“How did you escape? Why are you calling from Katherine’s phone? Is she with you?”
Right now, I just want to listen to her voice. I don’t want to explain everything that has happened and all the things that still need to happen. I want to hear her form words because when she talks, I can imagine exactly how those gorgeous lips of hers would move, and I can remember how soft they are against my jaw. I know how they curve when I make her smile or when she laughs at something outrageous I’ve said.
When she talks to me, I can see her, and that may be the closest my eyes are going to get to my girl for a long time.
“Elena,” I say softly, “I love you.”
She stops breathing.
“What’s wrong?” she says, her voice as hollow as cold, thin steel.
Across the room, there’s the smallest whisper of cloth against cloth as Lia’s spinal column begins to heal back into place, the movement of bones twitching her body against the bedspread.
“This thing with the Augustines: it’s not over. I have some big problems to sort out,” I tell her with bald honesty. “But I’m safe, and I’m going to stay that way.”
“Where are you?” Elena asks again. “We’re all together right now: Ric, Stefan, all of us. We can come and help you.”
The music of her voice hurts now, scraping over every raw nerve ending of my aching body because I can hear the dismay beginning to creep in behind her relief. And soon, it will turn to betrayal, and then anger. She is not going to understand.
Lia twitches again and I get up, moving reluctantly across the room because each step feels like another one I’m taking away from Elena.
“Listen to me,” I tell her, keeping my voice low, just between the two of us. “I can’t come back. Not yet. The Augustines...did things to me,” I admit. “I’m not safe.”
“What do you mean things?” she demands, and the outrage in her voice almost makes me smile. “And are you saying you’re not safe like Ric isn’t safe?”
I tuck the phone between my shoulder and ear and take Lia’s chin in my hand. Her skin is smooth and cold, her jawline stronger than I’ve ever noticed before, probably because I’m usually distracted by the wide grey-green eyes that dominate her delicate face. I cup the back of her head and snap her neck again, as quickly as possible so I can stop touching her.
“What was that?” Elena asks sharply. “It sounded like a breaking bone.”
This time I do smile, but it fades as I turn away from the body of my old best friend.
“I need to talk to Ric,” I tell her reluctantly.
I wish I could lie down and listen to Elena’s laughing voice telling me stories about her childhood at the lake house. But there are ugly things that must be done, and only my hands to do them.
“I am not going,” she says, the words shaking slightly, “to leave you to face this alone. Whatever’s happening, Damon, let me help you. Please.”
The bones in my free hand creak as I squeeze it into a fist, itching to punch through a wall. But I can’t let myself off this tight leash, even for a second. I need to be flawlessly in control, flawlessly myself, if I want to ever be near her again.
“They might have implanted something in my head to make me want to hurt you,” I confess, humiliation oozing cold and uneasy over my skin. “I can’t be around you until I’m sure I’ve undone what they started. And Elena…Lia wasn’t dead.” My voice goes rough and I take another step away from the bed, even though I know neither woman can hear me right now. “She was leading the Augustines.”
She sucks in a hard breath. “Oh God, Damon. Are you okay? Is she…”
“I’m going to take care of this,” I promise her. “But I need you to trust me, and please stay away until I am sure I won’t hurt you, because if I do…”
There’s a long pause and I can sense her presence in every second passing between us, holding me steady like she is some kind of magic I don’t even know the word for.
“Promise me you’ll come back,” she says finally. “No matter what you have to do to end this.”
The plastic case of the phone begins to crack, the breaking line spreading out slowly from my fingertips across the back of the device.
“I promise,” I whisper.
“I’ll be here,” Elena tells me fiercely, “when you wake up.”
I can’t speak, the memory of telling her that story jolting through my veins like pure, burning emotion.
I believe her.
“Ric,” she says simply, and then she’s gone.
There’s a scratchy sound as if the microphone is raking across beard stubble. “What the hell was that?” my friend asks. “Didn’t you get your pyromaniac phase out of the way when you were a kid setting vacant fields on fire like the rest of us civilized folks?”
I smile hollowly, finding the arm of the chair with my outstretched fingers and sinking back into it. My legs fold beneath me until wood and vinyl and foam supports all my weight.
“Hold the phone further from your face, dick. Sounds like you’re trying to Velcro the speaker to something.”
“What, you think you get kidnapped and tortured for a week and you suddenly get a free pass to micromanage the way I talk on the phone?” he asks easily, his breathing changing as if he’s walking somewhere. “Fuck you.”
I hear a door close behind him, and then the whoosh of open air against the microphone as he steps outside.
“I’m alone,” he says. “What can I do?”
“Get your ass to the address I’m about to text to this phone,” I tell him. “And hit the liquor store on your way.”
“What and who do I need to bring with me?” he asks and in the background, there’s the jangle of car keys.
“The usual.”
He laughs, low and harsh. “Nobody, a stake and a shovel? That’s not too bad. Somehow I thought the situation was going to be a little more complicated this time.”
“Oh, it’s complicated all right. The stake is for Lia, who was my best friend before you were even an uncomfortable feeling in your daddy’s pants. And the shovel is for Katherine.”
The sounds on his end pause. “She’s finally dead? Really?”
“No. But she will be.”
Ric takes a careful breath.
“Save it.” I tell him. “And you had better not even consider telling Stefan. He’s a loose cannon where Katherine is concerned. Don’t let Elena work those brown eyes on you, either. She’s too softhearted for this.”
Metal clangs off hard plastic, so I figure he must have already found the shovel. A car door slams.
“You sure you aren’t the one who’s too soft?” Ric asks matter-of-factly. “You could have killed the both of them already and saved me a tank of gas or so.”
“Oh, did you want me to?” I ask politely, calling his bluff. “Super, let me call you right back.”
A car engine fires up.
“Right,” Ric grunts. “I’ll be there in a couple hours. Sit tight and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
I just let my head fall back, slouching until it rests on the back of my chair. Relief makes my voice rough when I say, “Drive fast, old man. It’s been a long day.”
Chapter 24: Beautifully Blind
STEFAN
When Elena comes back into the room with the phone, I move forward but she brushes past me and hands it to Ric instead.
“What the hell was that?” he says roughly into the speaker, like he knows that’s what Damon needs to hold himself together right now. He’s right, but I wonder when he learned that about my brother. Maybe when they spent all that time hunting for me, the summer I was enslaved to Klaus and my own darkest nature.
Ric keeps talking even as he heads for the front porch and when the door slams behind him, my lips part in surprise. Caroline steps forward and brushes my shoulder lightly with her own.
“He’ll be back,” she murmurs, and I nod. Damon’s probably just filling Ric in on whatever plan he’s got going
and then he’ll want to talk to me. Still, why does Ric need to hear it before me? I was the one who was willing to do whatever it took to get Damon back, not Ric. Not even Elena.
My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of the garage door rumbling up and a car engine starting. I freeze, my eyes flying to Elena’s, which are shining with new tears though her chin lifts firmly.
“Damon says he has to take care of some…things before he can come home.” She takes a deep breath. “We have to trust him, Stefan.”
With that, she turns and begins to climb the stairs to her room, her movements so careful that I know she’s doing everything she can to keep from falling apart.
I should go after her, but if I leave right now, I might be able to follow Ric to wherever he’s going. Except I also need to call the human I compelled to drive Silas’s coffin toward Whitmore and get him back here before Silas breaks free or they get in a car wreck or something else horrible happens because that’s obviously the kind of luck I’m having lately.
“Sorry, I’ll be right back,” Jeremy mumbles to Cali and follows in his sister’s wake, taking the stairs two at a time on his way to the second floor.
“Um, wait, what just happened?” Cali asks.
“Ric went to go meet Damon, wherever he is,” Caroline answers, sounding irritated. “And apparently we’re all supposed to sit here and twiddle our thumbs and assume they’ll take care of everything. Right.”
“Uh-huh,” Cali says, not appearing as disturbed by the prospect as Caroline obviously is. Her eyes dart toward the stairs where Jeremy disappeared, and back to me, though she avoids meeting my gaze directly. “So, while we’re waiting, can I talk to you?”
Caroline stiffens, but I just nod, half my mind still working on the problem of how Damon might have escaped and where he could be hiding out.
“Of course,” I say aloud, because it’s the least I can do for Cali, after everything that’s happened to her since she met me.
“Right,” Caroline says, a little shrilly. “I’ll be erm, in the kitchen. Everyone could probably stand to eat by now.”
I aim a reassuring smile at her, but she turns her back too quickly to see, and I swallow a sigh, motioning Cali toward the living room at the rear of the house. I need to make time to talk to Caroline before I leave to retrieve Silas. What she said earlier…it’s not the first time she’s said she cares about me, but something about the way she said it felt very different. More momentous, somehow.
Cali follows me inside and shuts the double oak doors behind us, turning back and crossing her arms as she meets my eyes for the first time since I compelled her to remember.
“When we first met, I was attracted to you,” Cali says, and my body stalls into motionlessness. “You were dancing like you were good in bed but you didn’t want to admit it in public.”
I take a breath, abruptly nervous. Not long ago, I would have loved to hear that but now... I glance in the direction of the kitchen and wonder if there are enough walls between us so that Caroline can't hear our conversation.
A little smile plays across Cali's face and before I can decide how I'm supposed to respond, she goes on.
“After you locked me in your basement I had all of those feelings still, but I was furious and trying not to have them, especially because you reminded me of me. Of what I was afraid of becoming.”
My head rears back. “Wow. Um, okay…”
Cali takes a step away from the door, light blue eyes so intent that I have to fight the urge to fidget. “You said to me, ‘I’m living with the consequences of so many wrong choices that some days, I can barely move under the weight of my regret.’” She swallows. “That’s exactly what I was doing, for all my ranting about how useless guilt is. Did you know the songs I wrote in that cell are the first notes I’ve put together since I moved in with my grandma? I still play, but I don’t write. My band…they deserve better than me. We were getting damn close to signing with a label when I bagged out to go help Gram, and none of them are songwriters. I’m holding all of them back.”
I tilt my head, uncertain if she’s trying to apologize or if she wants me to. I stay quiet, giving her the space to say what she needs to say, part of my attention still pinned to the phone in my pocket, waiting for the vibration of a call from my brother.
“I was scared shitless that you were going to make me forget, just like I did when I got roofied,” Cali explains. “It felt like you were going to steal part of my life and it was enough to make me realize I’d already been doing that to myself. I was helping Gram, yes, but I took everything way further than that. The CNA job, the refusal to use any home health care staff…I was paying my penance for not being there for my family, but in a way that hurt other people I cared about.”
She stops by the sofa, her fingers picking at the cushioned back.
“Meeting you sort of opened my eyes to what I was doing wrong, but then you compelled me and my epiphany was lost along with everything else. I woke up at Gram’s house but couldn’t remember where I’d been earlier that day. My Taser was missing and I was suddenly intrigued by Mystic Falls. I felt unsettled, like I might be losing my mind. And then I met Jeremy.”
I glance down at the carpet, trying not to show how thoroughly uncomfortable I am with her bringing this up. I have no interest in getting in the middle of whatever she has going with Jeremy and if that's what this little meeting is about…
“As much as I hate you for kidnapping me, they did a lot of things for me, those three days. They helped me realize it was time to move forward,” Cali says, shifting her weight but refusing to look away from my face. She takes a breath, her voice softening. “I sat with Gram after Matt drove me back to Mystic Falls and the way she is now is nothing like the person she was. She really has nothing left to lose and I think part of the reason I was afraid to trust vampire blood to heal her is because I was still set on living out my penance.”
I nod, because I’m not sure that would make sense to most people, but I understand completely. “Do you want us to heal her? Once we’re sure it’s safe to go back to Mystic Falls, I mean.”
She tilts her head, her eyes kind. “Actually, I was hoping you would agree to heal her.”
I frown. “Me? Why?” When we were on the road together, she seemed to be more comfortable with Damon than she was with me, and I know she gets along well with Caroline.
“Because when you picked me to dance with in that club, it was the start of some really dark moments in my life,” she says, “but in the end you brought a whole lot more good than bad, and I think we could both use a reminder of that.”
I clear my throat, the thought of being able to heal her grandmother more powerful than I would have expected. And the fact that Cali wants that person to be me…I don’t know how to thank her for that kind of trust.
Instead, I opt for the simpler option. “Thank you for coming here, for helping us find my brother.”
“I’m really glad he’s okay, but I didn’t do it for you,” she says, and shrugs. “And he didn’t end up needing my help anyway.” I’m smiling before I can stop myself, and she scowls at me, shifting self-consciously. “What?”
“Nothing,” I say, holding back my chuckle. “Just…that’s exactly what he would say.”
“Yeah, okay,” she says, glancing back toward the foyer and the direction Jeremy disappeared.
I wait, because this feels strangely momentous, and I sense we’re not finished.
She shifts her messenger bag on her shoulder and looks up at me. “Stefan, to be honest, I don’t really know how to be around you. I’ve hated you and been grateful to you and sometimes you remind me of the worst parts of myself and sorry, that’s kind of an asshole thing to say.” She winces and I smile slightly. “But I think you’re a good person. Plus, you’re a part of Jeremy’s life and I’m stupid in love with the guy, so…” she trails off, flushing a little.
I hold out my hand first. “Friends?”
Cali tips her he
ad. “How about semi-awkward acquaintances?” She takes my hand and winks as she shakes it. “I wouldn’t want to start out our acquaintance-ship with a lie, after all.”
A low chuckle escapes me, and I release her hand. “Understood.”
“Good.” She pivots on her heel, leading the way out of the living room every bit as decisively as she led the way in.
As I follow, a smile plays across my face. Jeremy’s going to have his hands full with that girl, but somehow, I don’t think he’ll mind.
When we get back to the foyer, it’s empty and Cali pauses, biting her lip.
The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) Page 32
