She was never going to have Stefan again. All those years together, all they’d been through, and she couldn’t even talk to him. All their history, wiped out. If she succeeded, it would never happen.
“Elena?” She knew that voice. Her eyes snapped open.
Stefan stood in front of her, his face soft with concern. “I heard what Caroline said to you,” he said. “Are you all right?”
Elena couldn’t help laughing, a short, almost-sob of a laugh. “You think I’m upset about Caroline?” she asked. It was so far-off it was as if Stefan didn’t know her at all. Well, he doesn’t, not now, she thought, and the thought cut off her laugh. Sobering, she snapped, “Whatever she thinks, I don’t want anything Caroline has.”
Stefan touched her cheek, gently drawing her gaze back to his, and a spark of electricity flew beneath Elena’s skin at his touch. “I know that,” he said. “I know you don’t care about all this. Popularity. Dances. I’ve watched you, Elena, and I can tell you’re not thinking about those things. But I also know that you’re sad.”
“Oh.” Tears stung the backs of Elena’s eyes, and she squeezed them tightly closed again, shaking her head. “Caroline’s wrong about—well, almost everything. But, even if I don’t want to be queen or date Matt, it’s true that I can’t have everything I want. And that hurts.”
“Maybe …” Stefan began, but his voice trailed off as Elena shook her head again, her mouth tight. She’d tried having everything, having both of the vampires she loved, more than once. It had taken her years to learn that trying to have both Damon and Stefan led to nothing but misery for all of them. She couldn’t start down that road again, no matter how much she wanted to.
Stefan’s oak-leaf green eyes were warm with sympathy, and his voice was soft. “I understand, Elena. I can’t have the thing I want most either.”
Elena couldn’t help it. She leaned into his body, just a little, and Stefan’s arms circled around her. Elena pressed her face against his shoulder. It was Stefan, Stefan who she’d missed so much.
Stefan let her cry, holding her while she shook for a few moments. Swallowing hard, Elena straightened up, her face back under control. Stefan’s arms were still around her, as if he didn’t want to let go.
“Sorry,” she said, sniffing. “You must think I’m a lunatic.”
“Not at all,” Stefan said. He stroked her back gently, and Elena arched into his touch. “Shall we dance?”
“What?” Elena blinked in surprise. Music was streaming softly through the closed door from the auditorium. Stefan slowly lifted Elena’s arms and twined them around his neck, then wrapped his own arms around her waist.
“We can’t have what we want,” he said with a note of longing in his voice. “But we could dance, just for now. It is a dance, after all.”
They began to sway in time to the music, and Elena leaned her head against the delicate fabric of Stefan’s blazer. His strong hands were holding her so tenderly, and she knew that he was looking down at her with painful, aching love shining through his face, now that he knew she couldn’t see him.
Stefan was drawn to her, had wanted and needed her from the very beginning. This was one thing Elena knew, one thing that had always been true between them. But he would let her go without a word, for her own good. To keep Elena safe.
Elena was swept up in a great wave of emotion, of love and pity and passion, all mixed together. This was Stefan. How could she turn away from him, even for Damon?
Winding her arms around Stefan’s neck, his soft brown curls brushing against her fingers, Elena pulled back a little and looked up into his face. His eyes were dilated with passion, the black expanding across the green.
What if Elena’s plan didn’t work? What if, no matter how she tried, Damon was fated to kil
l Mr. Tanner Halloween night? Or worse, what if she gave up Stefan, undid their love, for nothing?
Elena pulled him closer. Stefan’s lips parted in surprise, and then, with an anguished look of surrender, he bent his head to hers. “What are you?” he murmured against her lips. “What is it about you?”
As their lips met, heat rushed through Elena’s body. It felt so familiar, so right. Her Stefan. The rest of the world fell away.
Until a door burst open behind them.
“Elena?”
Elena pulled out of Stefan’s arms in a panic, stumbling backward as she put distance between them. What had she been thinking?
“Damon,” she said as she turned to face him. Her heart was hammering hard, and she knew her voice sounded strained. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
Against the deadly pale of his skin, Damon’s eyes blazed like black stars. In an instant, his face smoothly fell back into its customary detached irony. If Elena hadn’t seen that momentary look of pain, she might have thought that there was a chance he’d listen to what she had to say.
Damon’s lips tightened. “Funnily enough, I think it’s exactly what it looks like, Elena,” he said cooly. “My little brother makes a habit of trespassing on my territory.” His eyes shifted, and then he was looking past Elena, as if she didn’t matter, straight at Stefan. Stefan glared back, his jaw set stubbornly.
“As for you? I’ll make you suffer,” Damon told him, his voice cold and clear, ringing through the deserted hallway. “I told you I would kill you one day, and I will, but first I’m going to destroy everything you care about. You’ll beg for death in the end.” He flashed a brilliant, scornful smile with no humor in it at all. Faster than Elena’s eye could follow, he was gone.
“Damon!” Elena tried to scream after him, but her voice was thin with shock, and it came out more a squeak than anything else.