Ric moves behind my chair and his hands come to rest on my shoulders, lightly, but I can feel the comfort of their strength because he’s reassuring me that he can stop me if I need him to.
“Are you okay?” he asks, the question echoing darker when he says it. “Damon?”
Now that I know the glitch in my reaction is only in my sight, not in my heart or my dangerous hands, I’m caught by the idea that they all came here together. To keep Elena safe, but also to meet me after all the days I’ve been gone. So I wouldn’t have to sit through a three-hour drive before I could see them, or maybe, bizarrely, so they wouldn’t have to wait that long to see me.
I sit very still, because I’m still trying to process the fact that if I go crazy, every person surrounding me will move to stop me, but none of them would ever truly hurt me. It’s a feeling I’ve never had before, not once in my very long life.
I open my eyes.
“I am,” I tell the people who love me, “every kind of okay.”
Elena takes a step closer and I catch her scent, rich vanilla sugar and tart peaches with just a touch of something darker that she began to wear at the same time as her daylight ring. It’s like a wave of everything beautiful that’s left in this wide world all at once, and I know that whatever connections the Augustines erased in my mind, she can put them back in place, given time. And for Elena? I have all the time in the world.
I smile crookedly at my brother, who is starting to look a little nervous about my reaction.
“The layovers were a bitch on this trip,” I drawl. “That’s all.” The lines around Stefan’s eyes relax and Caroline takes a half step closer to him until their shoulders bump and the backs of their fingers tease across each other without ever really catching.
He smiles back at me and I nod knowingly, because it seems like Vampire Barbie might have finally nabbed him after all these years of flirting and “just friends.” He looks better, and I’m glad. I don’t care if she wants to curse me for everything from puppy-hating to improperly sorting my recycling and hate me for the next ten centuries, as long as she takes good care of my brother.
Elena tilts her head, confused by my odd behavior, and the glossy sheet of her hair slides forward over one shoulder. Something twinges deep in my chest at the familiar movement and my shoulders relax slightly. My brain is starting to mend itself already.
I rise out of my seat and wrap a comforting arm around her, and when Ric sees how my hands settle onto her skin, half a smile finds his lips and he takes another step back, voting his opinion of how much protection she needs from me.
Elena turns into my chest, squeezing her eyes shut, and I close my arms around her shoulders, breathing a kiss into her hair because I know she likes that, and no one will have done it while I was gone.
But I don’t get the reaction I was hoping for when her breath breaks and she moves away instead of swaying closer, grabbing my hand and walking backwards as she begins to tug me along in her wake.
"Come on, we need to go."
Jeremy takes a step forward, dropping Cali’s hand and looking concerned.
"What? Where?" I ask, my brows snapping down as I glance around for whatever might have put her on edge.
"To a jewelry store," Elena says firmly.
Jeremy snorts and I hear Cali whisper something vaguely sardonic back, but I pay no attention to them.
I laugh quietly, squeezing her hand. "Now I know why you were so determined to get me back from the Augustines: you wanted a diamond."
"Actually, you’re getting a ring, too," she informs me, and suddenly I get what this is really about. This is Elena staking her claim on me.
I’m totally okay with that. Jewelry, tattoos, blood vows, mortgages...where this girl is concerned, I’m all in. But that doesn’t mean I’m above teasing her a little bit. I cock my head and pretend to think it over. "Not that I'm super familiar with the process, but I think guys generally wait until the wedding."
"Fine," she says, already turning to go. "We'll stop by the courthouse, too."
My heart kicks hard in my chest and I’m pretty sure I’m grinning like a fool at the idea that Elena Gilbert is about to shotgun-wedding me.
"E-len-a!" Caroline whines. "You are so not having a courthouse wedding!"
Stefan chuckles and the sound reminds me of all the reasons why “no” is a word I need to practice saying to Elena. I refuse to budge when she starts toward the exit, tightening my grip on her hand so she swings back around toward me.
"I hate to admit it, but Little Miss Yes-To-The-Dress is gonna win this round. You're not just going to drag me through a basement wedding like a girl who got knocked up on prom night," I announce, slowly reeling her back into my arms.
"I'm not?" she asks wistfully. “I could be Elena Salvatore by morning…”
I like the sound of that, enough that it makes me grateful breathing is optional for my species. But I also promised myself Elena wouldn’t miss any human milestones if I could help it, and thanks to Google, I know that the average length of engagement in America is 14.8 months. Which means I’m about to stall for at least a year. Longer, if it turns out to be fun. A hell of a lot shorter if she gives me the sad eyes.
I shake my head, but the memory of the words “Elena Salvatore” makes my voice very gentle when I say, "You're making an honest man out of a legendary bachelor, sweetheart. Let me go out with a bit of a bang."
"Ooh, fireworks!" Caroline claps her hands together. "We could order them in your wedding colors and ohmygod we could even see if they can make rockets that explode into the shape of the flowers in your bouquet, I mean if you picked some kind of lily or gerbera daisies or something like that and—"
Even though I’m pretty sure she still hates me, Caroline has been crazy excited about helping to plan our wedding, according to Elena. I try not to twitch when I hear Blondie start babbling about fireworks, but my brother must have noticed because he says, "Why don't we give them a little privacy for a minute, hmm? You in the mood for a Frappuccino?"
“Yeah, okay,” Caroline agrees, a little disappointed. “But they’re engaged, Stefan. You have to let me talk weddings at some point.”
"Wait!" Ric says, his voice conflicted. "Can you hold on just another minute or so until I can be sure that everything's um, completely kosher? And then maybe I could go with you?"
Elena rolls her eyes. “Ric, it’s fine. Go ahead.”
"No," he says, pointedly refusing to look toward the Starbucks. "I’m good.”
"We'll bring you back a drink," Caroline promises. "What kind do you want?"
"Cinnamon Dolce," he says immediately. "Light on the ice with a half a shot of vanilla on top. Vanilla Bean not French Vanilla, though, okay?"
"Cinnamon dutch?" Stefan asks, confused. "Like Dutch Apple?"
"No Dolce," Ric enunciates, sounding humiliated.
“You should probably go with them before Ric is forced to come all the way out of his Starbucks closet,” I tell Elena with a smirk.
“I don’t need to go with them. I’m perfectly safe here with you,” she says, illustrating her point by pushing me back into the seat I just vacated. “And if you won’t let me get a ring on your finger, the least you can do is hold me for a minute since this is the first time I’ve seen you in two weeks.”
“Elena, I will wear any ring you put on my finger,” I correct, “even if the damned thing is made out of Silly Putty and chicken beaks. But the supervision thing is no joke. We probably shouldn’t be alone together for a while, just to be sure that nothing’s going to trigger a command they conditioned into me that I don’t know about.”
“Have you met you?” she scoffs. “Trust me, they’d need a lot longer than a week to try to re-wire your brain. The whole thing is practically chiseled out of stone.”
I scowl at her and take a breath to argue, but then she folds herself gracefully into my lap and suddenly I’m so fond of this vinyl-padded chair that I think I’ll rip it out and take it w
ith me when we leave. We can put it in our new living room, which will be so damned small that Elena will always have to sit on my lap.
I’m never buying another piece of furniture as long as I live.
I curl my arms around my fiancé and drop my head onto her shoulder, the soft skin of her neck warming my forehead. Until this second, I didn’t realize how truly exhausted I was. It’s been a long week, with the fire I wasn’t sure I was going to escape, burying Lia, compelling Katherine and saying goodbye to her for what will probably be the last time. And through it all, the gnawing fear that when I saw Elena again, they might have programmed me to be her enemy.
“Go,” I hear her whisper to Ric, moving like she just waved him away before her small hand settles on the back of my neck, cuddling me closer into her body. Already, I’m re-learning the sight of her, every curve of her body imprinting itself back on my brain so that my eyes recognize the woman I love as well as the rest of me does.
I inhale the lullaby of her scent and it’s then that I know she is right.
She is safe with me.
I breathe in, and there is nothing else.
* * *
JEREMY
“Whew, it’s a good thing their kind can’t make babies,” Cali says, nudging me cheerfully. “’Cause I’m pretty sure you can get preggers from a hug that intense.”
I turn away from the chair where Damon is holding onto my sister like she’s the last thing left in the world worth fighting for.
“Leave ‘em alone,” I mumble. “They missed each other.”
“Aww,” Cali teases, wrapping her arms around me from behind and dropping a kiss between my shoulder blades. “You think it’s cute, don’t you? Jeremy Gilbert, hopeless romantic. I’m calling the paparazzi right now.”
“Shut up.” I swing her around so she’s in front of me. “You’re no better.”
“Are you kidding?” She grins unrepentantly. “It’s killer adorable when he drops the sarcasm for her. Turns me straight to mush. Besides, who do you think has been helping her water the houseful of daffodils and roses that keep getting delivered an acre at a time? It’s sure not Caroline, because she’s either attached at the lips to Stefan’s face, or racking up more miles on her BridalBonanza.com account than most long-haul truckers would see in a year.”
I tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear and duck my head to say seriously, “Thanks for keeping Elena company this week. I know you probably should have been back to work already, and I think the extra distraction really helped keep her mind off things.”
“No problem,” she returns breezily, then gives me a steady look, her pale irises with dark blue rims standing out brilliantly under the bright airport lights. “So, you chicken out on your big speech yet?”
“Wow, do you think you loaded that question heavily enough, or did you want to toss on another couple pounds of guilt trip for good measure?”
She grabs the strings of my hoodie and tugs them affectionately. “This morning, a very good friend of mine made me promise I wouldn’t let you skip out on confronting Damon about whatever’s been bugging you all week.” She bites her lip, giving me a playful look up through her eyelashes. “And just between you and me, this friend pays his debts with some really nice…services. So I don’t like to let him down.”
I huff out half of an unsurprised laugh, smiling down at her.
This whole last week we knew Damon was safe, but waiting for him to come home was excruciating and Cali’s been a rock, for the whole family. She kept Elena busy with guitar lessons every moment my sister wasn’t on the phone with Damon, and then started challenging Stefan to chess games and taunting him until he got blindingly competitive so he couldn’t spend all his time moping about why Damon called Ric for help instead of his own brother. Somehow, after all that, she’s still got enough energy left to drag me back to bed in the middle of the night when I wake her up with my pacing. And once she succeeds, she curls herself around me, whispering the world’s worst knock knock jokes into my ear until I drift off to sleep.
And I know that Cali’s bored into organ failure by choosing ribbon colors and bouquet shapes but she’s spent countless hours on wedding planning websites with Elena and Caroline, mostly pouring over the two bizarrely specific aspects of a wedding that seem to interest my sister: the monogram that combines the bride and groom’s initials, and the song for their first dance. Apparently, Elena has three songs picked out and can’t decide between them, though Cali said there’s plenty of symbolic justification for three “first” dances at a wedding because relationships are all about second chances.
She must be right, or we wouldn’t be here.
I bend and place a single kiss on Cali’s cheek. “Thank you,” I tell her, a little hoarsely.
She just winks and pushes up onto her toes to steal a kiss from my lips instead. “I’ll give you plenty of things to thank me for later,” she whispers, and when her weight comes back down into her heels, she takes me by the shoulders and turns me around. “Now go talk to your brother-in-law before I’m forced to shout something inflammatory to get you locked into an FAA interrogation room together.”
Damon and Elena must be getting ready to leave, because they’re back on their feet, my sister lacing their fingers together and then stepping in to murmur something to him that makes his eyes flare.
If I want to catch Damon before they disappear into a bedroom, I’d better do it while we’re still in public or I’m likely to lose my chance for quite a while.
I move closer to them and cough quickly. “Hey can I talk to you for a minute?” I nod toward the other side of the terminal, so he knows I mean without an audience.
Elena turns to give me a look of mild concern, and Damon rolls his eyes. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Gilbert Guilt Train has pulled into the station.”
I can feel the prickly heat of a flush climbing up my neck, but I just cross my arms and wait, refusing to give him the reaction he’s fishing for.
This only seems to alarm him.
“Do not tell me you wrecked the Camaro in a fiery explosion while I was gone,” he orders with a glare that clearly promises missing and otherwise mangled limbs.
“No, it’s still in storage because I thought it would be safer there, at least until we tracked down all the Augustines.”
“Okay, then we’re good,” he says, his eyes already skating away from me.
I think that’s going to be it, but then he claps me firmly on the shoulder and my throat closes up tight as I read the motion loud and clear.
Damon Salvatore isn’t great with forgiveness, but when he gives it, it feels a lot like this: his hard palm against my shoulder blade for one extra moment before he moves away.
But no way, I owe him better than that.
“Damon…”
“Jeremy….” he whines back.
Cali crosses her arms. “He’s trying to apologize to you, jackhole. The least you could do is let him talk.”
“Oh, apologize?” Damon says innocently, and I nearly flinch. “You mean for doing something incredibly stupid that nearly got all three of us killed?”
“Yes,” I make myself say. “It was incredibly stupid to leave the hotel alone, on foot, with no plan.”
Damon takes a quick step back and looks to the left, then to the right, eyes narrowed.
Cali stiffens, following his gaze, but Elena just rolls her eyes, a long-suffering smile twitching at the edges of her lips.
“What?” I ask warily.
“Just waiting for Klaus to show up in his Hannah Montana costume with a Candy Gram,” Damon says. “It’s been that kind of day.”
Elena laughs and pokes him in the side. “It’s a good day. That’s why you’re so suspicious. Don’t worry,” she says, tucking her arm into his and beaming up at him. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Yeah, you two are probably going to hate me for this.” I wince. “But that wasn’t what I wanted to say either.”
Elena turns
her head and leaves a kiss on Damon’s shoulder before she gives him a gentle push toward me. “You guys go ahead. Cali and I were hoping to get a chance to talk anyway.”
“About organic gardening,” Cali says helpfully. “And Proposition 32.” When Damon still shows no sign of moving, she adds, “And what kind of tampon applicators we prefer.”
Damon folds his arms and flares his eyes. “Wrong species, darlin’. But if I recall, Elena used to buy plastic applicator, name brand. You? Betting you’re a budget shopper, even when it comes to the up close and personal items.” He tips his head, raking her with his gaze as he pretends to consider. “As for materials…”
The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) Page 36