A/N I hope you guys like this episode/chapter.

I was at the bar in the Grill, trying to convince Damon to come home instead of drinking himself half to death. Alaric walked up to us.

"Beth, bad question, but have you seen Jeremy?" He asked me.

"Come drink with me!" Damon offered.

"This may come as a shock, Damon, but I'm not here to hang out with you. I'm here to see Jeremy. Who is an hour late to his shift…"

"I might have gone to his house last night… So he probably over slept." I said. Damon put his shot glass down and looked over at me.

"Rule number one of dating, little sis: never go back to them. Especially Jeremy. You could do better." He told me. I glared at him.

"Shut up." I told him. I looked over at Alaric.

"Why do you need Jeremy?" I asked.

"His midterm paper was copied straight off the internet. Didn't even try to hide it." He muttered.

"Ooh! Someone's getting grounded." Damon said with a smirk. I smacked him upside the head. A waitress stopped beside us.

"Did you say you're waiting for Jeremy as in Jeremy Gilbert?" She asked.

"Yeah." Alaric said with a nod.

"He was fired last week." She walked off. Damon smirked again.

"Oops." Elena walked up and heard the last bit.

"He was fired?" She asked, coming around to the other side of me and pulling out her cell phone.

"Yep." Damon said with a smirk. Elena looked at me.

"Beth." I smacked him upside the head again, harder this time. She called Jeremy, but he didn't answer, so she just left a message.

"Jeremy, the minute you get this, call me!"

"You are feisty when you're mad." Damon said.

"I'm not mad. I'm worried."

"What for, Elena? He lost his job at the Grill. He'll survive." Damon said, getting another drink. As if he wasn't drunk enough already…

"He's spiraling. Ever since Beth broke up with him, he's moody, he's not really talking to anyone." She looked at me, suddenly remembering I was here.

"Sorry." She said, chewing on her lip. I nodded.

"Trust me, I know what he's going through. Give me that before anyone sees me." I took Damon's shot and downed it, hoping no one saw.

"He's a typical teenager, dealing with a hot, un-replaceable girl that broke up with him because he was an idiot." Damon assured her, patting my shoulder for emphasis.

"Who's seeing ghosts and has lost everyone he cares about." She added, glaring at him.

"Not everyone. He still has you. And Beth paid him a late night visit last night." Damon said, giving me a suggestive look that earned him yet another smack.

"Don't mind me." We turned to Klaus in shock as he walked over to the bar.

"You're going to do this in the Grill? In front of everyone? Little beneath you, isn't it?" Damon asked.

"I don't know what you're talking about. I just came down to my local pup to grab a drink with a mate. Get a round in, would you Tony?"

"I'm surprised you stuck around long enough for happy hour." I told him. He smirked at me.

"Well, my sister seems to be missing. Need to sort that out." He told me.

"Cute blonde bombshell?" Damon asked.

"Physco. Shouldn't be hard to find." I added.

"Truth is, I've grown to rather like this town. I think I might fancy a home here. Oh, I imagine your wondering how does this effect you. The answer is: not in the slightest. As long as I get what I want and everyone behaves themselves you can go on living your little lives however you choose. You have my word."

"What more could you possibly want?" Elena asked.

"Well, for starters, you can tell me where I might find Stefan."

"Stefan skipped town the second he saved your sorry butt." I told him.

"Well, you see, that's a real shame. Your brother stole from me. I need him found so I can take back what's mine." Klaus told us.

"That sounds like a Klaus-Stefan problem." Elena said. Klaus moved towards Elena and me. Damon got between Klaus and us.

"Well, this is me broadening the scope, sweetheart."

Later that day, when I was in a booth at the Grill when my phone rang. I saw it was Elena and answered it.

"Hey, what's up?"

"Klaus compelled Jeremy."

"To do what?" I demanded, getting up.

"Stand in front of a speeding car without his ring. He's fine. Alaric got hit instead. There was a hybrid driving the car, so the ring should bring him back. Please get over here!"

"Be there in a second!" I hung up and hurried out of the Grill. When I saw no one was watching, I darted to the Giblet house and hurried inside. Alaric's body was on the couch, Elena and Jeremy gathered around it. I hurried over to Jeremy and he turned to me. I slapped him.

"Beth!" Elena protested.

"Why weren't you wearing Vervain? Where's your bracelet?" I demanded.

"I don't know." He said, holding his cheek painfully. I might have slapped him a little harder than I'd meant to…

"It was Tyler. It had to have been. That why he was hanging around you. To get the Vervain off you!" Elena told him. Damon walked into the house.

"Klaus is trying to send us a message. He wants us to find Stefan, who stole his coffins full of his dead family members." He explained.

"Coffins?" Elena echoed.

"Yep. So all we have to do is find one coffin and viola no one else on your family Christmas list needs to die!"

"Wait, that's your big plan? To steal back four dead Originals so this evil hybrid doesn't kill me and everyone else?" Jeremy asked.

"It's a better plan than just letting you get compelled to kill yourself." I snapped. I went out onto the porch and he followed me.

"So you dumped me but-." I spun around and interrupted him.

"But I still care about you? Yes, Jeremy! I love you! Why do you need to hear me say it?! I 'dumped' you because you made out with Anna and I don't want to date someone that will betray me that easily!" I told him.

"Beth, you know I didn't mean to."

"It doesn't matter, Jeremy!"

"Yes it does! I made a mistake and I have had to deal with that!" He told me, obviously pissed off.

"So have I! I have had to deal with the fact that the boy I love cheated on me. I have to deal with how much it hurts to miss you!" He stopped me by kissing me. I let him, even kissing him back as he hands found their way under my t-shirt. The door opened and Damon stepped out.

"No." He said simply, looking coldly at Jeremy as we pulled away from each other. Elena came out behind him, pulling the door shut.

"'No' wh-." Then Elena saw me with Jeremy, who had decided to keep his hands up my shirt. I pushed him away, embarrassed.

"Oh. We're going to see Bonnie. Can one of you keep an eye on Ric?"

"Yeah, sure." I said quickly. She gave us one last look before she and Damon hurried off. Once they were gone, Jeremy looked at me.

"I love you." He whispered. He tried to kiss me again, but I put my hands on his chest to stop him.

"I love you too, Jeremy. That's the problem." I ducked back into the house and went to sit by the couch to wait for Alaric to wake up.

I woke up from where'd I fallen asleep on the floor when Alaric woke up, gasping for air. I jumped to my feet and offered him my hand as he stood up.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Great." I was pretty sure that was sarcasm. Elena walked into the house.

"Ric! You're awake." She said.

"Yeah… How's Jeremy?" He asked.

"Hating me. Hating life. Lovingly hating Beth for what happened between them. Hating the fact that we can't have a family dinner without someone dying before desert." She explained. Suddenly Ric started coughing up blood. He collapsed on the floor and Elena and I ran to him.

"Something's wrong… The ring…" He sputtered before coughing up more blood. I threw my phone at Elena, not even looking to see if she'd caught it or if I'd just hit her with it.

"Call 911." I told her. She did and a few minutes later, she was letting the paramedics in.

"What happened?" One of them demanded.

"He got hit by a car and he's coughing up blood." Elena said as we both stepped aside to let them get to Alaric.

"Get his vitals."

"His pulse is pretty weak. Looks like internal bleeding. We gotta get him outta here. Let's move!"

"Let's not and say we did." We turned to the new voice. The hybrid that had been with Klaus at the bar was standing in the doorway.

"Why don't you too meet us at the hospital?" The paramedics walked out, obviously under compulsion. Ric started coughing again.

"I'm right here, Ric, I'm right here!" Elena said, kneeling down beside him.

"You can still save him, Elena. Here, take my blood…. But wait, I'm not invited in yet." The hybrid said with a smirk similar to Klaus's.

"No! Why are you doing this?" I growled, showing him my fangs.

"Klaus asked for his family. You didn't deliver. Might want to invite me in, Elena…" The hybrid said. Suddenly he fell onto the porch, an arrow in his back. Jeremy hurried into the house and passed the crossbow off to me.

"Jeremy?!" Elena asked in shock.

"Keep him down." Jeremy told me. He hurried into the kitchen and returned with a large knife. He went back out and cut off the hybrid's head.

"Now he's dead." Jeremy announced, coming back into the house with splattered blood on his face.

"We have to get Alaric to the hospital, now!"

Later that night, after Alaric was in the hands of doctors at the hospital, I helped Elena scrub the blood off the porch, though it left a faint stain there no matter what we did to it. After we were done, I went upstairs to Jeremy's room.

"Hey, Jeremy… You okay?" I asked.

"Stop regarding me like I'm a physco. I chopped off a dude's head. Normal Sunday." He told me. I went over and sat down next to him on his bed.

"Um… Normal isn't really in my dictionary anymore." I admitted. He half smiled.

"About earlier…" He started.

"When we made out?" I blurted out.

"Yeah, then… You said that being in love with me was the problem…"

"Jeremy… I still love you, okay? I just know that I shouldn't love you this much." I whispered. Elena poked her head into the room.

"Hey, can we talk, Jeremy?"

"What did I do now?" He whined.

"I've been thinking about what you said earlier. About how we should pack up and go…"

"Elena, I didn't mean that." While they were talking, I had gotten up and drifted to the doorway and Elena had walked over to him.

"But you were right. You shouldn't have to give up a normal life, just because of me." Damon came into the room. Jeremy and I grasped what was going to happen at the same time.

"You can't compel him!" I protested while Jeremy hung his head, apparently just accepting that he was about to have his mind messed with.

"Beth, come here." Alaric came into the room as he said it and took my arm. He pulled me out of the room and down into the living room. I yanked my arm back.

"You can't compel him!" I repeated.

"This is for the better. We're sending him to Denver to live with some family friends. He'll be away from all this supernatural stuff. He'll be in a new school, meet new girls. Living girls. And-." He stopped when he realized he'd said that part about girls out loud.

"Yeah. I can think of a lot of girls that would be better for him." I agreed in a whisper.

"I didn't mean it like that." He said quickly.

"No, I think we both know that's exactly how you meant it, Alaric… It's fine. It's true." I hurried out of the house and darted back to the boarding house. I went into my bedroom and slammed the door behind me. I collapsed on the other side, slumping against it. Then I cried. I almost laughed at myself through my tears. I'd been crying a lot lately. Jeremy made me cry. Now he was going out of town, some place where I would probably never seen him again… And I couldn't help but feel alone.