabbed this journal when I got up this morning." She tells him, and he starts skimming over the page.

He reads more of it when he sees a bit about Tyler, but it isn't jealousy of a past relationship that makes him stop skimming. He wants to understand her relationships to the vampires in her life, as well the difference between his wolf and Tyler's. But then he reads the part about her family toward the end.

"I wish everyday could be as mundane and normal as last night — laughing at my mom's embarrassment after we found her and Ric getting ice cream in their underwear. For a moment, we actually felt normal; just three kids and their parental-figures living in a monster free world. It was nice to feel...almost boringly normal, like a regular family. A broken family, but still a family who loves each other and would do anything for each other nonetheless." He reads aloud.

"It was the happiest that I'd ever seen my mom." Jay says, and he looks at her. "It was like...her life was full. She had kids, she was in a loving relationship, she was doing well with her school stuff, she was just happy... She was always what she called unlucky in love, said that I was the only smart relationship she had ever chosen. I think Ric was her second."

"Why do you think that you guys were broken?"

"I think we'd all been through too much not to be." She says as she looks at him. "The accident that killed Jeremy and Elena's parents... She and I were in the car too, and almost drowning was..." She takes a deep breath and shakes her head. "And losing Miranda and Grayson was the most difficult thing that we'd ever been through. And Ric — his wife was Isobel, mine and Elena's biological mother. She faked her death and disappeared, and he didn't have closure or answers for a really long time.

"But it had started to feel like we were these broken pieces that made a whole, if that makes sense." She says, and he nods. "Then the secrets broke up my mom and Ric... They got back together after she finally learned the truth about everything that we were dealing with, but she was killed that same night."

"I thought she died in an accident." He says, and she shakes her head.

"That's just what we told people. We couldn't exactly tell them that she was turned into a vampire and then ritually sacrificed by an altar of fire in the middle of the woods." She says, and his eyes widen as he looks at her. "Klaus wanted to break a curse that his mother placed on him a thousand years ago. He needed a vampire, a werewolf, and Elena. I freed Caroline and Tyler before he could sacrifice them, so he took my mom instead. I saw her killed, and then Elena. We found a way to bring my sister back, but not my mom."

"Saying I'm sorry doesn't feel like it even..." He shakes his head.

"I got the sentiment." She offers him a small smile, and he sighs as he closes the journal.

"What's this?" He asks as he picks up a picture from the coffee table, leaving the journal in its place. "Oh, Kim's gonna love this — no make-up, hair not done, still in her pajamas..." He looks back at Jay as she chuckles.

"That's a good picture. Actually, I think it's Jared's favorite." She tells him. "I took it a couple weeks ago, and he was going through a bunch of the ones that we had printed up."

"His opinion's biased." Paul says. "It's impossible for her not to look beautiful in his eyes."

"Oh, really?" She has a teasing tone to her voice, and he smirks.

"I meant because he's in love with her." He says, and she nods.

"Mhm." She chuckles when she sees that she actually got him to smile. "Oh, uh... I feel like I should tell you... I'm gonna be going back to Mystic Falls, just for a few days. A week, max. I need to see the house for myself, and I want to see what Damon and Stefan managed to grab."

"Then I'm coming with you." Paul says, and she shakes her head. "No, nothing is more important to me than your safety, remember? And it's pretty damn obvious that nothing's safe there."

"I don't need a babysitter."

"Protector." He counters, and she sighs.

"We're going by car, and Damon's driving. I know that you don't like him."

"No, I don't like what he is." Paul corrects. "But if he's gonna be in your life, then I have to get used to him being around. 'Cause now that you know about me and about the imprint, you can't get rid of me that easily... Unless you don't want me in your life."

"I want you with me." She tells him. "I can't lose anyone else... Especially you."

"Then you're not going to Mystic Falls without me." He says, and she nods.