So here's the next chapter! I really hoped you liked it but please forgive me because I wrote this whilst being sick so if it's awful, I apologise. The song was picked by bey0ndforever on Twitter because I was struggling to pick one for this chapter in particular. You should really follow her! AMAZING ACCOUNT!

Song is Goodbye - Miley Cyrus

Enjoy the chapter you flawless beautiful people! x

I can honestly say you've been on my mind

Since I woke up today, up today

I look at your photograph all the time

These memories come back to life

And I don't mind

Dear Diary,

Today was weird. I met someone. I actually met someone that wasn't from Mystic Falls, well apparently he was but I certainly can't remember him and believe me he has a face you wouldn't forget. Originally, I had planned a girl's night out with Care and Bonnie that included underage drinking because we knew Matt would serve us. The girls had spotted him immediately had said he was a 'hottie' but you could only see the back of his head? Okay it was a pretty good back of a head but still!

Anyway, I ordered drinks and he grabbed my arm offering me to sit with him and have a drink. Usually, I would walk away which I did because I never go for guys that are so much older than me. I am only 17! Despite my original plan I had managed to find myself going back at the bar to sit with him. I even flirted! It was probably disastrous but I don't even care. Oh, I don't even know what's wrong with me. He, Damon, just made me feel so brand new and alive. I didn't feel like the little girl that everyone adored because they thought she was perfect. I was just some normal girl, a normal teenager flirting with the guy that she liked.

Damon and I stayed at the Grill for the most of the night and then when Caroline said we had to go, I had said 'goodbye' and he looked at me with those blue eyes and kissed me on the lips. It wasn't a proper kiss but it was just soft brush of his lips against mine and I could feel myself crumble. His lips had set a fire burning through my body and all I wanted to do was for him to kiss me again… and again… and again… and again. After we pulled away I could feel Matt, Caroline and Bonnie staring at me waiting for what I would do next so I simply said 'see you around, Damon'. And then, he said very cheekily 'I plan to' which caused everything inside me to flutter. What is it about him?

I have to go, Caroline wants to know about me and Damon and you can't keep her waiting. I'll keep you informed on me and Damon.

Love,

Elena.

I smiled at myself. I had behaved like nothing other than simple minded teenage girl that had a school crush, the thought made me laugh. Isn't it strange how life works? How you can go from having a stupid school girl crush on someone to them becoming your passionate love that you thought only existed in stories? Damon had been the one to show interest in me from the start, for some reason this thought seemed to startle me. Somehow, whenever I had pictured the first meeting of Damon and I, it was always him that made the first move and that I hated him but I was the one flirting with him too.

"You got it then?" Damon asked, his head peering over my shoulder.

"Yeah…"I smiled, turning to face him. "I sound like a pathetic school girl. How and why was you interested in me?"

"Because you weren't like the rest." He said, kissing me softly on the cheek. "Even at that moment in the bar I just wanted to know you for you. If it had been someone else I probably would have done something completely inappropriate."

I chose not to think about what Damon would have done to another person because for one reason it created a pit of jealousy deep within my stomach and second of all it made me think of highly inappropriate things that I wanted us to do right now. I smiled up at him and rested the back of my head on his collarbone, breathing in the smell of him as he placed one arm on each side of the chair, completely encircling me in his arms. I closed the diary shut and set it back on my lap.

"How are you feeling?" I asked, tilted my head to gaze up into his abnormally beautiful blue eyes.

"Good, I'm feeling good." Damon smiled the wrinkles around his eyes forming and his blue eyes shining like Christmas lights you saw wrapped around a tree or a lamp post during winter. "Just need to get this blood off me." He continued to smile whilst holding up the hem of his shirt.

It was only now that I noticed that Damon was wearing the same shirt that was covered in blood by his heart, a perfect circle of red. The thick red liquid was splashed upon his shirt like an artist had painted it to create the perfect circle of blood around his heart. If it hadn't been for the mass of red on his shirt then it would be otherwise clean there was only the occasional dirt mark that could hardly be noticed due to the dark colour of it. The blood, however, was a significant mark to what Damon and I had been through, it marked Stefan's…

"Stefan." I whispered out loud, remembering what Caroline and Bonnie had said. "Caroline and Bonnie said that Stefan wasn't in the house. His belongings and everything was packed up and gone. But he did leave this behind for us. I haven't opened it yet I was waiting for you." My hand clutched the letter, a piece of paper folded into two, and held it up for him to take but Damon just stared at it though he was a starving vampire and I was holding a bottle of warm fresh blood in my hand. The letter had Damon and Elena scrawled upon it in an old fashioned handwriting, Stefan's handwriting.

"You read it. All he wants to say to me is that he wants to apologise for almost killing me." Damon raised his eyebrows, gave me a soft smile before turning around. "I'm going to go shower."

"There's some shirts in my Dad's room that you can have." I smiled at him, knowing that he was ignoring what had happened between him and his brother.

Damon didn't say anything and just made his way upstairs without saying anything. It was clear that Damon wasn't ready to say goodbye to his brother despite everything that had happened between them and all the differences they shared, he still wasn't ready to have a life without his brother in it. By ignoring Stefan's departure then he was allowing himself to pretend that it wasn't really happening and that Stefan would come back. Damon just needed to talk about it. It wouldn't do him any good to keep everything locked up inside of him. Didn't he get that I was here for him? Sighing, I unfolded the letter and wondered how Stefan was going to redeem himself for what he done to Damon and what he tried to do to me with only words.

Damon,

The first half of this letter is addressed to you. I ask you for forgiveness for what I have done to you. I ask for forgiveness for thinking wrong of you and thinking you had bad intentions. You loved her first as hard it is to admit it to myself and truthfully, you would be fool to let her slip through your fingers for the second time brother.

I am glad you are alive and well and that Caroline and Bonnie was able to save you from the pain that I had caused you. Yes, I stayed in the woods hearing what the girls were saying in the room and then I heard you wake and I knew you would be okay so I left. When I was listening it was made pretty clear to me that Elena shares your feelings so I am happy for you both.

I just need to time to heal my wounds and to make sure that I can control my blood lust and my anger.

Until we meet again,

Your brother, Stefan

Elena,

I cannot even begin to imagine what you what must think of me. I am sorry for what I have and how I have behaved. I should not have tried to harm you or my brother. I cannot give you an excuse for what I have done but I will wish you happiness with my brother because you deserve happiness and love, Elena. I am sorry that this more of a note than a letter but it's just so much harder to write because my feelings for you, Elena and they haven't changed despite my words about Katherine. I am sorry, those words were chosen to hurt you. I need time to become myself again and then maybe with time you and I could be friends. Maybe.

Stefan

Though the letter didn't convey every single emotion he was feeling like hurt, pain, jealousy, betrayal but it did show what Stefan (the Stefan I knew) did best, his self-righteousness and certain amount of selflessness that everyone had loved about him. These were the qualities that the majority of my friends thought that only Stefan possessed and that Damon had no redeeming qualities about him whatsoever but they didn't know him like I did. I closed my eyes and breathed, my mind drifting back to Stefan. He had been right. He needed time just like the rest of us to process all the information and everything that happened because it was a lot to take in.

I could hear the showering running upstairs and for a moment my mind wandered to something, something extremely far too tempting. What would Damon look like naked in the shower? What had we been like? What had I been like during it all? The weird part about all of this, the bit that made me smile, was that subconsciously I already knew what it been like to sleep with Damon and to touch him according to his reckless teasing about the subject.

There was also so many other questions that lingered in my mind that I couldn't wait to find out the answers too. How did he pursue me? Did he ask me on a date? How did that conversation go? Where did he take me? What had our first kiss been like? What had our first time been like? What had driven Damon to finally end things between us and to use such drastic measures to do so? All of the answers were in the book in front of me. All of the feelings I had ever had for Damon were written amongst these pages and so was the letter from Damon that he had wrote just in case he had died and never had the chance to tell me. Everything was in the diary in front of me so opening it back up to where I left off I jumped back into the past I never knew I had.

Dear Diary,

Today I saw Damon! He was driving past me on my way to school and offered me a ride which despite my better judgement, I took. I asked him to drop me off around the corner which he did with that gorgeous smirk of his that just makes my heart jump in my chest. When I got out of the car, he smiled at me and kissed my hand and handing me a piece of paper with his address on it but I can't go over his house. Can I? No, I can't it wouldn't be right. I barely know him. I asked the girls when I got to school and Caroline totally thinks that I should but Bonnie is completely against the idea so I promised I wouldn't go over there.

I think Damon may have guessed that his invitation to his house was a bit extreme considering we only met last night because when I finished school, I walked around the corner and he was there again. Damon offered me a ride home and apologised for being so abrupt this morning and that I didn't need to come over his house. He gave me that dazzling smirk when he dropped me off at my house and said 'see you around, Elena' and I really hope I do.

Love,

Elena

I skipped a few pages when I realised that Damon's name was hardly being mentioned and when I did write about him all I could say was that I missed him or that I was sad we hadn't had a chance to talk to more. I flicked through page after page until I seen Damon's name again where I had seen him for the first time in weeks.

Dear Diary,

Today I saw him, Damon, again for the first time in over a week. He was wearing his black leather jacket, black shirt and black jeans when he got out of his blue Camaro like a movie star. We, Aunt Jenna and I, were actually in the grocery store wearing our lazy day clothing so you can only imagine how we looked. I saw him getting out of his car from the huge glass windows hat overlooked the parking lot by the checkout point.

I blushed, actually blushed, when he got out of the car and his eyes gazed over at me with an intense look that could only belong to someone like him. His eyes landed on mine and for a second he smiled but there was something different about it. I don't know maybe, I'm paranoid but there was something different. It felt weird for him to look at me like that, like I had done something to him that had completely changed him.

Luckily for me, Jenna was too busy glancing at the chocolates to realise he was staring and that would have raised way too many questions for my parents…

"Ah, the day that I saw you for the first time in over a week." Damon smiled, leaning over my shoulder causing me to jump and for the diary to snap shut in my lap.

"Damon." I breathed, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath.

"Sorry." He grinned, and I couldn't help but smile back. Ever since he had woke up this morning he hadn't stopped smiling. There was always a ghost of a smile on his face. He was happy and seeing him like this so happy and carefree only made me feel the same.

"I remember looking at you and everything inside me just stopped for a moment because all I had done during that week was think about you constantly. It was there that I realised there was something different about you and that you wasn't just some girl that I had met in the bar. I think subconsciously I realised it when I met you after school and cancelled the invitation to my house. It was weird." Damon shook his head, glancing at the floor. "I had never thought about that before. I had always left the invitation open until you. When it came to you, I just wanted it to be different. I wanted to be different."

I smiled at his words and I could feel my heart soar in my chest. Even back then he had cared about me, even when he thought he couldn't love or wasn't capable of being human, he had cared about me. Damon had always cared about me. Still smiling, my hand grasped his, the connection sending shivers to us both. I slowly looked up to meet his gaze and as our eyes met briefly he smiled back at me, the wrinkles around his eyes forming once again. I leaned back, my head on his chest as I closed my eyes and just welcomed him and the comfort he brought me.

How many times had I done this before?

I let out a sight and pulled away from Damon, it was such a weird feeling to know that I had done something similar before but to think of it like it was the first time. I tossed the blanket and diary to the side causing them to slide off the chair and land on the floor with a soft thud. How many of these moments had there been that I had shared with Damon these last few days and not realised that I had done them before? How many times had this actually happened?

"Are you okay?" Damon asked, his voice filled with concern as he stood up with me.

"I'm just tired of not being able to remember." I shook my head, my fingers running through my hair as I paced back and forth on the same spot. How many times? Did I really want to keep going on like this?

"Diary not helping?" He frowned, already knowing the answer as he walked towards me with his arms outstretched.

"Nope." I whispered before running into his arms and clinging to him desperately, my head resting on his chest. "I just hoped that the diary would help me trigger something or just recollect something but it doesn't. I recognise that's me and my handwriting but it as far as I know it could be someone else living those memories entirely."

Damon sighed and kissed the top of my head, his fingers softly caressing my hair. It was more than comforting having his arms around me, it felt right. Truthfully, it felt like home. I never felt like I had belonged in someone else's arms before and literally meaning it, we just seemed to fit. I breathed in his scent and he was truly intoxicating, he was something else entirely. But I would already know that, I would already know what it felt like to be in his arms without a care in the world.

"That's it," I whispered into his chest, pulling back a little to meet his confused eyes. "I can't live like this anymore. You were going to take the compulsion away so can you just do it now? I want to do it now."

For a moment, Damon looked taken back and shocked by what I had said I wanted. He clearly wasn't expecting me to say something like that or anything like it. What else did he want me to say? I couldn't do this anymore. After a few seconds his eyes lost their wideness and he was softly rubbing his hand up and down my back, a reassuring gesture. I let out a breath that I felt like I had been holding ever since I had found out about me and Damon. This was actually going to happen. I was going to remember and nothing was going to come between us this time.

"Will it hurt?" I asked, tilting my head to get a better look at him and unable to hide how nervous I was.

"I'm not sure." He said honestly. "If it does it will only be for a second and I'm going to be right here the entire time. You won't be on your own for this. I'll be with you." He smiled softly before wrapping me up in his arms again.

I nodded incoherently and took a step back from him just needing to clear my head for a second. I could do this. I had wanted this and yes, everything was going to change now but I wanted this. I needed to do this because I couldn't take another day without knowing what it had been like. Once this was over and really over then it would be better. Everything would be better.

"Elena," Damon breathed, grasping the sides of my arms and staring me in the eyes. "I'm going to be right here."

"Right here." I whispered, smiling at him and loving the idea of him being with me. There was something about the way he was looking at me with his passionate and intense eyes that just made me want to kiss him so I did, a soft kiss but a kiss nevertheless. I pulled away from him and stood directly in front of him leaving him slightly dazed.

"I'm ready."

Damon nodded, taking a step towards me and placed a hand on either side of my face. His eyes were filled with tears and I knew he was remembering the last time he done this to me. The time that had left us both broken but had taken until now to realise just how much we needed each other and how much we actually cared for each other…how much we loved each other. I swallowed in my throat, my breathing all over the place because Damon was so close to me but I couldn't think of that right now. Right now I just had to focus on remembering and let my mind be free, empty from everything else that was going on around me.

"Elena, you're to remember the night outside the Grill when I had arrived late." Damon swallowed in his throat, remembering that night was too much for him and I felt selfish for asking him to do this and for him to relive it all over again. "You're going to remember that you waited for me outside, you're going to remember everything that I told you to forget that night. Everything about us that I told you to forget I want you to remember, Elena." His thumb brushed my cheek as I felt myself being pulled into a transcending daze. "It's time for you to remember."

"It's time for me to remember." I repeated, staring back at him aimlessly and then there it was.

It was like a wall had come down in my head and there was an endless flood of memories of me and Damon pouring through the barrier. I felt my knees hit the floor beneath me but I was hardly aware of anything else in this moment. All I could think about was the memories; it was like they were happening right in front of me. Damon and I meeting for the first time in the bar, the way he flirted with me endlessly and then seeing him the next day and how excited I had been. I could see him asking me out in the Grill, a nervous look on his face as he asked me out on the date. He had picked me up then had taken to me Pierre's, then all of sudden he was kissing me on the porch and then we were back at Pierre's. Then we were in the boarding house and I was asking him to make love to me. Then he was arguing with me, telling me he wasn't good enough and then there was another time but we were still fighting. All it was a passionate and intense mix of loving each other and pushing each other to be someone we weren't yet, someone we wasn't going to grow into until we were apart. Then came the night where he told me to forget everything. I screamed out loud as my heart felt like it was being ripped from chest and crushed all at the same. It was the only memory that I had seen that I wish I hadn't seen, the amount of pain I felt was horrendous.

"Elena!" Damon screamed, wrapping his arms around me tight and sitting me on his lap. "Elena, please. Elena?"

"I remember." I barely breathed my voice weak and the darkness over taking me with each time I tried to remember another memory. I opened my eyes and gazed up at him, smiling to him. "Damon, I remember."

Then the darkness won and washed him away.

I remember when we kissed

I still feel it on my lips

The time that you danced with me

With no music playing

But I remember those simple things

I remember 'til I cry

But the one thing I wish I'd forget

The memory I wanna forget

Is goodbye

So the moment you have all been waiting for! AHHHHH! So the next chapter is actually going to be the last chapter! I know it's awful! I can't believe it. But if you want me to do an epilogue for you guys I will. Anyway thank you so much for taking the time out to read this chapter. Please review!

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love,

lauren xxx