A/N: This story will have flashbacks occasionally and those sections will be in italics. Happy reading!

Chapter 2

Lately, a sense of dread has been following me around like a dark cloud. It only grew worse when Alaric called in his favor giving me an address and time to show up. Now I am sitting in a coffee shop. In a mall. In the one state to which I vowed never to return.

Sitting here, the reason for my feeling of foreboding is drinking an iced coffee on the other side of the coffee shop talking to Alaric and the memory of the day we became best friends invades my thoughts.

The sun was shining, warming my skin as I rode down the street. Dad kicked me out of the house because he had 'stuff to do.' Stefan luckily was playing with Tyler Lockwood and Matt Donovan at the Lockwood's. I could go there too, but I don't want to have to play with the little kids. Plus Mrs. Lockwood hates me. Ever since I punched her other son Mason, she thinks I'm a troublemaker and says so every time she sees my dad. No one believed me that I overheard him bragging to his friends, Jules and Brady, that he had been picking on kids that were from the founding families. For some reason he wanted to prove how untouchable he was by picking on them and not getting into trouble because his dad's the mayor. So, I confronted him about it. See what kind of tough guy he was when confronted by someone his own size. Maybe I shouldn't have hit him first but if he stopped picking on people it was worth it.

Pedaling down the street with no destination, I saw a girl trying to climb a tree one handed. There was something in her other hand preventing her from using it to climb. As I pedaled closer I saw it was Elena Gilbert and she was holding a bird's nest in the crook of her arm. Elena was friends with my little brother, Stefan and they're in the same class at school. She comes over to the house whenever her parents visit for dinner. The Gilberts have been friends parents with my parents for forever. Well, I guess they're friends with just my dad now. I usually stay in my room when they come over. I'm in double digits. No way would my ten year old self would be caught playing with a couple of seven year olds.

Jumping off my bike I laid it down on the grass and raced over to the tree worried she might fall on her butt. Reaching up I grabbed her around the waste and pulled her down to the ground making sure she was steady on her feet before letting go. She whipped around and stared up at me with big doe eyes. One hand went to her hip and she shot me a glare.

"Why did you pull me down?" Elena demanded.

"Duh, maybe because I didn't want you to fall and die." I bit back.

Suddenly her eyes filled with tears and she looked down at the birds nest in her hand. "Jeremy threw the ball at the tree and knocked the nest down. He's only three and didn't mean it, but I have to fix it. The momma bird is going to miss her babies. I need to get the babies back to their momma." Elena looked from the nest to the tree branches way up high.

With a heavy sigh, I looked up to the tree and down to the little girl now letting a few tears escape down her cheeks. The tears did me in. Plus I had a feeling if I didn't fix this, the kid would find a way to do it herself and I couldn't let her get hurt. Without a word I reached out to take the nest from her, but she jumped back in alarm.

"How do I know you'll actually save the birds? Mason Lockwood said he would help but just tried to use the nest to play catch with his friends. Laughing hysterically the whole time." Elena narrowed her eyes now filled with mistrust.

"Asshole." I nearly slapped myself on the head. I can't use words like in front of her.

"Sorry, I meant jerk. How did you get the nest back?"

"I kicked him where boys don't like to be kicked. He left crying." She had a smug smile on her face. You have to hand it to the kid, she's didn't take crap from Mr. Mason 'I'm better than everyone else' Lockwood. She moved up a couple of notches in my book.

"I promise to get the nest back where it belongs, okay?" She eyed me skeptically for a second before she nodded slowly and handed over the nest.

I shimmied my way up the tree placing the nest in a branch where I hoped it would be safe. Cursing how I got myself into this predicament for a seven-year old girl, I dropped to the ground wincing at the pain in my ankle.

"You kept your promise" she said in awe.

"I always keep my promises." I smirked at her.

Once I was back on solid ground, Elena was glued to my hip for the rest of the day. She just talked and talked and talked. Man, for a little kid she had a lot to say.

Forcing my eyes down, I just stare at the coffee in front of me intently, hoping that the black liquid would reach out and drown me. That would stop me from returning to a past and feelings I had long buried. It would stop me from facing what I had been running from the last four years. As the love of my life disappears into the throngs of happy Saturday shoppers, I see Alaric weaving his way through tables to my secluded corner flopping down in the chair across from me unaware of how he just dropped a bomb on my life.

"So?" Alaric asks removing the microphone from his pocket that had been transmitting to the ear piece I had discreetly concealed in my ear to hear his conversation.

"First off, why I am being called for a case in fucking Virginia?" I growl at him. He knows this state is off limits for me. My jaw is clenched so tight I'm surprised I don't crack teeth. I seize my partner, drinking buddy, and, in all honesty, only friend, by the lapels of his shirt pulling him toward me across the table.

Alaric Saltzman found me not long after I left Mystic Falls, drinking in a bar trying to lose my past in the bottom of a bourbon bottle. A drunken bar fight brought our lives together when some guy took a swing at me and he decided to jump in and help. We made a pretty badass team that night and have had each other's back ever since.

"You owed me and I needed your expertise. There were no warrants out for your arrest in Virginia, no reason for you not to come here, so I called in my favor." Alaric tries to shove me away but my anger is burning through my veins giving me the strength of a hundred men and he stay right where I am holding him.

Damn Alaric. He knew I wouldn't be able to say no if he called in his favor. My only redeeming quality is my over developed sense of loyalty, but only towards a select few. Alaric being one of those few.

Alaric still hasn't said why he was meeting with HER? Why did he drag me near the place I can never return? How could my blackened dead heart still bleed from the wounds it was subjected to four years ago after seeing her for only five minutes?

"Secondly," I respond ignoring his comments, "Why am I working on a case for her?" Shoving Alaric back into his chair, I slouch in my own seat running my hands through my hair. In trying to tone down my anger, I realize my raven locks desperately need to be cut before it moved into mullet territory.

"April set up the meeting since I was doing a job in Richmond. The girl? If you had been listening to the conversation like I asked then you would know her brother is missing. Supposedly this is the only time and place she could meet. She wants to hire us to find him. Something didn't sit right with me after our initial phone call so I wanted you to observe the first in person meeting, see if your bullshit meter went off." The news of the missing brother has me bolting upright in my chair and locking my gaze with his.

"Jeremy's missing?" I realize my mistake the second the words leave my mouth.

Alaric quirks an eyebrow at me and I brace myself for the paternal lecture. A night of a shared bottle of bourbon had me verbally vomiting how I had once loved a girl and she had been the One. But due to the fact that I am a fuck up...no surprise, I fucked it up. Our drunken night of confessions was not long after Alaric invited me to join him as a private investigator in the firm he had as a side business in Atlanta. The firm was meant to supplement his meager earnings writing history books since he no longer taught history. Alaric had made a name for himself as an amateur people hunter, finding the lost that the police didn't have the time or resources to find. His skills had been born searching far and wide for a wife that had disappeared in the middle of the night. She was one of the few cases he was never able to solve. After investing so much time and energy in developing his private investigator skills he decided to make a career out of it.

"How did you..." Alaric's eyes widen and he collapses into his chair. "It's her isn't it? Your Elena?"

My gaze drifts to where she had been sitting just moments ago and I simply nod my head. "So now you know why I don't do cases in Virginia...need to be nowhere near my home town and nowhere near Elena Gilbert."

"I'm so sorry, buddy. I had no idea." Alaric huffs out a breath running his hands through his hair then tilts his head to the side seeming to study me.

Don't do it Alaric. The look that I hate more than any other creeps over his face like a slow moving storm. It's the face I imagine he used when he was a history teacher to keep his kids in line. The face he pulls when he wants to lecture and guilt me into doing something I don't want to do.

"What's the brother mean to her?"

"He means more to her than life itself," I answer without hesitation. The bond between Elena and Jeremy, despite the crap Jeremy pulled as a kid, never wavered. I doubt even death would make that bond crumble.

"Then I need you more than ever. The whole family, hell supposedly the whole town, is convinced he ran away. All except her. She's convinced he wouldn't run but I suspect there is more to the story that she isn't saying. You know the family, you know the town and you know her. I need your insight." Alaric leans back in his seat, his face earnest, and his eyes sincere. He really thinks he needs my help.

For promises of the past to be kept I have to stay away. I endured too much, gave up to much to risk it all now.

"She's engaged," Alaric blurts out. His eyes dance nervously around the coffee shop no longer meeting mine.

"Saw the rock. It's a monster. Must be someone loaded." Alaric eyes suddenly fill with pity. Yep, the fiancé is loaded alright. I try not to grimace at the thought of her fiancé.

"What's your point?" I hate that my voice is so clipped giving away how affected I am by this news.

"No offense buddy, but if she's obviously moved on from you. I doubt she is going to up and dump her fiancé, even for the great Damon Salvatore. Expect a tongue lashing when she sees you for the first time, but that's nothing new to you. Man up and help her get her brother back safe and sound." Alaric gave an apologetic shrug of his shoulders.

Little brother did it. He got the girl. My girl. Well, I liked to pretend back then she was mine, but in truth she was always his. In reality we were, are, hers but I was the booby prize and Stefan the diamond ring. From what Alaric is describing, literally.

I maneuver in my seat, my back suddenly becoming tight as I contemplated Alaric's words. Elena's always came first for me, even if I had to make her hate me to ensure she had a future worthy of her. Which in the end is exactly what happened and I endured the pain of it all.

Could I really go home? If she's going to marry my brother then there is no chance of her going down my dark path. No chance I would ever be back in her life. She would remain safe. She'll hate me when she sees me, but she needs Jeremy. I can face her wraith to ensure Jeremy's gets brought home safe and sound.

"When do we leave?"

A/N: I know what many of you are thinking...another love triangle story. All I'll say is stick with it and hopefully you will be pleasantly surprised.

So team badass is heading to Mystic Falls! Please leave a review and let me know your thoughts and theories.

You can also follow me on twitter: wolverine_999

Or read my first original story on wattpad: wolverine99