AN: You know what day it is? It's Sunday which means I have a new chapter for you and I am so excited for you to read it. By the way thank you so much for your alerts and reviews for the last chapter. You guys keep me going and I love you so much. Here you have the next chapter of Intertwined.

Happy reading,

Mydarkside975

Chapter 14: Shade

Elena

He did not show up. She waited by the studio for almost fifteen minutes but he never showed up and she ended up only running for twenty minutes. She should have expected that from someone like him but she could not help but feel a little disappointed. Maybe something happened and he had to stay, she thought but then again this was Damon Salvatore. He probably picked up some model in a club and spent the night with her forgetting everything about their… appointment.

Elena was not going to let that faze her though. She was not the one who asked for a date. He was the one who had approached her and if he changed his mind then that was his problem.

Today was going to be a good day. It was a great Sunday morning and she was in central park standing on a yoga mat, talking into a microphone, her voice was carrying over to the almost hundred people looking at her, standing on their own yoga mats and trying to imitate her movements. She kept the poses easy and simple enough for everyone to manage.

She opened her eyes for a moment and looked at all the faces watching her, concentrating on the movements of her body and trying to make their own bodies do the same. The positive energy was exhilarating. Her life was never better than those moments when her energy joined other people's energies and together they created this vibrant wave of positivity that consumed them all and washed away everything else in its wake.

She took a deep breath imagining the air run through every corner of her body, cleansing it then she released the air again as she let her arms descend to meet each other in front of her chest with her thumbs connected to each other and to the skin covering her sternum. She took a couple of more breaths before she opened her eyes and thanked everyone for being there.

The crowd surprised her when they started clapping and she felt both proud because they liked her class and a little embarrassed; after all she was getting something out of this too. She thanked them and tried to look each and every one of them in the eyes as she did so.

Looking at the crowd of chatting and smiling people on bright yoga mats, something caught her attention. Far away to the left back of the crowd under the shade of a big oak tree, there was someone looking very out-of-place in a dark hoodie and probably some shades. His hands were in his pockets and she could not make out his face that far away even if she could see anything under that hoodie.

She took off her microphone and took her water bottle with her as she navigated her way through the chatting crowd to the far left corner. Something about that person seemed familiar. It was the way he was standing; somehow he looked too confident and had too good a posture for someone who wore hoodies.

She finally reached the tree, he had been standing under but he was nowhere to be found. She tried to locate him looking in different directions with no use. Whatever, maybe she was just imagining things.

Damon

He was standing behind a large tree trunk observing her while she elegantly twisted her body into a downward dog, a warrior whatever and a lot of other poses that only looked good when she did them. The rest of the crowd struggled to keep up, all of them mesmerized by the ease and elegance of her movement and the calming sound of her voice.

He was right there along with them admiring her from afar in her little top and tiny shorts, her tanned skin glinting in the sunlight. She was sexy as hell and the fact that he already had a taste of her made it even worse. He should have drawn it out to make it last longer but that night, he was functioning on autopilot. Not because he was drunk, far from it but because she entranced him and the strange connection between them made everything surreal like he was dreaming. In dreams you would sometimes want to move or do things but your body would not listen to you, well that was how it felt.

She was in the middle of a downward dog then she kicked her legs into the air and stood on her hands for a while her legs shooting straight up above her. Damn, those legs were a whole story for themselves. He remembered how that night, he had one wrapped around his hips. Now they were so far away. She was too far away… she was unreachable.

What the hell?! She was out of his league. He could never have her again, hell, that Friday night must have been a fluke. She was a good girl; one of those girls brought up in the suburbs with mommy, daddy and a white picket fence. He imagined her as a happy kid wearing pink tights and a tutu to ballet lessons and later a teenager on the cheerleading squad with tiny tops and short skirts. Yeah, she was definitely not the kind that went to bars and clubs to pick up guys; the kind that he was used to.

Well that was history. He could not do the constant stream of one night stands anymore because sleeping with her this one time caused some kind of glitch in his system and now he could not perform. She was the only one who could fix him and he had blown the chance she gave him. He did not show up last Tuesday morning. He was still in bed sleeping off his last binge caused by his dear father. The guy had impeccable timing; he had to give him that.

When he finally realized that he had overslept, he wanted to kick himself back to dreamland. Then he remembered her Central Park summer classes – yeah they had covered a lot of topics that night – so he Googled the day and time and here he was; hiding behind this large tree watching her like some creepy stalker.

He never intended for her to see him though… well, maybe he did but when he saw her looking at him and then making her way towards him, he did not want to face her. For some reason, he cared about what she thought of him. He was a damn mess and he could not look into her eyes and see his reflection in them as the big fuck up he was. Why did he care so much? What made this girl so special to his fucked up mind?

He hurried away and found another tree to hide behind as he watched her look for him in every direction. What the fuck was wrong with him? He acted like a twelve year old with a crush on the neighbor's wife.

He stayed behind that tree even as she went back to the front of her slowly thinning crowd. She was packing up her gear with a couple of other women and by the time they were done, the crowd was gone and it was his last chance to talk to her before she left.

She was walking towards his tree along with two other women as they made their way out of the park. He waited until she was right in front of the tree before he called her name. She stopped walking and turned her head from side to side to locate his voice. He stepped away from the tree and lowered his shades to look at her. Her eyes flared in surprise when she recognized him.

"Elena, are you coming?" One of the other women called.

"No, you guys go ahead." She answered before she faced him with crossed arms and a questioning look.

Elena

"New look?" She asked her one eyebrow lifted in question.

"Nah, just a way to blend in," he smirked.

Sure because wearing all black, pants and a hoodie to the park on a hot Sunday morning in July is just the way to blend in. She got it though; he did not want to be recognized but why was he even there to begin with?

"Are you gonna tell me why you're here?"

He hesitated looking away for a moment then drawing his gaze back to her, he said; "I'm sorry about Tuesday morning. I had a… thing."

Really, a thing? That was his excuse for blowing her off? Well, it was nice of him to at least apologize, Elena scoffed silently.

"Was that it? 'cause I need to leave… I have a thing." That sounded way more snippy than she intended but what did he expect when he could not even manage a decent apology?

"Let me come with you," he said his gaze flicking like his own words surprised him.

"Really? You wanna come with me to stand in a mall and try to talk people into donating money?" She was daring him to say yes. He was so afraid of being recognized that he came to the park dressed like a serial killer. He would never voluntarily put himself in a crowded mall surrounded by thousands of people and no close by exits. It was a miracle, really that he let her drag him down to the subway station that fateful night. Thank God people did not know he would show up to that party so there were no paparazzi, just a lot of nosy reporters and envious gold diggers all asking the same question; "Who was this new Damon Salvatore victim?"

"Yes." It was this simple; just a three-letter-word that turned her thoughts upside down. She never meant for him to say yes. She never even considered the possibility yet there it was; that word… and his eyes looking her over, probably trying to decipher her reaction from the frozen features of her face.

She was maybe quiet for a bit too long as she tried to wrap her head around how the rest of her supposedly perfect day was unfolding; it was getting way too weird.

"Okay… C'mon then," she managed to stammer tucking her hair behind her ear and moving to walk towards the exit. She heard him step beside her without another word.

AN: Thanks for reading I hope you liked the chapter. I am sorry to say this but real life is a b**** and college is even more so which means I don't have as much time to write as I would like. That is why I have to update once a week instead of twice but I will leave it to you to decide what day you want me to update. Feel free to tell me in that little box down to the right ;) Also please tell me what you thought about the chapter. It really means the world to me.