See what happens when I have a decent internet connection for as long as it's going to last? You get a chapter without several weeks as a wait time. As always let me know what you think.
"So were you expecting her to tell you she was pregnant?" Damon asked me almost immediately after Stefan and Caroline left.
"Not a chance. She's always been extremely careful, especially with her birth control. 90% of the time she made the guy wear a condom too." I told him and he chuckled.
"Well that whole thing went wrong somewhere." He said and I laughed.
"It did. But Caroline didn't really tell me she was pregnant. She told me her period was late and I saw her bump." I confessed.
"I can't believe she thought she could hide it like that. She had to have known we would figure it out eventually. The belly would be very prominent soon enough." He said and I laughed. I still wasn't quite sure what was going through Caroline's head when she opted not to tell anyone.
"I can't wait to hear Liz's reaction, and her dads. Neither of them were expecting to have a grandchild so soon." I said just before I heard little bangs coming down the stairs.
"I awake." Mady declared when she came into view coming down the stairs on her bum like we taught her if we weren't with her.
"I can see that. Do you want a snack?" I asked her standing up.
"I want chocolate." She told me and I laughed. There was no way I was hopping her up on sugar when she just woke up.
"How about an apple?" I asked her and she shook her head and her pouty bottom lip came out.
"Chocolate!" She cried.
"No chocolate Mady. Apple or an orange?" I asked. Before she could turn to her dad and focus though tear filled baby blues on him I picked her up and took her into the kitchen. Damon was putty in her more than capable hands. I shuddered to think of what it would be like with two daughters. I was almost praying for a boy.
"Chocolate. Daddy!" Mady called. She knew her effect on her dad even though she was still so young.
"Listen to mommy." Damon called. He could stay firm as long as he didn't have to see her face. I loved how dedicated he was to her. From the living room I heard Damon's phone chime and he picked it up. I sat Mady in her booster seat and gave her a banana instead since apples and oranges weren't doing it for her. A couple minutes later Damon walked in and gave me a quick kiss.
"I have to run out for a bit. The guys want to get together for a basketball game." He said.
"Have fun." I said to him offering him another kiss.
"You and Mady should come after her snack. It takes us a while to get going, picking teams is always a challenge." He told me.
"Where are you going to be?" I asked him.
"The basketball courts on campus. We try to play once a week on our early dismissal days, but class was cancelled today so I wasn't sure if it was going to work out." He told me and I smiled.
"We'll come if Mady eats her snack." I told him.
"I go with daddy." Mady begged and I shook my head.
"We'll go see daddy if you eat your snack." I told her and gave Damon one more kiss as he left.
After Mady proceeded to mash her banana all over the table, her face and hands I cleaned her up and took her out to the car. I rationalized that she ate most of the banana so it was an improvement.
"Go see daddy?" She asked and I nodded.
"We're going to watch daddy play a game." I told her and she grinned.
"I play game with daddy?" She asked.
"I think daddy is playing the game with his friends. You and mommy get to watch." I said passing her hat to her in the backseat. She immediately put it over her head with her little ponytail hanging out the back. When we got to the courts the game was already in progress. It took twice as much time to do anything when Mady was involved. That included getting in a car to go see her dad, she needed to make sure she had everything she needed. She needed her book, her necklace, a hat, her blanket and her sunglasses. She wouldn't leave the house without any of those items and if any were missing there was hell to pay.
"My girls are here." Damon called from the court. I put Mady on the grass and she immediately ran to where Damon was walking out to meet us.
"Hey, are you winning yet?" I asked him and he laughed.
"What do you think?" He asked kissing me. He was kissing me more than usual and I wasn't complaining. Having a little one it was hard to keep the spark in a marriage but we were making it work.
"Let's go sit down." I said to Mady and she shook her head emphatically.
"Mady can come play. She'll be our team's secret weapon." He told me and I bit my lip.
"Is she going to be safe out there?" I asked.
"Absolutely. None of these guys are going to know what hit them when the cuteness of Mady Salvatore is inflicted on them." He said picking her up and putting her on his shoulders where she couldn't be run over. I smiled and went to sit on the table as Damon jogged onto the court with Mady on his shoulders. I watched as every time someone went to pass the ball to Damon, they walked right up to him and handed the ball to Mady who squealed with delight. Damon would jog over to the basket and lift Mady up high enough to put the ball through the hoop. No one seemed annoyed by the newly amended rules and Mady was having the time of her life. At the end of the game it was announced that Damon's team won by a huge amount of points and the opposite team declared the team MVP to be Mady. Mady squealed with delight again when Damon picked her up and ran her around the court getting high fives from all the players.
"The devastating effect of Madalyn Salvatore strikes again!" Damon shouted. "Bow down to the master."
"I really think that's cheating. She's too damn cute." One guy said good-naturedly.
"There's no rules against cuteness. I've just got it in spades." He said giving Mady a kiss on the cheek.
"It's not listed anywhere. I guess we're SOL." Another guy said as he offered Mady another high five. Mady loved this type of thing. She loved hanging out with the guys. She was a girlie girl who loved doing boy things. I wouldn't have her any other way.
"Our kid is amazing. I'm bringing her every time we have a game." Damon said walking over to me while Mady stayed on the court with the guys. She was in her glory having all those people fawning over her. Damon's friends had gotten used to Mady since last year. She was now an honorary member of their group.
"Now I have a bone to pick with you Salvatore." James, one of Damon's friends came over saying.
"What?" Damon asked with a grin.
"You already have two of the most beautiful girls in the world but yet that new professor is still making googly eyes at you all the time. I haven't had a chance to confront you about that yet. Now seemed like a good time." He said punching Damon in the arm.
"New professor? Googly eyes?" I asked staring at Damon. He laughed it off and shook his head.
"If the new professor is making googly eyes at me, it's the first I know about it. I'm kinda preoccupied in that way with my wifes googly eyes." He told me and I smiled. That was so the right answer.
"So tell me about this new professor, James? Since clearly Damon has no idea she's interesting in any way." I told him and he laughed.
"It's just not fair. She's hot and I would so take her out." He said taming his language for the pair of innocent ears within hearing distance.
"Ooh so you've attracted a professor now have you? Can't say I'm surprised, my man is hot." I said completely secure in my relationship.
"Apparently. I don't really want to talk about it anymore. I'm perfectly happy in what I have." He said a little defensively. As his wife I worried there was more to the story than he was letting on, but by the same token I trusted him implicitly. I knew he would never do anything to endanger what we have but that didn't stop me from wondering if something happened.
"Maybe we should head home. We need to start thinking of something for dinner." I suggested hoping I'd have a chance to talk to Damon about this tonight.
"Yeah, good idea. How about I just stop and get subs or something?" He suggested and I smiled.
"That sounds good. Super easy clean up." I agreed and he smiled and started towards his car. I gathered Mady away from her swarm of admirers and started walking to the car.
"Hey, I'm sorry if I made things awkward for you and Damon. I just found it funny that he doesn't even know the looks he gets from all the girls on campus. Now he's getting one from a professor and that just makes the whole thing even funnier." James told me and I smiled at him.
"It's alright. But I should get Mady home." I said.
"Okay, make sure you bring her out again. She was an excellent addition to our team. We kicked butt." He said and I laughed.
"I will. She had so much fun." I promised before putting Mady in the car.
Later that night after dinner was finished, dishes were done and Mady was asleep Damon and I sat snuggled up on the couch.
"So what's with this professor?" I asked.
"Nothing, it's stupid. I don't want to talk about it." He told me and I sat up and stared at him.
"If it was nothing you wouldn't be avoiding the topic right now." I said to him.
"I'm not avoiding anything. I told you it's nothing, so it's nothing." He said frustrated now.
"How you're acting makes it sound like anything but. But if you won't tell me, fine. But don't try to stop me from expecting the worst because you're doing nothing to assure me it's not true." I told him getting up and heading upstairs.
"Shit." I heard Damon mutter but I didn't come back down. I checked on Mady first to make sure he was still fast asleep before partially closing her door and heading into our bedroom. By the time I was changed into my pyjamas Damon was walking into the room. "I swear to you that it's nothing. But if you want to know the whole truth it wasn't always nothing." Damon sat down on the bed and I sat down next to him. Since he was trying to be honest I owed him to sit and listen to him, no matter how badly I didn't want to know exactly what happened between them.
"Okay." I prompted him. He nodded his head and took a deep breath before taking me hand and kissing the back of it.
"Her name is Katherine Pierce, I met her my freshman year when she came into school as my teachers student teacher. She was on her practicum from college for teaching and she did it under Mr. Molina's math class. I was immediately attracted to her because what teenage boy wouldn't be. She was gorgeous, a blonde bombshell in every sense of the word. So when we started our affair we kept it a secret. I was still mostly a good guy back then and she introduced me to things I grew to be very familiar with. But she refused to actually have sex with me because I was only fifteen. I wasn't over the age of consent and she was in her early twenties. It was very illegal. So we kept doing other things until my sixteenth birthday. Then I lost my virginity to her. We stayed together for a couple more months after that, having sex every chance we got but then her assignment ended and she dumped me. She told me I was fun while it lasted but I wasn't her type. That's why I became the way that I am. Well one of the reasons, you know the whole story now." I told her. I laced my fingers through his in a show of solidarity.
"What does she have to do with our lives now?" I asked.
"Because she's one of my professors again." He told me.