Chapter Four: Damon Salvatore
Three and a half years ago
Charlottesville, VA
New Year's Eve, 10:05pm
"Caroline, I really don't care," Damon groaned, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. This was not how this evening was going to go. Caroline would not stand outside the car rambling on about the injustice of her failed car rental while he silently wished he was under the car's wheels instead of in the driver's seat.
"All I'm saying is that if I reserved it first, they should have held it for me instead of giving their final car away to some last-minute, bar-hopping city boy," she complained, shoving her cabin bag onto the rear seat.
Damon wrapped his arms over the steering wheel, laying his forehead upon it. He tried to tune her out, putting all his focus on waiting for the sound that would finally confirm she had entered the car. The sound came as a slam, her vampire strength causing the vehicle to shake. He turned and scowled at her, having a brief mental image of dragging her out of the car and sticking her in the trunk instead. Unfortunately those days were long gone.
"Let me tell you what I learned from this: never loan out your car while you're out of town," she stated. "The trip will always-always-be cut short."
"Got it," Damon confirmed absently, pulling away from the terminal.
Damon had it all planned out. Or at least as much planning as could be done by a desperate man in the seconds it took to reach the highway. He was going to give Caroline a generous five minutes of all-out complaining time before turning on the radio. Then he was-even more generously-prepared to increase the volume in increments in order to acclimatise her to his much-needed recovery time. However, when the moment came, this didn't go unnoticed and Caroline batted his hand away from the dial without even stopping for breath.
It was still a twenty-minute drive back to town, but it was going to feel a hell of a lot longer if he didn't divert her attention. Turning Caroline's grievances into confused protests, he reached across her, flipped over her fuchsia micro purse, spilling both everything and a pointless amount of hardly anything onto her lap. He grabbed her phone, dialled Elena's number, and passed it back to her. He was pretty sure he couldn't have done that more quickly if he were still a vampire. It was impressive how efficient being surrounded by talkative women had made him.
"Care, are you okay?" Elena's concerned voice immediately poured through the loudspeaker. "Is Damon there?"
"Oh, he's here. Physically-if not emotionally-present for me," Caroline confirmed dryly, side-eyeing Damon's smirk.
"How was the flight?" Elena continued.
Caroline straightened in her seat. "Flights-plural-and don't get me started!"
"Yes, honey, please don't get her started," Damon cut in, realising with regret that he was about to relive the entire experience.
"You wanted out of the conversation, Damon," Caroline reminded, "so stay out."
"Remember the good old days when I was fast enough to snap your neck?"
"Remember the good old days when I could snap yours without making my best friend a widow?" Caroline replied tightly.
Elena spoke softly on the other end of the line. "Do you two really want to spend New Year's Eve fighting?"
"Why not? My original plan was to spend New Year's Eve licking champagne from my wife's naked body-"
"Too much information, Damon!" Caroline declared.
"-Then someone I don't know-but now hate-called in sick at the hospital, forcing my dear, sweet, compassionate wife to cover. So a fight might be just what I need right now."
Elena's eye roll was almost audible. "You need to stay sober to pick up Stefanie in three hours; champagne was never on the table."
"Fine," Damon conceded. "I never needed champagne to be on the table, just so long as my wife was bent over it."
"Damon!" Elena gasped.
"I swear, I will throw myself out of this car if this conversation doesn't change," Caroline threatened, clutching the door handle.
"You promise?" Damon quipped with a flick of his eyebrows.
The sound of Caroline grumbling that Damon was 'unbelievable' remained in the background as Damon's focus was drawn to a pinging sound indicating a security alert on his phone. He reached into his pocket, looking at the screen, immediately realising that something didn't add up. He dove further into the app, trying to figure out what had activated the movement sensors in the new bar he was renovating. The video footage was offline, which was suspicious but not uncommon. The alarm was deactivated by someone who knew the code, which didn't suggest a break in. Only two other people, besides him and Elena, knew the code.
"Do either of you know if Gabe's back in town?" he asked.
Caroline answered, glancing between Damon and his phone with concern. "No, he's still in Atlanta. I met up with him yesterday for lunch."
"What's going on?" Elena asked.
Damon immediately had his answer. His new disgruntled tone reeked of self-righteous sarcasm. "Well, honey," he started as he juggled between scanning through another app and watching the road, "you know how you argued that our daughter is this amazingly responsible Grade-A student who got interviewed for Oxford University in England so deserves to have a night out with her friends to celebrate New Year's?"
"Ye-ah..?" Elena stretched out the word, sensing a lecture was coming.
The onslaught continued. "And you remember how I said that no eighteen-year-old off-spring of mine could ever be trusted enough to just attend an unchaperoned party, dance through a female empowerment playlist, maintain an adequate hydration of water with the occasional sip of sugary soda, and come home high on nothing but the knowledge that she has a fantastic year ahead of her?"
"Where are you going with this, Damon?" Elena sighed.
"Oh, I'm only leading up to the fact that our daughter is currently breaking into our bar to steal alcohol." He held his phone out to show Caroline the on-screen evidence.
"Oh my God, Damon, you have a tracking app on your eighteen-year-old daughter's phone!" Caroline snapped in outrage.
Elena was equally unimpressed. "Damon, you told her you uninstalled that."
"Well, it's a good thing I didn't," Damon exclaimed, wondering how he became the one in the wrong. He started dialling Stefanie's number. "There's three things in my life that I'm protective of: my wife, my daughter, and my bourbon. And right now two of those are at risk of being drunk."
"Hi Dad, is everything okay?" came Stef's saccharine voice, unmistakably quavering on the other end of the line.
Caroline's death-stare did nothing to deter Damon from his response, keeping his tone light but deadly. "Yes, of course, sweetheart. I was just out driving and wanted to call to hear my precious daughter's voice, and-more importantly- warn her that I'm about to DeLorean this car all the way to my bar, so if she isn't out of there and back home in the next fifteen minutes, she's going to be grounded until she's twenty-one."
"Wha... How?" Stef panted. "Dad, you can't! It's New Year's Eve!"
"Tick-tock, Buttercup." He hung up.
"Damon, that was too harsh," Elena scolded.
"Look, Elena, we did things your way, and now we're trying them my way. My way's just a little more..."
"Threatening," Caroline finished critically.
"Exactly!" Damon agreed.
"She'll never forgive you for this, Damon," Elena warned.
"Fine, we'll just add it to the list of all the bad things I've done," Damon said dismissively. "That list could do with being watered down with something as lame as this anyway."
"Have you ever considered that this might be why Stefanie's been applying to colleges and universities overseas, Damon?" Elena asked gently. "She's going to get into Oxford, you know that right? The interview went well. She's going to party. She's going to drink. How are you going to cope with three years of not being able to control her life?"
Damon leaned back in his seat, contemplating this. He drove in silence for a short while before suddenly feeling Caroline's hand stroking tenderly against his arm.
"Hey, I know it's hard," Caroline said. "I've been through it. They grow up and, as much as you don't like it, you have to let go. There's nothing you can do about it."
Damon nodded and smiled acceptingly at her, yielding to the unfortunate and tragic conclusion that was now dawning on him. Nothing more could be done. He had no other choice but to acknowledge the inevitable steps he now had to take.
"Gabe's European, right?" he asked seriously. "He's got places to stay, connections... binoculars?"
Somehow, between the shrieks of two women simultaneously telling him that he will not be instructing Gabe to spy on his daughter while she's in Europe, Damon managed to hear his phone ring. The caller ID confirmed it was Stefanie. He hushed Caroline and Elena and held the phone to his ear, prepared for a continuation of their argument.
Instead, muffled sobs had Damon instantly on high alert. His hand gripped the steering wheel as he instinctively pressed down on the accelerator. He struggled to keep his voice calm. "Angel, what's happened? Tell me."