A/N: Alright, here you all are. The next chapter. Make sure to read the Author's Note at the end. It's important.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own The Outsiders.

"JACQUELYN!"

The brunette jumped as her name was called. She'd made every effort to enter the establishment quietly. She'd even gone as far as walking behind the building to come into the store through the back door where there was no bell. She was successful in entering the store quietly. She'd dropped her jacket off in the back room and poked her head around the corner. She hadn't seen the blond, but clearly she was there.

"Gina," the brunette answered with a half-smile and a nervous laugh. She tucked her hands into the pockets of her pants and leaned back on the doorframe. "How's it hanging?" she questioned, trying to sound nonchalant like Two-Bit did when he said it.

"Lemme see!" the blonde exclaimed as she took a step towards her friend. Jacquelyn pushed herself off the wall and took a step back. Gina took another step towards her and Jacquelyn took another step back. They continued their dance for a few more steps until Gina charged at her and pinned her to the counter. "Lemme see!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jacquelyn answered through gritted teeth as she struggled to get free from Gina's grasp. For someone so small, she was kind of strong.

"Show me!" Gina demanded as she started to pull at her arm.

"What are you doing?" the brunette laughed as she started to slip from her position and fall to the floor; Gina falling with her. "Let go of me!"

The bell over the door jingled and their fighting stopped. However, neither one moved. Jacquelyn was sure that this was a rather odd position for someone to walk in on. The two employees lying on the floor. One with her hands pushed firmly into her pockets and the other pulling on her arm.

"Ladies," the voice greeted.

"Dare, what are you doing here?" the brunette questioned as she clenched her fists again. Gina obviously thought that she had let her guard down since Darry had come in. Not a chance.

"What are you doing here?" he echoed.

"This is how I start every work day," she said calmly as Gina began to shake her arm with a rough grip on her forearm. "Your turn."

"You left your key at the house," he told her as he pulled it from his pocket and placed it on the counter over her head. By this point, Gina shaking Jacquelyn's whole body, quite roughly. "Why don't you just show her?" Darry asked assuming that this, whatever this was, was about the ring.

Jacquelyn shifted her weight as she did Gina moved, still shaking her friend. The result was both of their heads colliding.

"Ow!" the both shouted and made the identical motion of pulling away from each other and bringing their hands to their foreheads.

The diamond on Jacquelyn's finger glinted in the light.

"Lemme see!" Gina shouted as she attacked the brunette grabbing her hand in a death grip before she could move.

"Are you okay?" Darry asked as he knelt down so that he was level with Jacquelyn.

"Oh, it's so perfect!" Gina was exclaiming.

"Yeah," she rubbed her forehead with her right hand. "I'm fine. Would have been nice if you had helped me." Jacquelyn had started to attempt to retrieve her arm from her friend's grasp. The most she pulled the tighter her grasp got. It was like trying to fingers free from a Chinese finger trap.

Darry held his hands up in mock surrender. "I am not going to get between that."

Jacquelyn winced as Gina pulled her arm upwards and held her hand up towards the light. "Hey, my arm doesn't exactly bend that way," the brunette tried, but Gina didn't hear a word. "I see where your loyalties lie, Darrell."

He pulled a face at the use of his full name. She was never one to use his full name, and honestly it sounded odd coming out of her mouth. "With you of course."

Jacquelyn finally managed to release her arm from her friends hold and brought it to her chest quickly, so to keep Gina from getting her hands on her arm again. Darry could clearly see her irritation and offered her a hand to pull her up. "I don't want your help, Curtis," she said in a huff as she attempted to pull herself back to a standing position with one hand. An attempt in which she was successful. Gina was still babbling about something or other. However, something she said caught her attention. "What was that?" she questioned.

"What was what?" Gina questioned as she turned her blue eyes to her.

"That last thing you said," Jacquelyn answered.

"I don't remember," Gina said with a shrug.

Jacquelyn rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to Darry, as Gina frolicked to the back of store. "Aren't you gonna be late to work, Curtis?" she questioned as her eyes briefly fell on the clock behind him. "How is the work site ever going to be able to operate without you? The alpha male! You must go to them!"

"You're being dramatic," he told her calmly.

"Welcome to the rest of forever," Jacquelyn teased as she pushed pass him and shoved the door open. When she looked back at him, he had an odd expression on his face. Her eyebrow arched and she shifted her weight from her left to her right. "What?"

He glanced at her briefly. "Nothing." He picked the key up off the counter and then took her hand. Darry opened her hand and placed the silver key in the palm of her hand. "Your key, stop leaving it lying around," he told her as he closed her palm around it.

"But we don't lock the door…" Jacquelyn whined.

"Everyone has a key, locked door or not," he answered as he walked through the door and out into the chilled morning. "Don't-"

"Lose it, I got it," she finished for him as she waved him off. "Now, shoo, you're distracting me from my work."

Darry opened his mouth to say something, but decided that it would be best to just not say anything and it go. "Yeah, yeah, see ya'," he called over the roar of the truck's engine.

"Welcome to Penny's," the brunette greeted her tone less than excited. Over the past two or three hours there had been one or two customers. Both just looking around and then left without buying anything. The rush of the summer was over. Now all the kids were in school and the parents were working. In other words, the place was dead.

"Jac!"

"Sodapop," the brunette responded more energetic this time. "Hey!"

Soda didn't beat around the bush. "What did you say?"

"What?"

"To Darry. Ya know, when he," Soda wiggled his eyebrows.

The woman brought her thumb and ring finger of her right hand to her temples and sighed. "Soda, shouldn't you be at work or something?" she questioned and she closed her hazel eyes and took a deep breath.

"That faster you answer, the faster I go," he told her bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Whatcha' say?"

She hadn't realized that he'd been gone when she and Darry came back from the stadium and was still asleep when she left out earlier in the morning. He hadn't actually had a chance to talk to her. "Yes," the brunette breathed with a soft smile.

"Yes!" he exclaimed. "Finally getting that sister. Ya know, I wanted Pony to be a girl real bad, but he's not."

"You wanted a sister?" Jacquelyn questioned.

"Yeah, I had already had a brother and he's a bore," Soda teased, "so I figured a sister would be better. But then there's Pony and he's a bore too." Of course, Soda loved his brothers boring or not, they both knew that. So the comment was taken as what it was meant to be: a joke. "Can I see it?" he questioned. With a sign, Jacquelyn brought her hand on to the counter, so that he could see the ring. "It was our mom's, ya' know," he told her as he gently picked up her hand and examined the ring.

"I know," she said quietly.

"Darry asked us if it was okay, ya' know, to use mom's ring," Soda said as he returned her hand to the counter and watched as she folded her hands together. "I think that mom would have liked that you have it." He looked up and saw that she was blushing. "I don't think that I have ever seen you blush. Ever."

Jacquelyn ducked her head, her brown hair covering her face. "Stop talking about it."

Soda laughed.

"Jacaquelyn," Gina called from the back room, her voice strained. "Do you think you could come help me with this box?"

The brunette shrugged. "I'm busy."

"You're not doing anything!" the blond shouted back. "Literally nothing."

Jacquelyn turned her attention back to Soda, but before she could say anything he had already started towards the back room where Gina was struggling, as if he had read her mind.

"Jacquelyn," the blond shouted again. "Oh, hey, Soda."

"Stop touching me, Matthews," the brunette shouted as she lay on the soda, trying to fend off the boy with the pillow on the sofa. "Go away!" she shouted again.

The front down swung open and then shut.

"Help me," Jacquelyn called to whoever had walked into the house. She had been fighting with Two-Bit like this for the past ten or so minutes.

"Two-Bit, let her go," Darry's voice said as it moved from the living room towards the kitchen. He looked over his shoulder to see that Two-Bit had not moved and Jacquelyn was still swatting at him with the pillow. "Matthews, let her go," he said again, a more commanding tone in his voice.

Two-Bit took the hint the second time around and released his hold on Jacquelyn. Of course, not before reaching over and giving her cheek a solid pinch and receiving another smack with the pillow. After Two-Bit moved from her space she sat up, her brown hair flipping over her shoulder. With her hand on her face where he'd pinched her, she stood from the sofa. The brunette shot him a dirty look as she walked out of the living room and into the kitchen.

"Didn't we talk about your loyalties this morning?" she asked as she continued to rub her face where Two-Bit had pinched her.

Darry looked at her briefly before turning his attention back to the bills in his hand. "What?"

"Your loyalties," she repeated. "They don't seem to be lying with me."

"I told him to let you go," he said as he dropped the water bill on the table and moved to the rest of the bills.

The brunette moved into the kitchen and sat down in the chair next to him and took the bills from his hand. "Know what I found out?" She held the bills out of his reach. "It's so much easier to talk to someone when the other person is acknowledging you."

"I'm responding to you, Jacquelyn," he said as he took the bills from her and started to look through them again.

"Ugh!" the brunette exclaimed as she pushed away from the table and walked out of the kitchen.

From the living room, Darry heard Two-Bit ask Jacquelyn, "Are you having a fight?"

"No!" they both responded. Jacquelyn's answer was a yell, while Darry's was a calm statement.

Fire and ice. It had always been that way. Fire and ice.

"Jacquelyn, come here," Darry said as he placed the bills on the table.

She was right. He wasn't paying her any attention. However, he couldn't always give her his undivided attention. It just didn't work that way. Then again, he was doing this, flipping through the bills, out of habit. He didn't need to do that anymore. Ever since Jacquelyn had moved in, he didn't need to do this. He didn't need to sit and stress about how he was going to make the money stretch. He just did it out of habit.

When he realized that she hadn't come when he called he sighed. "Jacquelyn."

"She went outside," Two-bit replied. "Go get her before someone else picks her up," the boy teased as Darry walked into the living room with his hands in his pockets. "How's you first fight of your engagement?"

"S'not a fight," Darry replied as he walked out the front door.

"Hey," the brunette said.

She was lying on the grass just outside of the house, holding her engagement ring over her face and watching the gem glitter in the sun. Darry came and sat next to her watching her.

"We're not fighting right?" he questioned carefully.

Jacquelyn looked over at him. Her hazel eyes meeting his blue ones and she shrugged. Her skin rubbing against the prickling grass as she did. The brunette then turned her eyes back upwards towards the fluffy white clouds.

A chilled wind swept over the yard and Darry feel the goosebumps forming on his skin. Just like he could see the goosbumps forming on her cheeks. The skin on her face, starting at her nose started to turn a little pink, and as it crept across the bridge of her nose the so easily forgotten about freckles there started to show.

"Jacquelyn?"

She slipped her ring back onto her finger and folded her arms behind her head. "No, we aren't fighting."

"Are you-"

"Not mad at you either," she told him before he could answer. "That would mean we were fighting."

"So you're-"

"Nothing short of content," she answered again as she rolled over onto her stomach and placed her chin on her crossed arms.

"Content," he questioned with an arched eyebrow.

"I never pictured things actually turning out this way, ya know? I figured that once I left that you," she paused as she took a blade of grass in between her pinky finger and thumb, "that we, would just move on. I thought I was stuck there for forever. Of course, I didn't count on my parents getting a divorce. Or moving back to Tulsa with my dad. Definitely didn't actually think that I was gonna see you again." She shrugged and rolled on to her back again. "I just thought this were going to turn out so different. Like I was gonna be stuck marrying some yuppie," she snorted. "Or that I was going to have to stay with my mother for the rest of eternity."

"You never thought about what it would be like?" he questioned.

Her thick eyebrows furrowed. "I tried, but when I left," she trailed off trying to figure out how to say what she wanted to say without upsetting him, "you weren't the same person as before. I couldn't picture myself with that person."

Jacquelyn sat up and ran her fingers through her long hair, shaking out the grass and dirt that had accumulated in her hair. After a moment, she pressed her shoulder to his and looked over at him.

"You were still kinda that person when I got here."

"I'm not sure what you want me to say," he told her honestly as he briefly met her curious gaze.

It was rare that he knew how to respond to her when she spoke like this. Jacquelyn had always been so open and trusting, nothing changed that. In her mind, everyone received her trust until they showed her that they were unworthy of having it. He on the other hand was the opposite. He wasn't the type to be open with feelings, even before the accident, it just wasn't something he did. He also wasn't all that trusting. People had to earn his trust, and even then he would keep them at arm's length. The two people that were truly closest to him were Sodapop and Jacquelyn.

Jacquelyn Ross just had a way of worming herself into your life, whether you want her there or not. If she liked you, she was gonna do whatever it took to make you like her as well. Darry hadn't really put up a fight when she tried to worm her way in his world. Of course, he hadn't really noticed that she was coming into his world until he went home one day and was reading on the sofa and Ponyboy asked him where the 'brunette broad' was. It wasn't until then that he realized that he had been spending a lot of time with her and in turn she was spending a lot of time with his family. She just too easy to like. She too sweat and funny and bubbly to not like her. It took no time for him to fall of her, and hard at that. What did take time was admitting that to himself.

She leaned against him and shrugged. Her dark hair falling over his shoulder and she rested her head on it. "You don't have to say anything," she told him.

When she look up at him, she could tell that his eyebrows were furrowed and he was thinking. Jacquelyn stood up and offered her hand to him. "Stop it. I made a cake before Two-Bit started harassing me. It's chocolate," she sang.

Darry took her head and allowed her to 'assist' in helping him up. That meant that she pulled his arm and he stood without her help.

So things hadn't played out exactly the way that he had imagined in high school. But everything seemed to work out for the best.

"Jacquelyn," he said as she stated pulling him towards the house. Because there was something that he wanted to say something to her.

"Hmm?" she questioned as she glanced over her shoulder at him.

"Nothing," he responded.

Words. Still not his strong suit.

He pulled her hand back towards him and turned her around all in one motion. Being the uncoordinated woman that she was she stumbled backward into his chest. He reached up and pushed her dark hair from her eyes, pulling a few blades of dead grass from her hair as he did.

"What?" she questioned as she looked up at him. Her hazel eyes squinting against the setting sun.

He placed a soft kiss on her lips.

"You know you're gonna have to use words to convey feeling eventually," she muttered against his lips.

"Not today," he responded before kissing her again.

This. This he could get used to.

"Gross," Soda's voice called from the front door. Jacquelyn looked over her shoulder and stuck her tongue out at him. He returned the gesture. "So I saw a cake in the fridge," he said as he bounced on the balls of his feet. "I'm gonna cut it."

The brunette pulled out of her grasp around her and took of towards the house. They all knew what Soda cutting the cake meant. That meant that he was going to pick at it with his hands until he got enough.

"No!"

Darry pushed his hands into his pockets and started towards the house. From the other side of the door, he could hear Soda, Steve, Two-Bit, and Jacquelyn shouting. Ponyboy had emerged from his room to join in the mayhem. A small smile crept across Darry's lips as he listened. Soda was still trying to get his hands on the cake and Jacquelyn was having no part of that. He and Ponyboy had teamed up in her from the sounds of it.

He walked into the house, the sound of fighting much louder on the inside ad leaned on the kitchen door. His fiancée, that was going to take some getting used to, was swinging a dish towel at the two boys. While Ponyboy and Soda were taking turns charging at her, Steve and Two-Bit were betting on who was going to win.

"Stop it!" Jacquelyn shrieked as Soda took hold of the rag and started to pull it out of her hands.

Darry hadn't seen the gang like this in a long time. Since before Dally and Johnny died, since before his parents died even. And it was all thanks to her. To that bubbly brunette.

Pulling himself from his thoughts, he joined his brothers. Jacquelyn looked very disapproving as she swatted him with the dishtowel as well. Darry, who wasn't playing fair, charged at Jacquelyn much like he would have a football player on the opposing team and lifted her over his shoulder.

"No!" From her position, Jacquelyn could see Soda grabbing a handful of cake and Ponyboy following suit. "But the icing was perfect," she squeaked as she tried to squirm out of Darry grasp. Two-Bit and Steve had joined in the cake eating. "I was winning!" she shouted as Darry placed her feet on the ground and she ducked under his arm to go back to the remainder of her cake, which was very little.

"You were gonna lose," he told her as he approached her from behind.

Jacquelyn turned and smeared icing on his face with the palm of her hand. "Ha!" she shouted. The chocolate icing was spread from his forehead to his left cheek. She'd caught him off guard.

"Christ," he laughed as he took a step back from her to regain his bearings. He rubbed his face, trying to get the icing off and only succeeded in making it worse and giving Jacquelyn something to laugh at. He took what icing he hand managed to get on his hand and smear it across her face, just as Soda had the same idea.

"Soda!" she gasped as she returned the action.

That was how it started.

It started with her. It started with her being herself. With her being that bubbly person she was. She was something else. Since she had come back everything was easier. She had managed to bring them all closer. She and Soda were the same; they were like glue they held everything together.

That was how he knew she was the one.

She'd wrapped her arms around Ponyboy's neck from behind and jumped on his back, hiding her face in the collar of his shirt as Soda moved to smear the icing across her face. He succeeded in spreading it in her hair and on Ponyboy's face. Ponyboy was holding her legs.

Ponyboy did not open up to people, but he'd taken a vast liking to her.

That was how he knew she was the one.

Darry grabbed her waist and pulled her from her brother's back, her laughing the whole while, giving Soda and Pony ample time to attack her with icing.

They hadn't had this much fun and laughter in the house in long time. Something had been missing since his parents died. Jacquelyn filled the void and completed the Curtis house.

They were family.

A/N: Okay, so this is the last chapter for Feel Again. I just want to thank you all again for being so supportive and reading and reviewing. It's been a total pleasure writing this knowing that you all were reading it. With that said, literally as soon as I post this chapter, I am going to post the sequel to Feel Again. If you are following me then you should get an email about me posting a new story, at least I get one for the people that I'm following. If you aren't the story is called Shattered. So please, come check it out. It's a continuation of this story. It's gonna be exciting and dramatic and you'll love it. So I hope to see you all on the next story. Thanks again for reading!