Stefan went back home that night a little after nine o'clock. Exhausted from thinking too much, he only wanted to grab something to eat and go to bed. He went to the kitchen and pondered his options. He could cook something, make a sandwich or he could just grab a package of Oreos. Oreos it is. He went up to his room to find his brother laying on his bed, playing with something on his phone. When he saw Stefan come in, he moved to a sitting position.

"Little brother!" He said, with the usual smirk on his face. He hadn't changed a bit. "You know, it was a lot more fun to hang out in your room when you had all those journals for me to read."

"Well, I thought it's about time you understood the meaning of the word 'privacy', brother." Stefan walked over to his bed and settled the package down in the nightstand. Then he walked to his bags, still not unpacked and pulled out a a pair of sweats and boxers. He grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head.

"Spare me the show, little bro." Damon covered his eyes, mocking his brother.

"What do you want, Damon?" Stefan asked, already knowing the answer. If he wasn't so tired, he would actually want to have this talk with his brother and get it over with.

"I wanna catch up!" He answered excitedly.

"You wanna know why I'm here." Stefan stated.

"Yeah, that too." Damon said, a little more seriously, which was weird because Damon didn't do serious.

"I'm pretty tired, Damon, so if you don't mind..."

"Actually, I do mind." Damon said, even more seriously. "The sooner you answer me, the sooner you'll be able to rest, Steffy." Stefan hated when Damon called him that. It made him feel like his brother was making fun of him. And he was 99% of the times.

"You know," Stefan started, figuring Damon had a point. "I'm actually surprised you two hadn't figured it out yet."

"Figured what?" Damon asked, confused.

"Do the math, brother." Stefan told him. "I sure you considered this option at some point." He added. "If you haven't you're pretty stupid."

"Stefan, if there's something I'm not it's stupid." Damon said, sounding offended, which was also unlikely of him.

"Then you already know everything you need to." Stefan said simply. Annoyed by the possibility of having to talk about that subject for longer than he intended on. Damon seemed furious, but Stefan grabbed his change of clothes and walked into the bathroom, not giving his brother the chance to continue their conversation. He took much needed shower and when he came back out, Damon was nowhere to be found. Thanking God for his brother's lack of insistence, he put his Oreos aside, having lost his appetite, and fell on his bed, falling asleep instantly.

xxxxx

"Did you find anything?" Bonnie shouted from Caroline's kitchen.

"It depends." Elena said, coming in their direction with a pile of DVDs in her hands.

"Depends on what?" Bonnie asked.

"On whether or not you guys want me to completely lose it." Elena put the pile over the kitchen table and Bonnie started looking through it with her.

"I guess no Nicholas Sparks then." Bonnie said, setting aside Caroline's entire collection of Nicholas Sparks' movies.

"Seriously, the guy who invented the ice cream should win an award for his existence." Caroline said, taking a bite from the huge ice cream carton Elena bought in the way to her house and not paying the slightest bit attention to what the other girls were talking about.

"You ate half of the carton by yourself, isn't it enough?" Bonnie asked laughing, as she watched Caroline shove her spoon into the carton again.

"God, you sound just like Stefan!" Caroline said, not noticing that Elena got stiff just at the mention of his name. "He said I must have childhood trauma or something to explain my uncontrollable desire for this little piece of heaven." He look goes from Bonnie who has a disapproving expression, to Elena who is just awkwardly looking at the ground. "Oh my God, I'm sorry, Elena!"

"No, it's fine." She lies. "I guess this is better than pretending not to have any contact with him whatsoever, right?"

"Come on, I already apologized for that. He ask-"

"He asked you not to tell me, I know." Elena interrupted her, a little more harshly than she intended on.

"Did you tell him?" Bonnie asked quietly, afraid of Elena's reaction to the subject. "About your engagement, I mean."

"I didn't have to." Bonnie sent Caroline another one of her looks and Caroline threw her hands in the ir in protest.

"Don't look at me, I didn't say anything."

"No, I know. He recognized the ring. It was his mother's." Elena admired the rock on her finger for a moment, seeing nothing but Stefan's eyes in there now. "I asked him to have dinner with me tomorrow." She added quickly in one breath.

"You did?" Both Caroline and Bonnie asked at the same time.

"I can't live with not knowing why he left me forever. We'd have to cross that path sooner or later. I choose sooner."

"Just don't..." Caroline asked Elena quietly. "don't pressure him, okay?" It wasn't actually a question, it was a request. "If he's ready to talk about it, he will, if he's not, don't make him."

"If he's ready? Am I supposed to waint until he makes up his mind?" Elena, asks, annoyed that Caroline is taking his side on this.

"That's not what I'm saying." Caroline uses her calm tone, trying to calm Elena down.

"So what are you saying?"

"That he might have a very good reason to justify his actions." She raises her voice this time, starting to lose patience with her friend.

"Yeah, you would know." Elena says even more annoyed.

"Could you two stop, please? I thought we were supposed to have good time here." Bonnie interrupts them. Elena and Caroline mutter their "I'm sorry's" to one another, while Caroline goes back to her ice cream and Elena continues going through DVDs, trying to find something romance-free for her own sake.

xxxxx

The following day goes by pretty quickly, faster than Stefan wanted it to. He texted Elena after lunch to see if they were still up for dinner and she texted him back a few minutes later letting him know where and what time they should meet. He spent most of his day in his room, reading snd watching whatever interesting program he could find on tv. The house was mostly quiet, allowing him to hear his brother talking on the phone to someone he assumed to be Elena.

After many hours of boredom, Stefan started getting ready for his date. He laughed at himself. The last thing he could call that dinner was "a date" and he knew that. He finished getting ready and decided he would rather wait for Elena at the restaurant than wait a little more at home before leaving. He checked the address she sent him again, making sure he didn't go to the wrong place. He didn't need to though, since they had been to that restaurant a thousand times before. He wondered why she didn't ask to meet him t the grill. Probably so no one would see them together. After he got to the place he waited for about half an hour before spotting her car entering the parking lot.

"You look beautiful." He complimented her after she made her way to him at the entrance of the establishment. She thanked him shily and they made their way in, sitting at the table designated to them next to a window. The waitress stopped to see if they wanted something to drink and Stefan ordered the house's best red wine for them both. He didn't even have to ask what she wanted, that one was her favorite. They looked at their menus quietly, and Elena found it a bit odd that he hadn't said a word to her after his compliment. He would usually try and make conversation, but tonight he didn't even ask her if she was okay. The waiter came back with their drinks and took their order. Stefan kept looking around the place, not letting his look fall on her.

"Stefan, is everything okay?" She asked a bit annoyed.

"Sure, why wouldn't it be?" He said completly nonchalantly.

"You haven't said a word to me."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I was just wondering when you would stop pretending this was about having dinner and not about getting the answers you want." He went straight to the point, not wanting to make the night longer than it had to be.

"How come you're the one who's mad at me?" She said, dropping the act too, even though she secretly hoped she would be able to keep it up a little longer for old times' sake.

"I'm not. I just want you to ask whatever you want so we can get this over with."

"You make it sound so simple."

"There's nothing simple about it, Elena." He tells her truthfully. "But the sooner this ends, the sooner I get to stop thinking about it." Elena looks into his eyes, and she can see the pain present in them, like he is relieving a bad experience or something like that. She takes a deep breath and asks the thing she truly couldn't stop thinking about since he didn't come back from his trip to Italy that summer.

"Did you love me?" She says finally, and her question takes Stefan by surprise. He didn't expect it to come first, or at all. "Did you?" She asked again, tears starting to fill her eyes. He hated to see her like that, but there really wasn't anything he could do to stop it.

"More than anything in the world." He smiled at her, but she could see the sadness behind it.

"Then why did you leave me?" Tears were now rolling down her checks, and she let them. "We went to the airport to pick you up but you weren't there! Do you have any idea how worried we were about you? We had to hear from your uncle that you were safe and with him in New York. That you were spending some time there and that you didn't know when you were coming back." Tears kept rolling down her checks and Stefan reached for her face, wiping her tears with his thumb. "How hard was it to make a phone call, Stefan?!"

"I know I'm jerk for not talking to you personally. For not calling, for... I was just so mad at you that I didn't think that I could possibly be hurting you. I'm sorry." When his anger started to desappear, months after, Stefan wanted to slap himself for doing things the way he did. He was angry, yes, but mostly he was hurt. At the time, talking to her, confronting her about it would have hurt him even more, so he decided not to, and by doing that, he ended up hurting her too.

"And why is it that you were so mad at me huh?" Elena raises her voice. A few seconds the waitress comes back with their food, and after she leaves, Elena just stares expectantly at Stefan.

"Because," He takes a deep breath. "because I came home early from my trip. I missed you so bad that I wasn't even enjoying Italy anymore. So I came back. I came back and I went straight to your house. There wasn't anyone home, so went to the boarding house to take a shower and rest before going back to your place to wait for you and surprise you, and when I got there..." He made a pause, and Elena felt like she was gonna be sick. "I saw you with him. On the couch."

Elena covered her mouth with her hands in surprise, preventing herself from screaming. She felt like all the air was being sucked out of her lungs. "Stefan..." She said his name in a pleading tone. All this time wondering why was he gone... She didn't stop to think for a moment he could have seen that. He was supposed to be in Italy. Not that she had planned any of that. That summer Stefan asked her to come to Italy with him, just the two of them, and there was nothing in the entire world she would have wanted more. But her brother was going through rough fase and she seemed to be the only one who was able to get through to him. Stefan said there was no rush, they could wait and go when she didn't have so much to worry about, but she insisted for him to go without her. She couldn't ruin his summer because of her problems. He didn't want to at first, but she insisted for him to go and have a good time, for her, so he did. They would talk every night, but she missed him a lot. More than she ever expected to. After a couple of weeks she was starting to feel lonely, so she would go to his place and lay in his bed, just to feel him closer to her. Feel his scent, feel him there beside her. Most of those times Damon was home and would keep her company. They would talk and talk for hours, and they started getting closer very fast. One day on the fourth week Stefan was away, she came by the house. Damon was drinking and offered her some. They started talking and laughing and after the alcohol kicked in, he kissed her. It was soft and slow at first, but after no objection came from her part, their make out session grew more heated, leading to some other things. Elena didn't know what part of it all Stefan witnessed, but had no desire to know either. "I missed you too. And I was lonely, and Damon was there... there ws some alcohol, and it just happened." She lowered her head, ashamed to look inside his eyes.

"You could have asked me to come back and I would in a heartbeat. There was no need for you to have sex with my brother."

"And ruin your trip? It wouldn't be fair to you."

"And cheating on me was?" He asked surprised she would say such thing.

"I regreted that for so long..."

"Not so much, apparently, since you agreed to marry him." Stefan interrupted her.

"I'm so sorry, Stefan, I am! But my engagement has nothing to do with that night. Damon and I only started going out long after you didn't come home."

"Elena, can I ask you something?" Stefan said, after a long moment of silence. She nodded. "You asked me if I loved you. Did you love me?" Elena wished she could avoid his look, but his deep grass green eyes where staring right into hers and she didn't feel like she could break their gaze. Could she tell him she loved him after what she did to him? She did. She loved him, very much.

"I loved you, Stefan." She paused for a second. Stefan didn't seem convinced, but he didn't say anything. He asked her. He wanted the truth, and he was going to give her the chance to tell him all of it. "But I don't think I knew what love is back then." She added, quietly.

"And now?" He asked, seeing she had nothing more to say. "Do you know what love is?"

"I'm not sure." She answered truthfully.

"And you're getting married anyway?" Stefan asked, surprised with her answer. "What happened to the hopeless romantic who forced me to watch movies about soulmates, fate, eternal love? Where did she go?"

"I didn't force you. You enjoyed those." She avoided his question. Truth to be told, she didn't know either. She used to dream about those things once upon a time. But at some point, they didn't matter as much anymore. It's like she stopped being the same person.

"I miss that girl. She was pretty amazing." Leaving his food untouched, Stefan put some money on the table and left without another word. Elena stood there, not touching her food either. The night had gone in a completely different way than she expected it to. She actually thought she would yell at him a bit for being a jerk, after having a nice meal in her favorite restaurant. But there she was. Alone, with no appetite and feeling pretty bad for being so stupid and hurting Stefan like that.

XXXXX

I know this update was kind of short, but I wanted to end it like this. Now that Elena knows the truth, I'm interested in how they are all going to deal with all this. And will Elena be able to bring back the girl she once was or is she lost for good?

As usual, don't forget to review and let me know what you think. Also, tell me what you would like to see happen, I could use some ideas (: xoxo