⌜ chapter four ⌟

"Are you sure you're gonna be alright?"

"Shut up, Stefan." Jay grinds her teeth, and he glances at her as he turns onto the dirt road that leads to Emily's house. She can hear the boys teasing Jake as they get closer.

"I'm glad you're here, Bella." Embry's saying, sounding rather amused. "Maybe now we can finally get a break from Jake's obsessive inner monologue."

"I wish Bella would call." Paul reaches out as he leans toward his friend, smacking Jake's shoulder, and a small smile tugs at Jay's lips when Stefan turns into the backyard and she sees him.

"I wish Bella wouldn't call." Jared inputs.

"Maybe I should call Bella." Embry adds.

"Maybe I should call Bella and hang up." Quil says, and they all laugh.

"Alright, you can all shut up now." Jake tells his pack brothers as Jay climbs out of Stefan's bright red 1963 Porsche.

"Hey, it's the biter." Quil's the first to acknowledge her presence, making the rest turn, but Paul and Embry are both already looking at Jay.

"Hey, it's the food thief." The little brunette muses as she walks over, and he chuckles. "I didn't know you were a part of the pack."

"You've missed a lot." He tells her, and she just nods. "How are you doing?"

"She has raging anger issues that she generally directs at her best friend's boyfriend." Stefan says from inside his car, still sitting behind the wheel as he keeps an eye on her.

"Shut up, Stefan." Jay turns around to look at him, confusing the rest of them.

"Or at me. That's fine." He shrugs. "Do any of them own shirts?"

"Will you go home?"

"Can't. I have to go back to school and get your work for the day. Damon's gonna love that you're ditching." He tells her, and she rolls her eyes. "Call me if you need anything."

"Yes, Mom." She mutters as he backs the car away from the house.

"It's cute how they hover." Bella muses, and she shakes her head.

"It's annoying." She argues, intentionally not looking toward Paul and Embry, who are standing right next to each other. "I'm an orphan with a zillion questionable father-figures."

"And those two are both in love with your sister." She says, and Jay scrunches her nose as she looks down. "Didn't Damon also sleep with your mother?"

"Oh, for the love of..." She shudders. "I'm never telling you anything ever again."

"You know, I'm surprised that you even came." Bella says as the younger girl lets her feet drop off the higher ground to the lower level that leads toward the patio.

"Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure your boyfriend was gonna try glaring me to death, so..." She scoffs, and then their attention's pulled to the girl who just walked out of Emily's house. "Leah?"

The Quileute girl with the newly cut short hair looks between Bella and Jay. "If you two are here to torture Jacob and Paul some more, feel free to leave." The older girl tells them and then turns around and walks away.

Embry clears his throat awkwardly, looking down as Paul grinds his teeth, glaring at her. Jake shakes his head as Bella glances up at him. Quil then looks away from Leah, and Jared continues eating his fried chicken leg as he glances between Bella and Jay to see their reactions.

The youngest chuckles. "I knew I liked her." She says, and Paul looks over at her, surprised that that was her first thought.

"Jay, Bella!" Both girls look up at the sound of a familiar voice, and they see Emily and Sam walking out of the house. "Hi." She goes to hug the younger of the girls, but Jay quickly steps back, so Bella hugs her. "I was wondering when we'd see your faces around here again."

"Yeah, it's...been awhile." Bella nods as Jay backs up even more and sits on the step.

"How've you guys been?" Emily asks, and the Swan girl glances over at Jay.

"Good." She says, and the younger girl scoffs. "She's a pessimist."

"I'm a realist."

"You're a fatalist."

"I take after my new Daddy. You try living with Dickface and Broody." She mutters, and Jake raises his eyebrows as he looks back at Bella.

"Damon was bugging her last week, so she tried to—"

"I did not."

"You tried to snap his neck."

"Okay, that I did." Jay concedes. "But I didn't actually do it."

"Stefan locked her in her room for a couple of hours." Bella says as she looks back at Jake.

"While you and Marie watched...and helped."

"And then Damon called her Rapunzel for the next three days."

"You spend a lot of time at their house?" Jacob asks, knowing that that's what's on Paul's mind as he looks at his imprint.

"Only sometimes, and only now that Marie lives there with them." She tells them, and Jay scrunches her nose as she rubs her head. "Uh... She's a witch, and she can do this thing—"

"My head was on fire." Jay interjects.

"Not literally." Bella says when they all look confused. "She uses her magic to, like...give them an aneurysm. But they heal quickly so she does it over and over again."

"It's abuse."

"It's how she breaks up fights."

"Do they fight a lot?" Jake asks.

"Only on days that end in y."

"Funny girl." Jay mutters, her eyes still on the dirt.

"Her emotions are heightened now, and Damon liked pissing her off when she was human. Now the reaction he gets is amplified, and he claims that nothing exciting ever happens in Forks, so..." Bella shrugs, shaking her head.

"Nothing, except the redheaded bitch trying to kill my best friend."

"She's been in a mood lately." She says, and Jay smiles sarcastically as she looks up at her.

"Are you guys hungry?" Emily asks, and the little brunette looks over at her.

"Uh... Sure." Jay nods, remembering when Caroline told her that eating can help sublimate the cravings.

"Come on—"

"No."

Everyone looks at Bella, confused by Jay's response, and she takes a deep breath. "She doesn't...want to be invited into anyone's house." She explains.

"That's ridiculous." Emily says as she looks back at her. "You're family around here."

"She won't come into my house either." Bella says as she looks at the older girl. "It just makes her more comfortable to be outside — fresh air and all."

Emily and a couple of the boys go inside to collect a few things to bring out onto the patio to finish eating, and Jay stays where she's sitting. Paul looks over at Jay again, and this time he notices that she's gripping the step next to her leg. Bits of dirt crumble to the ground as she squeezes her eyes shut and lets her head hang. He takes a step toward her, but then she just disappears. He clenches his teeth as he looks down.

"Stefan said that there were things she was compelled to forget when she was human, and when she turned, the compulsion was stripped away. It, uh...reopened old wounds." Bella says as she looks at Paul. "Now, she has to deal with that on top of the still pretty fresh grief of losing Jeremy, and even Ric. And Elena, Bonnie... He told me that all of the overwhelming emotions can blur into one basic instinct for a vampire, especially a new one — hunger. She's terrified of losing control."

"She goes to school." He looks over at her, and she nods.

"And there's only one class that she doesn't have with Stefan, or Alice, or Jasper, or Edward — English 9." She tells him. "And she has that class during Stefan's free period, so he's sitting right outside the room. Alice watches her future, Edward keeps tabs on her thoughts. She hates it, but she knows that it's for her own good...and for the people around her."

"Why do you know all of this and I don't?" He questions. "Why can you be around her, and she keeps me away?"

"Because she doesn't need me like she needs you, and she doesn't feel for me what she feels for you." Bella explains, remembering the conversation she had once with Jay when she told her that she wants Paul to understand, but she doesn't know how to explain it to him. "Her grief isn't the only thing that was magnified, everything is heightened. And everything that she feels can blur into the hunger that she hates. You may not think that she can hurt you, but she's seen what vampires like her have done to the people that they care about the most."

"I don't care—"

"But Jay does." She cuts him off. "Paul, everything about her personality...every insecurity and fear — no matter how minuscule or irrational — has been put under a microscope." She tells him, and he just looks at her. "Every fear she's had that whatever you two have is only because of the imprint, every time she got hurt when you disappeared or distanced yourself, what she felt when you told her that you didn't want to have feelings for her... All of that was going to have consequences before she turned, and now she feels it all a hundred times more."

"Maybe you and I should go somewhere else." Jake says when he sees that Paul's getting angry, even though he knows the anger is at himself and not with Bella.

"Okay." The brunette nods, and then they start back toward his motorcycle. "Hey, Paul?" She turns back to him, and he looks over at her.

"Yeah?"

"I don't know if nobody else has asked or thought to ask — I haven't because I don't know how, but..." She takes a deep breath. "Jay died, Kol killed her. She isn't just grieving the loss of her family; she lost herself that night. She lost who she used to be, and now she's trying to learn to be something that she hates... Her death was hell for us to see happen. What do you think it was like for her to feel it?" She asks. "I think we all should take that into account."

—

Jay's sitting in the sand at First Beach when she hears footsteps behind her. The little brunette turns her head as Embry sits down about a foot away from her, and she takes a deep breath — through her mouth — as she lays her head on her arms, which are resting on her knees.

"I miss Christmas." He says, and she smiles as her eyes travel the side of his face; his own dark eyes are on the ocean in front of them. "We were both human, and I didn't have to feel guilty about having feelings for you...and wanting to kiss you."

"So, Paul was the only reason that you broke up with me?" She asks, and he nods.

"Sam was sick of us constantly fighting, and honestly... I felt guilty, and not just because he imprinted." He tells her, and her eyebrows furrow.

"What do you mean?"

"Remember how I said that we can hear each other's thoughts?" He asks, and she nods. "We don't control what we tell each other when we phase. Anything we think is fair game for the rest of the pack to see. So, I could see it every time he thought about you — how much he loves your smile, whenever he wants to hear your laugh...the pain it causes him when he sees you cry.

"I didn't break up with you because Paul's my brother, and he imprinted on you. I mean, it was part of it, sure. But I broke up with you because it wouldn't have been fair of me to keep dating you when I knew that I'd never feel for you the way that he does." He tells her, and she looks away from him, not knowing what to think about any of that.

"Things are more complicated now." Jay says. "Things are different."

"You told Emily that you hate vampires just like we do." He continues. "But you dated Tyler, right? Because you had feelings for him when he was human, and that didn't go away just because he was turned. Paul's hated the Cullen family since he phased. Hell, they're the reason that he phased, and he doesn't like being a wolf... And he's hated them for longer than he's known you... You were right before — we don't go through a lot of pain when we phase, and we weren't murdered. But we didn't ask for this either, it happened to us because it's in our blood."

"You think I'm being too hard on him for what happened the night that Victoria was here."

"I think you're being too hard on both of you." Embry tells her. "Things are different now, a hell of a lot more complicated than they were before. So, now you have to give yourself time to adjust to the changes, time to figure out where you stand with each other and with yourself."

"I appreciate the advice, but that's easier said than done." She argues, and he nods.

"Yeah, it is. But it also takes effort. Which you're not putting in if all you do is avoid him." He says, and she looks back out at the water. "I haven't imprinted, so I can't really tell you anything about it, but... I've seen plenty in his head, and what's going on between you two now — it's killing him, and I'm telling you this knowing full-well that he's gonna kick my ass for it when he finds out. So, I think you should cut him some slack. It'd probably do you some good too."

"My life was so much more simple when I could just tell myself that he was a dick, and that I was better off dating someone like you." Jay says, and he chuckles. "It sucks when you learn that there's more to people than what they let you see."

"Like that they're a hunter who's not afraid to shoot a vampire in the face?" He muses, and the brunette laughs.

"Hey, I missed his face." She argues.

"Still, it was very badass...and entirely unexpected." He tells her. "I mean, we all knew that you were hiding something, but none of us guessed that."

"I'm a girl of many mysteries."

"Even to yourself, I'd bet." Embry says, and she sighs.

"You have no idea, my friend." The younger girl glances at him before her gaze settles on the horizon. "I'm gonna talk to him. I am planning to, I swear... I just have a few things that I need to figure out first — straighten a few things out in my head before I try explaining them to him." She tells him, and he simply nods as they sit in silence.