Lia would have loved Elena. She would have teased the shit out of me when I first met her, though.
As much of a sanctimonious bitch as Lexi was, that blonde always reminded me a little of Lia, too, just the easy way Lexi knew Stefan's history, how they could laugh about it together. Nobody would believe me if I told them, but I had that, too. Once.
When I drove a stake through Lexi's heart, it wasn't because I needed a vampire scapegoat for the council. And it also wasn't just because I didn't want to remember a New York rooftop, another manipulative seduction, another girl I left behind. I’d never say it out loud, but the biggest reason I killed Lexi was just so I didn't have to watch her and Stefan. I didn’t want to see how nice it was to have an old friend, because I knew I couldn't be trusted with one.
There's another crinkle of plastic, and a cup lands on the table in front of me, just before Elena slides into the other chair. Her tangled hair is swept over her shoulder and it riots wild and beautiful over her pale skin. She still flinches when she takes her shirt off at night, but right now she sits in front of me, stark naked and looking completely composed. She nods silently at the cup.
My heart in my throat, I fill it, half-wondering if she's going to throw it in my face. I have no idea what she might say to me.
She waits until I fill mine, too, and then she tips her cup toward me. "To Lia," she says. "May she rest in peace."
She takes a sip and I take a gulp, holding it on my tongue so the fumes scorch all the way through my sinuses before I swallow.
Elena looks me squarely in the eye. "And fuck you, for thinking I would rather have had you sacrifice yourself for her, when it means I never would have met you. I'm sorry, Damon, but I'm not that selfless."
My head recoils so quickly the tendons in my neck creak. I have never in my life heard Elena Gilbert use that word, but that’s not the shock running like ice water through my veins.
I shove away from the table, my chair tipping over behind me. "What? Are you kidding me? You drowned yourself to save your ex-boyfriend and if you think I don't know how terrified you were of drowning you obviously have no clue how many times I snuck into your dreams before Stefan hung his antique vervain albatross around your neck. You did that, Elena, and yet to save my best friend I wouldn't even face a bunch of guards that I ended up killing a couple days later anyway. How can you possibly delude yourself into thinking we're the same? That two people like us should ever be married?"
My knees quake when I hit the last word and I almost have to grab the table to steady myself because this is the shadow that has been dogging my thoughts all day. When I saw that cupcake, when she kissed her answer to my proposal into my lips. God help me, even when we were in bed, every letter of my name dirty and delicious in her gasped moans.
There's no way I deserve a girl like this.
I may be a monster, but I'm not Stefan. I don't hate myself for it, and I don't even really care that much that I probably should. I know who I am and I know what I've been and I damned well know I don't deserve Elena. Not who I am today, not fifty years ago, maybe not even that last sunny day before I signed my body and my life over to the Confederate army and put on the scratchy grey wool that allowed them to make me their killer.
"I made my choice in that truck," Elena says, pushing away from the table and stepping closer to me. "And Lia made her choice in that dungeon. We both made the wrong choice."
"What?" Her words don't even make sense. We've argued a thousand times about how she should have let Donovan die and she's never budged an inch.
"I was confused, and I was freaking out, and I've hated myself for it ever since," she confesses. "I thought you were all going to die, and Stefan and everyone in Mystic Falls had each other. I loved all of you and I thought that I had to make a choice of who to love the most and in the end, I copped out. I just couldn't justify choosing you over everyone I knew. I left you to die alone and that's the only reason we were on that bridge the night we crashed."
There are tears in her eyes, and only now do I realize there are dried streaks on her cheeks as well. I made her cry and I didn't even notice. I’m such a dick.
"I told Stefan to save Matt, but it's my fault he was in danger in the first place and if you'd actually died I don’t know—" Her face crumples and I'm dying to reach for her. I'd pay anything, give anything, be anything to be able to comfort her right now but that's the thing. It has to be her choice. And so I can't touch her.
She swallows and straightens her still-shaking shoulders.
"But all that isn’t the point right now," she says. "I made the wrong choice, and I have to live with that. Lia made the wrong choice, and she died for it. But it was still her choice, Damon."
I just stare at her. The Elena Gilbert I know would run into a burning building to save a tumor-ridden hamster, much less a dozen or so fellow prisoners. How can she be taking my side?
"Do you know why I'm alive right now, Damon?” she asks. “Because you took a crossbow arrow in the back for me. Because you fought the Originals for me, even when you knew you couldn’t possibly win. Because you turned Bonnie's mom into a witch to save me. Because you make the hard choices. Lia? Would be alive today if she'd gone with you. Just like all the other vampires that you saved and she failed to save," Elena says with iron determination.
She steps forward until she's almost in my arms and I won’t move away but I shouldn’t let myself touch her.
"And I know you cared about her, Damon, and it's okay to grieve her, and to feel bad about what happened." Her eyes shimmer as her hands settle, so gently, back onto my body. "But you're not allowed to tell me that I have to hate you for what you did. Because I can't."
"Elena..." I'm not sure her name came out in words, but it is pouring out of my whole body and then she's kissing me, pulling my head down to hers and her lips almost harsh on mine, as if I'm fighting her. As if I could.
She holds me so tightly it hurts, and I want it to keep hurting, but after only a moment she lets me go, sliding her hands up to cup my cheeks. I don’t know how this is happening, how she’s not throwing me out or even yelling at me. I just told her the worst thing I’ve ever done, one of the only things I regret, and she’s still here. Christ, she’s still here.
Her hands on my face feel different and my head is such a mess it takes me a minute to realize it’s more than just how much I love her, more than the way she’s looking at me, her eyes shining even though they’re sad.
“Your ring.” I pull it down from my cheek and stare, confused. The lapis lazuli is on the third finger of her left hand now, not her right. “You moved it.”
Her lips slowly tip up into a smile. “I didn’t have an engagement ring.”
I narrow my eyes suspiciously and she rolls hers.
“Come on, Damon, like I don’t know who my daylight ring came from.”
“When did you guess?”
She toys with my fingers. “It was too pretty. Not something you come up with on a day’s notice. And I knew Stefan wouldn’t have planned ahead, so I knew it had to be you. Besides, it fit my finger perfectly.” She peeks up at me through her eyelashes. “Stefan’s better with dates than noticing details. That’s more your department.”
I lower my lips to her daylight ring. “I still owe you an engagement ring.”
She grins. “Damn right you do. And a honeymoon.”
“And a wedding and a new house,” I say, a smile creeping onto my lips. “Jeez, you’re expensive, woman.”
“You’re not really into cheap,” she reminds me, but even with the light back in her eyes, I don’t know how to grasp my luck and the smile cracks and falls off my face.
“How can you still love me?” I whisper. “After everything I’ve done?”
She touches my face, her ring cool the way it was after I dug it out of the mud of the river bottom for her, the day she tried to die. Her eyes are different when she looks at me now, softer or maybe steadier. Not nervous like they used to
be, or rebellious. They crinkle at the corners, just a bit, and that’s when I realize why they look so familiar.
It’s the way I look at her. Like I almost can’t believe what I’m seeing but I can’t stop looking.
“Oh, I don’t,” she says lightly, her eyes caressing me. “I’m just using you for the hot sex.”
“Then come to bed,” I growl, my voice hoarse with more than desire.
She takes my hand, her finger slipping over the D on my ring.
And this time, she makes love to me.
Chapter 11: Bumps
DAMON
By all rights, I should be asleep. My body is deliciously exhausted, we broke another lamp, and Elena’s head is cutting off the circulation to my right arm.
I feel freaking fantastic.
And for some insane reason, I’m thinking about Jeremy.
My lips quirk as I remember interrupting him and his little punk rock princess making out in the parking lot, but the smile falls away when I think back to the sporting goods store.
His eyes are too much like Elena’s even on a bad day, but when he looked down at Cali’s feet and blurted out that painfully awkward compliment… That day, his eyes looked just like Elena’s did tonight.
I smirked at that kid in puppy love with Crazy Vickie, watched his shy blushes at Anna’s obvious fascination with him, laughed my ass off when he would perk up every time Bonnie came into the room. But I’ve never seen him look at a girl like he looked at Cali’s feet in that sporting goods store.
And okay, maybe the idea of being a married man after all these years is turning me into a sap and I’m about to start Candy Gramming and bad poetry-ing myself into virtual castration. But still. I figure after all the bullshit that has been his emo teenaged life, Baby Gilbert deserves a shot at love that doesn’t start with lies and compulsion.
Though it fucking figures he goes head over heels for a girl who has a knack for improvised weaponry and will probably try to kill all of us in our sleep once I tell her the truth. Jeez, with my luck? She’ll turn out to be the next vampire hunter of the Five. And Jeremy might forget all about his “detour” training and try to bury me when he finds out I kissed his girl. But he’s a Gilbert. He’ll get over it.
I smile down at my fiancé’s head like the total sucker I am, and start to shift her to a pillow so I can get up.
“Damon?” she murmurs, her arm tightening across my chest. I slide away, kissing her forehead.
“Go to sleep, sweetheart,” I murmur. “I’ll be back.”
Her face scrunches into a pout even though I can tell she’s still mostly asleep, but then it smoothes as she dozes again. I pause by the bed and brush my knuckles down her cheek, watching her sleep like I’ve done so many times before.
I quietly pull on jeans and a shirt, find my boots and jacket just in case, and slip out the door. If I make this snappy and Jeremy doesn’t stake me, I might be able to catch one more quick nap with her before we have to start driving for the day.
My fist meets my brother’s door and after one knock, I move across to the railing overlooking the parking lot and lean my hips back against it, my foot tapping impatiently as I wait for him to answer.
Ric opens the next door down wearing only boxers and gives me a grouchy, quizzical look, his face still bearing red creases from his pillow.
I wave him off. “Just need to talk to Stefan. Go back to bed.”
He grunts and lets the door slam back closed just as my brother opens his, squinting into the late afternoon sun.
“Damon?” Emotion flickers across Stefan’s face and he coughs once, glancing down. I shift my weight, my eyes narrowing as I realize he probably thinks I’m here to talk about Elena and the engagement. Fat chance. I’ll be ready to have that conversation about two centuries after somebody crams a stake through my heart.
There’s movement in the room behind him and I take a step to the side so I can see better, glad for the distraction. I spot the rumpled sheets of an empty bed, and then someone in the second bed, rolling on their side to face away from the light from the door.
I give a low whistle. “Look who plucked a new roommate off the cheerleading squad.” I wink. “Want me to book you a single bed for tomorrow? I can make it look like it was an accident.”
“I can hear you, jerkface,” Caroline grumbles into her pillow. “Not everybody is a sex-a-holic like you, you know. Some of us actually have friends.”
“So, is now the time to bring up all the whining I heard you do to Elena about vibrator batteries and how they never last long enough?” I tilt my head. “Because apparently when you have friends, what you do is complain to them about what a sex-a-holic you are.”
She shoots straight up in bed, shoving a taupe satin sleep mask off her eyes and glaring at me. “Damon Salvatore, I swear to—”
Stefan shuts the door behind himself, frowning at me. “You know, we might actually be able to break that negative sire bond someday if you two could make the slightest effort to be nice to each other.”
“Strange as it may seem to you, brother, I don’t need every last person in the world to love me in order to be happy.” I smile tightly. “Which is fortunate, considering our little mission this morning. Put a shirt on. We’ve got shit to do.”
“Did that last lead on the Augustines pan out?” he asks, already tapping one knuckle on the door for Caroline to let him back in because the door locked automatically when he closed it.
“Just get dressed,” I tell him, and thirty seconds later, he’s back outside, fully clothed and hair combed but not gelled to its usual poufy glory.
Sometimes, my brother’s not so bad.
“So where are we headed?” he asks, his eyes already flicking ahead toward the parking lot.
“Put it this way: if you’ve got a bulletproof vest, and you’ve been waiting for the right occasion, right now might be the time dust off that bad boy.”
He nods once, his lower lip nipping in a little bit like it does when he’s thinking. He doesn’t ask any more questions and I’m glad, because he’s likely going to be just as pissed as the kid when I spill the beans.
Jeremy and Cali’s room is on the end of the row. I pound on their door with enough force to rattle it on the hinges because I know he usually sleeps with music on loud enough that I’ll be talking to him in sign language in another ten years or so.
The door bounces open and I smirk at a scowling Jeremy, who is wearing flannel pajama pants with his boxers poking out the top. Seriously? Kid even wears underwear under his pajamas? Must be a Gilbert thing: Elena used to wear bras to bed right up until she moved in with me.
“Rise and shine, cupcake,” I say, brushing past him into the gloom of the hotel room. “We gotta talk.”
“Jeremy?” a drowsy voice says and suddenly, I’m stumbling back toward the door, coughing on the softball-sized knot in my solar plexus.
I dig in my heels and stop moving, blinking with surprise. Jeremy shoves me again, shifting so his shoulders are between me and the bed.
“She’s not dressed, asshole. Get out!”
“Hey, Jeremy, it’s fine,” Cali says, appearing behind him and catching his arm. “I’m a lot more JC Penney’s Secret than Victoria’s right now anyway.”
She’s wearing a pair of boxers that are the same brand as the ones peeking out of Jeremy’s pants, and a thin racerback tank top that shows off her sleek shoulder muscles and clear lack of a bra. I avert my eyes even though she’s more dressed than most of the girls at the last club I went to, and listen to her move over toward the two duffel bags spilling open by the bathroom door. I scowl at my brother, who is waiting in the open door.
“Don’t give me that look,” I warn Stefan.
The soft creases of amusement at the edges of his eyes deepen. “What look?” he says, and I glare at him while Jeremy glares at me, arms crossed across his chest like an underaged, underdressed security guard.
Cali comes back toward the door with her long d
ark blue sweater wrapped over the top of her pajamas. She holds the front of the sweater closed with one hand while she lifts her mussed hair out of the collar with the other, curling into one of the chairs by the window as she tries to bite back a yawn.
“What’s up?” she asks. “We leaving early today?”
“Can we come in and close the door, Killer, or is that gonna cost me a finger?” I ask Jeremy, a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.
I have to admit, I’m kind of proud of the scrappy little son of a bitch. It took some balls to bum rush me back toward the door, and all in defense of his girl’s virtue. Maybe we’re finally making a man out of the little punk after all.
The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) Page 14
