Hello there

So, this is the new project I've told you about.

Have you ever read a book that you find in the most unlikely of ways and ends up staying with you? That happened to me with Somebody's baby by Elaine Keagan, I read the condensed version of Reader's Digest many years ago when I found it by accident on my parent's bookshelf and I must say it was the first book that broke my heart. I thought about it for weeks and even months afterwards and it always made me sad to think about it because I think it's a beautiful but cruel story. A couple of weeks ago I was re arranging things and I found it hidden under my things, I opened and skimmed thought some parts and remembered how heart breaking it was and how much I longed for a happier outcome. Then I decided that I could have a brighter ending if I wanted so it was that I decided to start this story, what better way to give the story a much more satisfying ending (to me) than using the fictional characters I love the most in the world.

This is what brings me here right now, a retelling of Somebody's baby by Elaine Keagan. I took the title for the story from one of my favorite episodes of Cold case, an episode that marked me as well.

The chapter is a bit short but it's more like an introduction, I really hope this story interest you and decide to give it a shot.

As always, thanks to Lorena for always supporting me and being an awesome beta.

Here we go,

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"It was an eternal love. They didn't share a life together, but when they closed their eyes they were always in each other memories"

Ulises Sanchez

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He had a tattoo. Maybe this isn't the best way to start the story but what really is the best way to start a story? It was the first tattoo I had ever seen, it was the profile of a wolf and it covered his entire right shoulder blade. It was many days afterwards that I found out he had gotten the tattoo in prison.

Prison.

That was not a common word in my vocabulary. It was the year of 1959 in Mystic Falls, Virginia and here nobody knew about prison. People didn't talk about tattoos, and much less about prisons.

I had never met a guy like him; I had never talked with that sort of person as my mother would say while twisting her lips in a scowl. I came from a wealthy and respected family, a founding family. I was the only child of Isobel and John Gilbert, and certain things were expected of me. Getting involved with a guy like him certainly wasn't one of them nor was trying to achieve the one thing that I wanted in life for that matter.

I was seventeen years old and knew without a doubt what would make me happy for the rest of my life, I had known it since I was ten. I wanted to be a dancer, ballet was everything to me but my parents had always thought that that dream was nothing more than a phase.

"Oh Elena, I know you think you're good sweetheart but how many girls have been just as good before you? New York is a big place, you wouldn't even know what to do there" A statement like that one often left my mother's lips when I mentioned my dream of finishing high school and flying to New York to attend a dance school.

I always hid away from them to dance; I never let them see me anymore because I felt it was something deeply personal, I didn't want it to be tainted by their words and criticism. I learned to hide that dream away and maybe if things hadn't turned out like they did I would have abandoned it all together. I would have run away with him in 1950, we would have left that little town in his blue Camaro and never looked back. But I could also spend the rest of my life arguing about what is fate and what you can and can't change in life, but I already knew the answer. Nothing.

He worked in a diner that was famous for its strawberry milkshakes and greasy fries. Everyone in my grade loved to spend their afternoons there and listen to the songs coming from the jukebox in the back of the restaurant.

I was sitting with my friend Bonnie the first time he smiled at me, we were talking about a guy named Jamie who had been chasing her around for days when he came to retrieve the plates from the table, his lips turned up in a small smile and his eyes turned bluer, if that was even possible. It was then that I realized that he had a limp in his right leg, and a burning need to find out why invaded me.

I was a good girl going to a local high school, perfect grades, participating in as many clubs as was possible and with a bright future ahead of me. Him? He was no one. I didn't even know if he was going to college or if he had even gone to high school. He was older than me, I had no idea exactly how much older but I knew that in experience he had many years ahead of me. Damon Gabriel Salvatore, it was later that I found out his full name. At the moment he was only Damon because that was what his uniform's tag said.

It was a Thursday afternoon the first time he spoke to me; I was in the drugstore a few blocks from home. He was near the cashier with his nose buried in a magazine; a part of his hair was falling over his eyes.

"Hi" He said and my eyes almost popped out of my sockets when I realized he was talking to me.

"Hi" I answered back, feeling color rise to my cheeks. I gripped the bag with my belongings next to my chest as a defense not truly knowing why.

"What do you have there?" He asked, motioning to the bag.

I shrugged "Oh, just a lipstick"

"Yeah? Let's see it" He extended his hand and not knowing exactly why, I actually listened and handed it to him. "Pixie Pink" He said once he took the tube out of the bag "Come on, let's see how it looks"

"Now?" I asked

"Of course"

The cashier was looking at us and I blushed under his stare "I don't have a mirror" I told him

"I will be your mirror"

I laughed, I laughed because I didn't know how else to react. Damon was staring at me like I was a movie star and I was five seconds away from turning into goo right there on the floor. He was looking at me as if there were no one else in the store but the two of us.

"Go ahead"

I painted my lips while trying to watch myself in the reflection of his eyes "A little more to the right…" He murmured "Damn Elena, you do have a sweet mouth"

"Eh…" I flushed even more if that was possible, I felt my ears turning hot and knew if I didn't walk out of here soon I would probably start rambling nonsenses because that's what I did when I was nervous but once I was over with the lipstick, he stood up and gestured towards the front door.

"Do you want a soda or something else?" I knew I was supposed to be heading home already but a hopeful look appeared on his face and I wasn't able to say no that.

"Sure"

We walked out of the drugstore and a few minutes afterwards I found myself sitting across from him sipping on a cherry soda while he had a vanilla milkshake, when I woke up that morning I didn't expect to end the day sitting with a milkshake with a boy.

"How did you know my name?" I asked with genuine curiosity

"I heard your friend call you by it the other day" He answered and for a minute he looked embarrassed.

"Oh"

"That lipstick looks really good on you" He said

"You think?" I asked, I was in a situation way out of my league. Damon was nothing like the boys I went to school with and I had no idea how to act around him.

"I mean, you are beautiful already but I think that color brings out the best in you" He smirked as his eyes danced over me.

I almost choked on my soda right there. I had been called beautiful many times before but it had never felt like this, I didn't even know how to answer to something like that. Truth was I had never felt attracted to a boy the way I did to Damon and being close to him was making me feel things I wasn't familiar with.

His eyes looked down to the table briefly and a rosy tint appeared on his cheeks "I was wondering if you'd like to go out sometime"

"Sure" I didn't even think about it, I just agreed immediately. I was not being myself and I liked that. "What's your full name?" I asked. I had agreed to go out with him; the least I could know was his full name

"Damon Gabriel Salvatore, mam" He said with the biggest of smiles.

"Salvatore as in Stefan Salvatore?"

"My little brother" He said with a warm smile.

Stefan Salvatore was my age and went to my school but we definitely didn't move in the same circles. He was an outcast in school, mainly because he didn't come from a wealthy family and had a tendency to be a loner, now I felt kind of bad for not trying to talk with him on the many times I saw him being miserable in school.

"He goes to the same school as me" I told him

"Yeah I know" He said with a smile that hid something but I didn't dare to ask what.

I spent that entire afternoon with him. I told him things I had never told anyone before. I didn't know why but there was something about him that made me want to be open, somehow he made me feel free. His eyes were fixated on me as we spoke, like I was the most precious thing he had ever seen and I relished in his attention, I wanted his eyes on me all the time. I told him about my dream of being a ballerina and how my parents thought it was stupid, I told him I adored my cousin Jeremy as if he was my own brother, and that Bonnie and I had been tight as sisters since we were in kindergarten.

I told him everything and he listened, he listened like no one ever had before.

I told him I had always been a good girl and he told me he had always been a bad boy.

I spent the best afternoon of my life next to that boy with blue eyes and dark hair that fell over them and for the first time in my life I felt truly happy.

If only I had known how easily life can change, how unfair the world can be and how easy it is for a heart to break.

If only I had known he was going to break mine.