Hey there!

Hope you're doing okay and that you're liking the story. I get so happy when I read your reviews, I know it seems like the story is a bit rushed but It's just the way is working for me. We're seeing little snippets of Delena's past story until we reach the present part of the story. Hope you like this chapter, thanks to all for still reading and thanks to Lorena for being awsome and being my beta :)

Love,

SaM

"I wish I had done everything on earth with you"

The Great Gatsby

.

.

It's easy to say now that I was just too young and inexperienced back then. What could I possibly know about life? It's simple to say that he was my first love and that first loves never last. That they crumble and extinguish, leaving us broken.

It's easy to say that we were never going to make it, that Damon was not the right person for me. That what we felt for each other would die in a matter of five years and I would stare at him and think of the huge mistake I made. It's easy to say all of that when I lay awake alone at night, it's easy trying to convince myself that what happened was for the best but deep down I know better because I am a twenty-eight-year-old woman that in her short life has reached everything she ever dreamed of but who still feels dead inside.

No one can predict the future, no one can guess whether a person is going to be good for us or not. How do you know if the person you give your heart to is going to cherish it or break it? You can't. And for me there was no one else like Damon Gabriel Salvatore, even after all the years that passed or the times I tried to find love somewhere else he was still the only man who had touched my heart because he took it with him when he left.

After that first night when we made love everything between us changed. I couldn't tell what it was that made Damon so special to me; the only thing I can say is that he was everything to me and that since that night until things fell apart we spent every waking minute together. He would pick me up from school and take me to dance classes or I would go and sit at the diner just to watch him flip pancakes in the air. He had continued with his construction job and when he came to school he was in ripped jeans and with stained white shirt, my classmates would turn their heads and stick up their noses but I didn't care, I felt so proud to be in his arms.

We would lock ourselves in his room and I would dance for him for hours, he was the only person I allowed to see me dance, he always told me how great I was and how good I was going to be one day. Damon was the only person who truly believed in me and I will forever be eternally grateful to him for it.

Everything I had to do and say to be with him I did it, Jeremy covered for me, Bonnie covered for me, they didn't like it but they did it because they knew how much I loved Damon. My mother discovered me in several occasions, she shouted at me, slapped me, forbade him from me but I didn't care, at that point there just wasn't a way for me to leave him.

But who can predict the future? Who can guess how things are going to end up? Could it be that Damon and I started our love story too soon? Could it be that our love burned too bright too quickly that It was impossible to keep it afloat?

"I love you Elena, I will always love you" He used to say those words to me all the time and every time they sounded like music to my ears. What would I not give to hear them once again?

.

JANUARY

.

.

"But why would you want to steal from someone?" We were lying on his small bed, the room was cold and we had all the blankets around us. My head was resting on his chest and he was tracing patterns on the skin of my arm.

"Because I was an idiot, I was hanging around bad people and I was trying to be a bad guy" He laughed but there was no humor in it just pure sadness "But we weren't smart enough to not get caught"

"And what happened?" I asked with my eyes wide open, I propped myself on one arm and stared at his face while he spoke.

"They put me in prison doll"

"What?"

"I was seventeen back then"

He told me all about it, he and his friends went into a liquor store and tried to steal, they had guns so when the police caught them they sent them to the correctional for an entire year. He told me about the tattoo he got in there and about a really awful fight he got himself into.

"The guy was a bully, always trying to mess around with the younger ones. I've never been one to keep quiet" He said and I couldn't help but think back to the incident with Mason, Damon was an action man and that was something I loved about him. "It got so bad that he ended up throwing me from the second floor"

"Damon-"I gasped, taking a hand to my mouth. He looked at me with tenderness and stroked my cheek softly.

"I got lucky and fell into a pile of wood but broke my leg. I was in the hospital for three weeks with the leg hanging in the air. They put some nails in me and said that was it, I was going to have a limp for the rest of my life and that was all they could do"

I took a deep breath and rested against his chest once again, I threw my arm across his middle and squeezed him to me, I wanted to keep him there and never let go, to protect him from everything wrong in the world and to make him forgetting every awful thing that had happened to him in the past.

"I will never do anything like that again" He told me "That year I was there… what it did to Stefan. I never want to do something like that to him"

"I know you won't" I answered honestly and kissed him.

Damon often told me how I was the only person besides Stefan who thought he could do something more with his life, that he could be better than what he was already. He told me I was the only one who believed in him and I did.

I do. I like to believe he got everything he wanted in life. Even if I'm not by his side to see it. My mother would think I'm stupid for that statement, she would tell me it's foolish to wish him well after what he did to me but she never understood. Not even when everything went to hell did I manage to hate him, my love for him was too strong, there wasn't any space for other emotions.

Up to this day I still love him and sometimes when I close my eyes at night I like to picture the kind of life he's leading, I like to believe he made something out of himself and reached everything he ever dreamed.

.

.

February

.

"What are you doing with him?" Bonnie asked. We were sitting in the Mystic Grill, a new place that had opened in town and served some amazing burgers

"Excuse me?" I asked dumbstruck once the words left her mouth.

"Elena, we have to be honest. You're not going to marry him. He's not the kind of man you want to marry" Bonnie looked at me with hard eyes, her gaze turning deeper with each passing second, I had known Bonnie for my entire life and knew that the realization was hitting her "Oh my God, you went all the way with him, is that it?! You're not a virgin anymore!"

"Bonnie!" I reprimanded her and looked around to make sure no one was listening.

"Is it true then?" She asked

"Yes" I answered while looking down and focusing on the french fries on my plate.

"Dear lord" She whispered "What were you thinking, Elena? Do you want to actually marry him? He's a guy with no future. You want to raise your children in the floor of that diner?"

My blood turned to ice in my veins and I lifted my head to stare hardly at her. I can still remember how much I hated her in that moment, Bonnie Bennett, my best friend since childhood; I hated her so much in that instant for saying those awful things about the man I loved.

"Then why have you been helping me?" I looked at her hardly "If you do not think I should be with him why you have been covering for me?"

"Because I thought… God I thought this was a phase, but I don't know anymore"

"I love him, Bonnie; I want to be with him. Marry him"

"I can't believe what I'm hearing" She muttered "Darling, this can't end well, Damon is… well he does not fit in"

"Fit in?"

"With us, in our lives"

I laughed sardonically while rolling my eyes "And who does fit in? Someone like Mason? God, Bonnie, I thought you knew better than that"

"I'm telling you this because I love you, Elena"

"How can you even say that? How can you be just like them and think you're superior? Stefan and Damon don't fit, you're right. Because they are so much better" I threw my napkin on the table and gripped the counter with strength.

"Yeah right" Bonnie laughed "I just want what's best for you Elena" Her eyes grew softer and I could see something resembling my best friend in there "You really think you can be happy with him? Does he even love you?"

"Of course he loves me Bonnie" I said

"Maybe he just wanted to get lucky with you" She said and I could see that she actually believed what she was saying.

"No Bonnie, trust me. Damon is not like that" I muttered icily

"All the guys are like that Elena…" She said rolling her eyes "I still think you're making a mistake, Elena, Damon and Stefan are below us. They're white trash darling. Are you going to spend the rest of your life living in a trailer park?"

I stared at her dumbfounded, not being able to believe what I was hearing. It was the first time I left a place without eating my plate completely. No matter how much Bonnie begged I refused to climb into her car and I walked home instead, not caring that the air was chilly and my body shook from the force.

My heart was breaking inside and not because I thought that Bonnie was right, but because I realized that after fifteen years being friends with her I didn't know my best friend at all. Or maybe Bonnie had changed or I had changed and we just didn't know how to be friends anymore. That was the last time I spoke with her, sometimes I think of what she came to be and if she would have laughed and said "I told you so" after knowing what Damon did to me or if she would have held me and let me cry in her arms.

In time I learned to forgive her but in that moment I hated her, how could she say those things about Damon? White trash! The guy who used to tell me we would never be apart, that if I looked at the moon from my window at the same time as him we would never be apart. The guy who kissed my eye lids and smiled when he saw me, who would worry when I went somewhere without him and forced me to let him know if I had arrived safe. The guy who got mad when I took the bus instead of calling him one day when it was pouring outside.

"Elena, I don't want you to have an accident. Just call me, I'll go pick you up wherever you are" He had said

White trash. The guy who used to say he loved me so much that just seeing me made him happy.

How wrong they all were.

And how wrong was I thinking that our love was going to overcome all the obstacles. If only I had known.

Review?