(A/N: I want to thank each one of you who has followed this story. Grazie mille to those of you who have been kind enough to list it (or me!) among your favorites. Those of you who review it – well, that makes my day, and it makes me better, too, so giant heaping helpings of thanks to you. This here is the last chapter of this story, but I've got a whole new fic on deck, ready to go in a day or two, so hit the author alert if you haven't already.

Finally, special thanks to CreepingMuse, who beta'd this chapter and told me the truth. She is the queen of awesomeness.)

Fuck this. I'm hijacking the story.

I know that technically it's Elena's turn for a chapter but I am jumping the line, because listen: I was not okay with how this shit was turning out. I needed to talk. To her.

I admit that it took me a couple of hours pacing Ric's floor to a high sheen before I couldn't stand my own excuses any longer. What was my problem? How could I have convinced myself that anything but this was true: if there was any girl in the world I was meant to be with, it was Elena. I knew it in my bones. Still do.

I screeched by the boarding house but her car wasn't there and I couldn't bear to see Stefan immediately post-break-up, not with what I intended to do hanging between him and me. Next stop, Casa de Gilbert. I drove toward it: long porch full of memories, nosy neighbor, and right out front, Elena's car. Bingo.

Impatient, I took the front stoop in two giant strides and opened the door without knocking. Jeremy was blithely absorbed in a video game, no concern for the powder keg of baby vampire hunger in the house with him. "Hey dude," he called without eye contact.

I skipped right past the 'dude' and the stupid. "Elena upstairs?"

"Shower."

Oh God.

I took the stairs to her bedroom just as fast, maybe hitting four of them on the way. Look at me, counting stairs when there was love to be declared. I was such a mess.

She was: she was in the shower. I don't know why, but it seemed so crazy that, at this huge moment in our lives, this major turning point for me anyway, she would be in the fucking shower. What could I do? I waited. I paced, (I pictured her dripping wet, strewn with bubbles,) I contemplated rifling through her underwear drawer, I scrutinized the incomprehensible horse 'art' on her wall, I cursed the invention of conditioner. I stared at her journal but did not read it. And when I felt the inevitable impulse to bolt, I sat down on her bed and grabbed onto the comforter with both fists.

She came out in a long brown t-shirt. Well, long for a shirt, anyway. Way too short to ever be called anything but a shirt. I mean, far be it from me to complain. It was a very good shirt. Honestly, this was about how clear my head was. I was debating whether or not a shirt could be called a shirt. What this girl can do to me, I swear.

"Damon. Seriously?" Her voice was light and wobbly and made of hope. I think.

And at this point I realized that a script would have been helpful, or some forethought, something more than this desperate need to tell her… something. To fight for… something. I had figured out what I had to do during those six hundred (or so) turns around Ric's living room, but I felt only slightly more articulate than I had in the woods.

I stood up to face her, bracing myself against my penchant for self-sabotage which, yes I have noticed that thank you very much. "Elena." It was a good start. That is indeed who was standing there, but that wasn't going to be enough. Man up, Salvatore. "Elena, you… you were wrong."

"Excuse me?"

"You were wrong about me. I didn't give up on you."

She peered at me, suspicious, and she was right to be. How could I be trusted with her heart? I couldn't be. I didn't deserve her, after the way I had – stop it.

"I was waiting for you," I tried to explain, "when I should have been fighting for you." She opened her mouth to talk but then shut it again. Good, I thought. I have so fucking much to say. Don't know what it is, but it's in there. "It was so hard, Elena, impossible to believe that you felt… how you felt."

"That I love you?"

My heart swelled like a damn balloon. God, this girl. "Yes," I sighed, a dumb grin forcing its way past what little reserve I still clung to.

"But you were right to make me forget, if only to save yourself more pain," she protested. "I can't do this to you anymore, Damon. I always hurt you. Having me in your life hurts you." She was on the verge of tears, again.

I took a short step closer, found the familiar spots on each side of her face where my palms belong. "No, Elena. I'm never going to stop loving you. We were meant for each other. We were right, from the very beginning."

One tear, at the corner of her eye. "But -"

"It should have been us then, and it should be us now. I want us. I want you." She appeared ready to argue with me but her timing was terrible. It was the wrong time to argue and absolutely the right time to kiss her like my life depended on it, which it did. So I did.

For a moment her body was stiff, or maybe startled is a better word, but I kept kissing her, tasting those lips, thinking of all the times I had wished I could be doing this very thing, and soon, so soon that the lag barely registered but of course I noticed, she was kissing me back. She ran her fingers through my hair, tugging me down. I shivered. She wanted me, it was right, and we weren't doomed. I smiled, my entire self just smiled as I squeezed her closer, wrapping my arms around her waist, and she felt it and smiled too.

Under that ludicrous shirt her skin was still moist from the shower, and so warm. I licked along her neck as I dragged the shirt up over her breasts, pulling away only for the split second it took to get the thing over her head, and then my lips and her skin were back together and I was pressing her back on the bed, or maybe she was tugging me. What did it matter? We were on her bed and she was unbuttoning my shirt.

That's right, Elena was unbuttoning my shirt. Sometimes these things just hit you. It took her a while because I was more invested in getting her panties off than in waiting for her, but eventually we both succeeded and let me tell you, I should have done this a long time ago. Yes, there was that one time but this, this was the right way to go about making love to Elena. She knelt to undo my jeans and although I wanted to get rid of them and maybe never wear pants again because at moments like this they get in the way and I wanted a million more moments like this… anyway, I let her take them off of me, just watched her, an adorable, sexy smirk on her adorable face, and when the offending clothes were gone she slowly sank herself down onto me. And slow was perfect.

My hands rested on her hips as she rocked them gently, like she couldn't help it. I love how her hips open out from her small waist like an upside down flower. Nothing was stopping me from gazing at her, and she was gazing at me the same way because we were hungry for the sight of each other's eyes and lips and bodies. It was almost as satisfying as kissing and in some ways more, because this is something we had never done and she is absolutely stunning to watch. She ran her trembling hand – trembling not from fear, or hesitation, but from what I'm pretty sure was ecstatic joy because it was making me tremble too – she ran it up the center line of my chest, up along the side of my neck and into my hair, her body rubbing and pressing against mine as she opened her lips over my mouth. It was so much goodness, it was hard to take. I enfolded her in my arms, groaning with the delicious sensation of needing and getting at the same time.

We tried to make it last, this second time that was really the first time. We both did. But nothing in the history of the world has ever felt as good as being inside her, surrounded by her scent and her wet hair and her love and her hands clutching at my shoulders. Even slowing her down didn't stop it from barreling toward us. She looked right in my eyes, all devotion and surprise, and she whispered my name. My name on her lips, the hitch in her voice – to this day, it's like a switch in my body and I'm on fire. And I breathed her name because it was the cherry on top of this amazing feeling to somehow confirm for myself that yes, Elena. And she seemed to like hearing it – she always does – because she sighed this wisp of a moan and then it was here and we came together, just like that, gazing into each other's eyes.

The end.