Pretend You Love Me 2
A/N: So Torn into Pieces got a name change. I wasn't crazy about the old title and I think this one fits perfectly.
“Elena?” Jenna asked as she opened her front door. She couldn’t think of anyone else to go to. One look at her aunt’s face all her fears came rushing back and tears immediately ran down her cheeks.
“Oh, Elena,” Jenna cried as she pulled her niece into a hug. Elena cried into Jenna’s shoulder, reveling in the comfort she’d never find in her own home. They stood there for several moments before Jenna finally pulled her inside and into the living room. Jenna’s husband Alaric walked in to see what was going on, but Jenna waved him off quickly.
They sat in silence for a few moments while more tears flowed down Elena’s face. She wasn’t sure how she’d manage to keep crying. She felt like she’d been crying for days. She had been crying for days. Damon had left the house as soon as she dropped the bomb on him and he hadn’t been back. She assumed he was staying at the fire station.
Jenna waited patiently, knowing that she was here for a reason. She also knew not to push Elena. She learned her lesson a few months ago when she’d pushed Elena to tell her what was upsetting her, but Elena snapped at her and didn’t talk to her for almost two weeks. She’d never make that mistake again.
“Jenna, he hates me,” she whispered, her voice breaking.
“No, he doesn’t,” Jenna said, wrapping her arms around Elena.
“Yes he does and it’s my fault,” she wept, “I pushed him away, I didn’t tell him what was wrong, I pushed him into her arms.”
“Elena,” Jenna pulled back and held her at arms length, “You did not push him into Andie’s arms. He is a grown man and he made that choice all on his own.”
“I’ve been so horrible to him. Sometimes I want to be horrible to him,” she cried before her voice dropped to a whisper, “Sometimes I want to hate him.”
“Oh, honey,” Jenna said, pulling her into her arms once more.
“It’s my fault we ended up like this. It’s all my fault and now I’ve only made it worse,” she sobbed into her aunt’s shoulder.
“What happened?” Jenna asked finally.
Elena pulled away and wiped at her eyes with a tissue Jenna provided her.
“I’m pregnant,” Elena said sadly, “God, we can’t even take care of ourselves. How are we going to be parents?”
“You guys will figure it out, you always do,” Jenna said, patting her hand.
“Not this, Jenna, you don’t see the way he looks at me,” she paused for a moment before her eyes went wide and she gasped, “What if he wants out?”
“He’s not going to divorce you,” Jenna said firmly.
“You don’t know that,” Elena cried, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks, “Oh god, what if he leaves me. I’ll be a divorced single mother at 26.”
“Elena, you guys will get through this,” Jenna said, “You just need to learn to communicate and be honest with each other.”
“We can’t even say two sentences to each other without it turning into an argument,” Elena said, she breathed out an exasperated sigh.
“You guys have hurt each other plenty the last few months, it’s understandable,” Jenna comforted her.
“What if he isn’t ready for the truth?” Elena asked, “Once he knows what I’ve lied to him about, he’ll never look at me the same again. Who am I kidding, he doesn’t even look at me now. He hasn’t touched me in months!”
Jenna’s heart broke for her niece. She knew there wasn’t anything she could say that would lessen her pain. It killed her that she couldn’t help.
“He hates me so much,” she cried.
---BREAK---
“I thought I’d find you here,” Alaric said as he sat on the bar stool next to Damon.
Damon only smiled and lifted his glass toward Alaric before downing the remainder of the liquid in the glass.
“Want to talk about it?” Alaric asked, before ordering himself a drink and another for Damon.
“What is there to talk about?” He asked nonchalant, but Ric knew better. His eyes held the same heartbroken look he’d been sporting for months now. Only today, it seemed worse. Everything in his body language looked exhausted, he was a shell of the man he once knew. The man who would do anything to marry Ric’s niece. The man who pursued her for almost a year. The man who was so head over heels in love with a woman who felt exactly the same for him.
“I don’t know. Maybe there is a reason my niece is at my house in tears,” Ric said a little defensively. Damon may be his best friend, but Elena was his family. He and Jenna practically raised her after her parents passed away.
“What do you want me to say, Ric?” Damon turned to face him with fire in his eyes, “That I screwed up again and knocked up my wife who has barely said seven words to me in the past months? That when she does speak to me, it’s only to make sure I don’t forget a mistake I made?”
“Damon, you almost slept with her best friend,” Ric said quietly.
“God! I know that!” Damon exploded, not caring who heard, “You don’t think I know that? That it doesn’t haunt me everyday? That because it happened my wife refused to even sleep in the same bed as me?”
As much as Ric hated the fury of Damon’s words, he knew they were finally getting somewhere.
“I wish I just knew what I did all those months ago to make her push me away,” his voice was sad and broken, “She’s having my child and I can’t even be happy because we are so fucked up. I want to fix things so badly, but there is a part of me that doesn’t. It’s selfish, but sometimes I just want to leave, to get out and leave it all behind.”
“Damon,” Alaric said, worry evident in his tone.
“I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to leave her,” Damon whispered, “I just don’t know how to fix this. She won’t even talk to me. Hell, she won’t even look at me. She’s never once gotten mad at me for the Andie thing. She’s only spoken about it a handful of times, but she’s so detached. Sometimes I just wish she’d yell at me, slap me, call me all the names in the book. I can’t handle her silence. It’s killing me, Ric.”
Tears filled Damon’s eyes and he looked away quickly to hide them, but Ric knew better.
“That house is suffocating. I dread the moment I have to walk in and be accosted with her broken gaze and her silence. I just want to love her so badly, but I don’t know how anymore. She won’t let me,” he said quietly, “I just want my wife back.”
---BREAK---
Most normal people would think his job was hard. Running into burning buildings without a second thought, risking his life for people he’d never met, but for Damon, his job was easy. It was real life that was hard. He could save complete strangers, but he had no idea how to save his own marriage. Their marriage was on fire and dangerously close to burning to the ground, yet he had no idea what to do about it. How to save it. If he wanted to save it.
Sometimes when he was feeling really morbid, he almost wanted to stand back and watch it burn, killing them both in the process. He knew he’d never do that, he’d do everything in his power to save them, but sometimes he felt like he’d tried everything. As much as he wanted to fix them, if Elena didn’t, there was nothing he could do about it. What hurt the most is that he didn’t think she wanted to fix it. Maybe if she did, she’d try a little harder, she’d tell him why she pushed him away, why she never let her emotions show in front of him. She didn’t trust him, it didn’t take an engineer to figure that out. She was so guarded around him and it killed him that he broke her heart when he’d vowed that it was the one thing he’d never do.
He stood staring at the burning building they were called to. He wondered if he would have a job if all buildings were fireproof. What would things be like if his own marriage was fireproof? That building, that was going to be easy to save. The people on the third floor, pretty simple to save. But his marriage? His heart? From where he stood, it seemed pretty impossible.
Instead of wondering how he could easy run through a burning building and not into the problems in his marriage, he did the only thing he knew. He hiked his gear higher on his shoulder and ran right into the fiery inferno that blazed in front of him.
---BREAK---
“Alright, Mrs. Salvatore, are you ready to get started?” Her OB doctor asked.
She only nodded, it was only her first appointment and she was only about six weeks along, but she was still so anxious. What if something was wrong? What if she messed it all up again?
“Is Mr. Salvatore coming today?” Dr. Fell asked.
“No, he’s working,” she answered. He was really working, but in all honesty, she never mentioned it to him. They hadn’t said two words to each other since she told him about the pregnancy, mostly because she’d hardly seen him.
The appointment went normally. Elena breathed a sigh of relief when the doctor told her everything looked good. She’d come back in a few weeks to hear the heartbeat and a few weeks after that they’d hopefully see the baby on the ultrasound. Her spirits lifted considerably after her appointment. So far so good. It was the mantra she had been repeating to herself the entire appointment.
Her spirits stayed high until she pulled into her driveway, where they immediately dropped at the prospect of entering her house. Damon’s car was in the driveway and she didn’t think she could handle the silence.
She steeled herself and got out of her car and entered the house with her breath frozen in her lungs. She saw Damon in the kitchen sitting at the table. His head snapped up when she shut the door.
“Hi,” he said timidly. She stared at him for a few moments before she realized he was waiting for a response.
“Hi,” she said back quietly, taking slow steps toward the kitchen.
“What were you up to today?” He asked hesitantly. Their relationship was so fragile that just a few words would break it into thousands of pieces. They’d been walking this narrow line for too long that soon they’d be out of luck.
“I had a doctor’s appointment for the baby,” she said quietly, cursing herself for not telling him. His face fell at her revelation. She’d gone without him. They were so far gone that she didn’t even tell him about their baby’s first appointment.
“Oh,” was his only response. She could have sworn she heard disappointment in his voice, the sound made her heart feel a little lighter. The tension in the room was a strange one, they’d never spoken this many words to another without a fight exploding from it. They were both trying to hard to keep it from resulting in that again.
“I knew you had to work, so that’s why I didn’t tell you,” she was shocked that she was trying to make him feel better. The disappointment in his voice set something off in her and all she wanted to do was take that fallen look off his face.
“Oh ok, well when is your next appointment?” He asked quietly, his hands fidgeting nervously on the table. He was still waiting for the entire conversation to go up in flames, isn’t that what happened when they played with fire?
“It’s in four weeks, on the 15th,” she said softly.
“Well,” he started awkwardly, “If you want, I can make sure I have that day off and go with you. If you want.”
He cursed himself for sounding so stupid. His words ran together and he stuttered for the first time in years. He was so nervous, his hands were shaking. He was just waiting for everything to break, everything in the room felt like it was on edge just waiting for the fallout.
To say she was shocked at his words would be an understatement. She was floored. It was a huge step that they hadn’t even yelled once yet, but that he offered to go to the appointment with her was groundbreaking.
For the first time in months, he saw the corners of her mouth twitch upwards into a small smile.
“Ok,” she agreed.
This was it, he was finally taking a chance and running into the thick of their burning marriage.
He was absolutely petrified.
“Elena?” Jenna asked as she opened her front door. She couldn’t think of anyone else to go to. One look at her aunt’s face all her fears came rushing back and tears immediately ran down her cheeks.
“Oh, Elena,” Jenna cried as she pulled her niece into a hug. Elena cried into Jenna’s shoulder, reveling in the comfort she’d never find in her own home. They stood there for several moments before Jenna finally pulled her inside and into the living room. Jenna’s husband Alaric walked in to see what was going on, but Jenna waved him off quickly.
They sat in silence for a few moments while more tears flowed down Elena’s face. She wasn’t sure how she’d manage to keep crying. She felt like she’d been crying for days. She had been crying for days. Damon had left the house as soon as she dropped the bomb on him and he hadn’t been back. She assumed he was staying at the fire station.
Jenna waited patiently, knowing that she was here for a reason. She also knew not to push Elena. She learned her lesson a few months ago when she’d pushed Elena to tell her what was upsetting her, but Elena snapped at her and didn’t talk to her for almost two weeks. She’d never make that mistake again.
“Jenna, he hates me,” she whispered, her voice breaking.
“No, he doesn’t,” Jenna said, wrapping her arms around Elena.
“Yes he does and it’s my fault,” she wept, “I pushed him away, I didn’t tell him what was wrong, I pushed him into her arms.”
“Elena,” Jenna pulled back and held her at arms length, “You did not push him into Andie’s arms. He is a grown man and he made that choice all on his own.”
“I’ve been so horrible to him. Sometimes I want to be horrible to him,” she cried before her voice dropped to a whisper, “Sometimes I want to hate him.”
“Oh, honey,” Jenna said, pulling her into her arms once more.
“It’s my fault we ended up like this. It’s all my fault and now I’ve only made it worse,” she sobbed into her aunt’s shoulder.
“What happened?” Jenna asked finally.
Elena pulled away and wiped at her eyes with a tissue Jenna provided her.
“I’m pregnant,” Elena said sadly, “God, we can’t even take care of ourselves. How are we going to be parents?”
“You guys will figure it out, you always do,” Jenna said, patting her hand.
“Not this, Jenna, you don’t see the way he looks at me,” she paused for a moment before her eyes went wide and she gasped, “What if he wants out?”
“He’s not going to divorce you,” Jenna said firmly.
“You don’t know that,” Elena cried, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks, “Oh god, what if he leaves me. I’ll be a divorced single mother at 26.”
“Elena, you guys will get through this,” Jenna said, “You just need to learn to communicate and be honest with each other.”
“We can’t even say two sentences to each other without it turning into an argument,” Elena said, she breathed out an exasperated sigh.
“You guys have hurt each other plenty the last few months, it’s understandable,” Jenna comforted her.
“What if he isn’t ready for the truth?” Elena asked, “Once he knows what I’ve lied to him about, he’ll never look at me the same again. Who am I kidding, he doesn’t even look at me now. He hasn’t touched me in months!”
Jenna’s heart broke for her niece. She knew there wasn’t anything she could say that would lessen her pain. It killed her that she couldn’t help.
“He hates me so much,” she cried.
---BREAK---
“I thought I’d find you here,” Alaric said as he sat on the bar stool next to Damon.
Damon only smiled and lifted his glass toward Alaric before downing the remainder of the liquid in the glass.
“Want to talk about it?” Alaric asked, before ordering himself a drink and another for Damon.
“What is there to talk about?” He asked nonchalant, but Ric knew better. His eyes held the same heartbroken look he’d been sporting for months now. Only today, it seemed worse. Everything in his body language looked exhausted, he was a shell of the man he once knew. The man who would do anything to marry Ric’s niece. The man who pursued her for almost a year. The man who was so head over heels in love with a woman who felt exactly the same for him.
“I don’t know. Maybe there is a reason my niece is at my house in tears,” Ric said a little defensively. Damon may be his best friend, but Elena was his family. He and Jenna practically raised her after her parents passed away.
“What do you want me to say, Ric?” Damon turned to face him with fire in his eyes, “That I screwed up again and knocked up my wife who has barely said seven words to me in the past months? That when she does speak to me, it’s only to make sure I don’t forget a mistake I made?”
“Damon, you almost slept with her best friend,” Ric said quietly.
“God! I know that!” Damon exploded, not caring who heard, “You don’t think I know that? That it doesn’t haunt me everyday? That because it happened my wife refused to even sleep in the same bed as me?”
As much as Ric hated the fury of Damon’s words, he knew they were finally getting somewhere.
“I wish I just knew what I did all those months ago to make her push me away,” his voice was sad and broken, “She’s having my child and I can’t even be happy because we are so fucked up. I want to fix things so badly, but there is a part of me that doesn’t. It’s selfish, but sometimes I just want to leave, to get out and leave it all behind.”
“Damon,” Alaric said, worry evident in his tone.
“I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to leave her,” Damon whispered, “I just don’t know how to fix this. She won’t even talk to me. Hell, she won’t even look at me. She’s never once gotten mad at me for the Andie thing. She’s only spoken about it a handful of times, but she’s so detached. Sometimes I just wish she’d yell at me, slap me, call me all the names in the book. I can’t handle her silence. It’s killing me, Ric.”
Tears filled Damon’s eyes and he looked away quickly to hide them, but Ric knew better.
“That house is suffocating. I dread the moment I have to walk in and be accosted with her broken gaze and her silence. I just want to love her so badly, but I don’t know how anymore. She won’t let me,” he said quietly, “I just want my wife back.”
---BREAK---
Most normal people would think his job was hard. Running into burning buildings without a second thought, risking his life for people he’d never met, but for Damon, his job was easy. It was real life that was hard. He could save complete strangers, but he had no idea how to save his own marriage. Their marriage was on fire and dangerously close to burning to the ground, yet he had no idea what to do about it. How to save it. If he wanted to save it.
Sometimes when he was feeling really morbid, he almost wanted to stand back and watch it burn, killing them both in the process. He knew he’d never do that, he’d do everything in his power to save them, but sometimes he felt like he’d tried everything. As much as he wanted to fix them, if Elena didn’t, there was nothing he could do about it. What hurt the most is that he didn’t think she wanted to fix it. Maybe if she did, she’d try a little harder, she’d tell him why she pushed him away, why she never let her emotions show in front of him. She didn’t trust him, it didn’t take an engineer to figure that out. She was so guarded around him and it killed him that he broke her heart when he’d vowed that it was the one thing he’d never do.
He stood staring at the burning building they were called to. He wondered if he would have a job if all buildings were fireproof. What would things be like if his own marriage was fireproof? That building, that was going to be easy to save. The people on the third floor, pretty simple to save. But his marriage? His heart? From where he stood, it seemed pretty impossible.
Instead of wondering how he could easy run through a burning building and not into the problems in his marriage, he did the only thing he knew. He hiked his gear higher on his shoulder and ran right into the fiery inferno that blazed in front of him.
---BREAK---
“Alright, Mrs. Salvatore, are you ready to get started?” Her OB doctor asked.
She only nodded, it was only her first appointment and she was only about six weeks along, but she was still so anxious. What if something was wrong? What if she messed it all up again?
“Is Mr. Salvatore coming today?” Dr. Fell asked.
“No, he’s working,” she answered. He was really working, but in all honesty, she never mentioned it to him. They hadn’t said two words to each other since she told him about the pregnancy, mostly because she’d hardly seen him.
The appointment went normally. Elena breathed a sigh of relief when the doctor told her everything looked good. She’d come back in a few weeks to hear the heartbeat and a few weeks after that they’d hopefully see the baby on the ultrasound. Her spirits lifted considerably after her appointment. So far so good. It was the mantra she had been repeating to herself the entire appointment.
Her spirits stayed high until she pulled into her driveway, where they immediately dropped at the prospect of entering her house. Damon’s car was in the driveway and she didn’t think she could handle the silence.
She steeled herself and got out of her car and entered the house with her breath frozen in her lungs. She saw Damon in the kitchen sitting at the table. His head snapped up when she shut the door.
“Hi,” he said timidly. She stared at him for a few moments before she realized he was waiting for a response.
“Hi,” she said back quietly, taking slow steps toward the kitchen.
“What were you up to today?” He asked hesitantly. Their relationship was so fragile that just a few words would break it into thousands of pieces. They’d been walking this narrow line for too long that soon they’d be out of luck.
“I had a doctor’s appointment for the baby,” she said quietly, cursing herself for not telling him. His face fell at her revelation. She’d gone without him. They were so far gone that she didn’t even tell him about their baby’s first appointment.
“Oh,” was his only response. She could have sworn she heard disappointment in his voice, the sound made her heart feel a little lighter. The tension in the room was a strange one, they’d never spoken this many words to another without a fight exploding from it. They were both trying to hard to keep it from resulting in that again.
“I knew you had to work, so that’s why I didn’t tell you,” she was shocked that she was trying to make him feel better. The disappointment in his voice set something off in her and all she wanted to do was take that fallen look off his face.
“Oh ok, well when is your next appointment?” He asked quietly, his hands fidgeting nervously on the table. He was still waiting for the entire conversation to go up in flames, isn’t that what happened when they played with fire?
“It’s in four weeks, on the 15th,” she said softly.
“Well,” he started awkwardly, “If you want, I can make sure I have that day off and go with you. If you want.”
He cursed himself for sounding so stupid. His words ran together and he stuttered for the first time in years. He was so nervous, his hands were shaking. He was just waiting for everything to break, everything in the room felt like it was on edge just waiting for the fallout.
To say she was shocked at his words would be an understatement. She was floored. It was a huge step that they hadn’t even yelled once yet, but that he offered to go to the appointment with her was groundbreaking.
For the first time in months, he saw the corners of her mouth twitch upwards into a small smile.
“Ok,” she agreed.
This was it, he was finally taking a chance and running into the thick of their burning marriage.
He was absolutely petrified.