Unstoppable | The Vampire Diaries

7. The Ugly Truth

Riley regretted being there. She knew that she shouldn't have confronted Stefan, but she never expected him to reveal something as crazy as that.

"You're... not human?" she asked under her breath. "Then, what are you?"

"If you don't know, you don't want to know," he said, staring at her.

He was probably right, she didn't want to know. But now that she'd gotten to this point, that she was so close to finding out his secret, how could she just walk away?

"Tell me," she said against her better judgement. "What are you?"

He took a breath. He didn't want to tell her, but he knew that she would never let it go. If he wanted to stay in this town, to be with Elena, then he couldn't risk her finding out on her own. He had to control the situation before it got out of hand.

"I'm a vampire."

Riley's eyes widened; it was the last thing that she expected to hear. She'd heard stories about them when she was a kid, the same way she'd heard about the Boogeyman or werewolves. She never imagined that any of them could be real.

"Are-are you serious?"

He sighed. "You were one incident away from figuring it out," he told her.

She started to put the pieces together. "So, you drink blood, right? All those 'animal attacks', they were you?"

"No," he admitted quickly. "They were Damon. I don't drink human blood."

"Damon?!" she exclaimed. "Damon's one too? Who else?!" Maybe this whole town was crawling with supernatural creatures that couldn't be explained.

"Calm down," Stefan said softly, looking around. The Boarding house was pretty secluded, but that didn't mean that it was impossible for someone to walk past and overhear their conversation.

"How can I calm down?" she asked. "You just changed my entire life!"

Stefan sympathized with her, it was hard to turn someone's life upside down because of something about you that you couldn't change.

"Come in," he said. "Please."

"No," she shook her head defiantly. "I have to go home."

She turned to leave, but Stefan grabbed her arm. "I can't let you leave. Please, just come in."

"I can't!" she said forcefully. "If I come in, and you or Damon kill me, then I'm the idiot that went into a vampire's house. I'm not going to be one of those girls on the news that goes missing and no one ever hears from them again."

"I won't hurt you," Stefan said.

"Does a murderer go around announcing that he's going to kill before he does?" she asked rhetorically.

He grabbed her waist, and in a second she was inside the house, the front door locked.

"What did you do?" she asked frantically, moving away from him as quickly as possible.

"There are things that you have to know," he said, speaking slowly so as not to scare her. "Please, just let me explain."

"I don't want to know," she said, terrified at the thought of being trapped in the house with a monster. "Please just let me go."

"I need to make sure that you won't tell anybody," he said softly. "You knowing this, it's dangerous."

She was about to reply, but there was a harsh knock on the door. He listened for a second, before choosing to open it.