Elena sighed and laid her head on her friend’s shoulder, just for a moment.
Bonnie wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You helped them. From what you told me, I think you’ve saved a lot of people.”
“Yeah,” Elena said, her voice small. She blinked back the sting of tears in her eyes. She’d saved herself, too. Stefan. Damon.
In the big picture, it didn’t matter if she never got to say good-bye to Damon, if she never saw either Salvatore brother again. Not if they all got to live.
When they pulled up to her house, Elena hugged all three of her friends again, fast and hard, before climbing out of the car and waving good-bye.
Aunt Judith had left the porch light on for her, but the windows of the house were dark. They must already be in bed.
As Elena crossed the lawn, a dark shape detached itself from the shadows beneath the quince tree and came toward her.
“Damon,” she said, happiness flaring up inside her, hot and sudden.
Damon came close and looked at Elena for a few moments without speaking, his black eyes unreadable. “I suppose I should say thank you,” he said at last.
“You’re welcome,” Elena said, holding his gaze steadily.
“You’re no coward,” Damon gave her his quick, devastating smile.
Elena smiled back, and Damon took her by the arm and led her to her front porch. “More comfortable here,” he said, sitting down on the porch steps, and Elena sat beside him. She was still wearing the Red Riding Hood cloak, and she was glad of its warmth.
Damon tilted his head back to look at the stars. “I suppose Stefan told you we’ve decided to go back to Italy,” he said conversationally. “He seems to think that things might get sticky here, with the fire and the graveyard desecration and all that.” Damon lifted one shoulder in a graceful shrug.
“I can imagine,” Elena said. She let herself lean into him a little bit. She felt as if her heart was, very quietly, breaking.
“Come with us,” Damon said suddenly. “I have this strange feeling that it would be a terrible mistake to leave you behind.”
He was still looking up at the stars, as intensely as if he could read the future written in the sky. The moonlight and the porch light combined threw shadows across his face, softening Damon’s aristocratic features and the stubborn set of his mouth.
“Oh, Damon,” Elena said. Tears started to pool in her eyes.
Damon tore his gaze away from the sky and looked at her, his eyes dark and more open than she had ever seen them in this time. “Come,” he said again. “Please.”
“I can’t,” Elena said. Damon flinched and, on an impulse, she put out one hand and covered his heart. “You’re good,” she told him furiously. “In here. You can be so good, so wonderful if you decide to be. Don’t forget that.”
Tears ran down Elena’s face, hot on her cold skin. She scrambled to her feet and backed away toward the front door.
“Good-bye, Damon,” she said quickly, longingly. His face was full of confusion, and he started to rise, but she was already closing the door behind her.
Elena leaned against the door and just let the tears fall. Every part of her yearned to go with Stefan and Damon.
What if she did? Would she wake up in a future where she and Damon and Stefan had been traveling Europe together, a happy triumvirate, for the last seven years?
No. Elena shook her head. She wasn’t going to be selfish like that, not the way she’d always been selfish with the Salvatore brothers. She’d seen where it led. She wasn’t going to make Katherine’s mistakes. Not again.
Wiping her eyes, Elena peered out the window by the front door, but Damon was gone.
Her shoulders slumped and Elena started up the stairs, feeling unutterably exhausted.
Margaret’s trick-or-treat bag was in the hall outside her door, stuffed with candy, and Elena smiled a little.
Turning into her own bedroom, Elena kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed, not bothering to change into her nightgown.
A tear slipped out from under her eyelids and ran slowly down her cheek. But a certain peace settled over Elena, and as she fell into a slumber, she knew without a doubt that, as much as it hurt, she’d done the right thing.
31
Elena woke up in a room flooded with light. The white ceiling above her was unfamiliar, outlined with ornate crown molding. Sitting up, she looked around. She was in a big bed heaped with soft pillows and a thick duvet. Sunlight streamed in through full-length windows at one end of the room, which opened onto a tiny balcony she could just see from the bed.
Hopping out of bed, Elena wiggled her toes against the thick pale carpet and padded out barefoot to examine the rest of the apartment. She wasn’t in the clothes she’d fallen asleep in anymore, she realized, but in crisp white cotton pajamas. Elena ran a hand across them wonderingly.
It wasn’t a big apartment: bedroom, bathroom, a kitchen with a small dining alcove at one end, a little living room with a large, cushy pale green couch. Everything looked peaceful and comfortable in light, neutral shades, accented with forest green or jewel blue. Paintings hung on the walls—not posters, but real paintings, a couple of them abstract, one an intricate landscape, another a charcoal sketch of a young girl’s face. The apartment felt like a nest, a retreat made just for one. Just for her.
It felt like home, she realized, even though she’d never seen it before.
She rummaged through the kitchen, finding coffee and figuring out the intimidatingly complicated brushed-steel coffee maker. While it brewed, she went back into the bedroom to get dressed. Everything in the closet seemed simple and chic, more sophisticated than the old Elena had been used to, and she pulled on a pair of close-fitting black trousers and a light blue top made of impossibly soft fabric.