Never Make A Promise

Never Make A Promise 38

I walked slowly toward the door with Damon following closely behind me while Aliyah, Jordan, and Seth followed behind him. I kept walking until I was right in front of the door in the front hall.

"Damon-"

"I'm right behind you," he assured me, putting a hand on my shoulder. I took a deep breath and put my hand on the door knob.

"Don't open it!" Aliyah suddenly shouted from the living room, causing me to jump out of my skin. I looked in that direction and then back at Damon. He shrugged his shoulders and led me into the living room where Jordan, Seth, and Aliyah were all looking out the window across the street. I peered out over the shoulders, going on my toes since I couldn't see over the three of them because they were both taller than me- everyone here was taller than me actually- and I saw a sight that I really didn't want to see. A black AND silver SUV. They were here. All of them.

"What do we do?" I asked mainly Damon. He glared out at the black car that Jake was obviously in and clenched his jaw. "Damon."

"Is he okay?" Aliyah asked.

"Who cares?" Jordan mumbled so low I barely heard. I ignored his comment and put my hand on Damon's shoulder.

"He just won't quit, will he?" he asked himself.

"Damon," I said. He looked at me and his glare softened into a gaze. Suddenly, he put his fingers under my chin and pulled my lips up to his. He kissed me desperately and then parted before I got the chance to respond.

"I'm sorry Hayley," he said. I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. He's sorry?

"What?" I asked. He gently pushed me back toward Jordan and set Jordan's arms around me.

"Keep her here," he told Jordan. I felt Jordan nod obediently. Damon looked back down at me and mouthed 'I love you' before leaving. What? Where was he going? What was he doing? Why did he tell Jordan to keep me back?

"Damon!" I started to go after him, but Jordan kept his grip on me. "Jordan, let me go!"

"He told me to keep you here!"

"You don't know what he's going to do!"

"Oh and you do?"

"Yes, I know and I don't want him to!" I said, suddenly getting what he was doing. He was going out there. He was going to let them do whatever they wanted to him. How he thought that was going to help me, I didn't know but that's what he was doing. I finally got out of Jordan's grasp and bolted out of the front door just in time for both of the cars to speed away. I tried running after them, but tired out after a few minutes. Tears flowed down my face as I watched after them. He wasn't going to try to get out of it. He didn't have me to worry about there and he had no reason to not let them kill him. I did something I haven't done in a long time and stomped my foot on the ground and literally ran to throw myself in the snow in front of my house and cried my eyes out. It felt like hours went by before I felt someone rub my back soothingly.

"I'm sorry Hayley," Jordan said gently.

"He promised me that he would keep me safe," I sobbed. He picked me up and I cried in his shoulder.

"Maybe he thought that this WOULD keep you safe," he said. I shook my head.

"He promised he would never hurt me. I should have known," I cried. "I really should have known that he wouldn't keep his promise."

"He just wants to end it all Hayley," he said.

"And to do that he's going to let them kill him!"

"I'm sure he's not going to."

"The only reason why he hasn't before was because I was always with him and he wanted to keep me safe then. Now I'm not with him and he-" I struggled with choking back the tears and finally gave in to the sobs. Jordan held me while I cried and stroked my hair in attempt to calm me down.

"Is she okay?" I heard Seth whisper to Jordan.

"Does she look okay to you? Or sound okay?" Aliyah asked. Seth sighed and I felt someone sit on the other side of me and take my hand. Aliyah sat behind me and hugged my shoulders. Time went by and I eventually calmed down and came out of Jordan's shoulder. I had soaked the shoulder of his jacket.

"Hayley? Jordan? Seth? Aliyah? Is that you?" I heard Joyce call. Oh great, I thought as I wiped my eyes furiously. The last thing I needed her to see were my puffy red eyes from crying over my boyfriend who either was already killed or was close to being killed at this moment.

"Yeah, it's us!" Jordan called to her. She came in front of me and kneeled down to see my face.

"What's wrong? Why are you sitting in the snow without a jacket or shoes?" she asked me. "Hayley, are you crying?"

"No," I lied pitifully.

"Hayley," she said, knowing that I had just lied.

"I don't want to talk about it, okay?!" I nearly screamed. I then stood and ran back into the house. No, I don't want to be down here, I thought. I ran up to my room, slammed the door shut, and went and cried on my bed. I felt like my heart was being torn out from my chest and it hurt so much. More than when I found out that I was taken away from my dad and that he wasn't coming to find me and just as much as when mom died. If I had known. If only I had known that he was going to run out that door, I would have called the cops then and there. I would gave lied for Damon and I would have said that he never killed Jake's brother and that it was all a lie. Why did he run after them? Just...why?!

I woke up the next morning to wet eyes that barely wanted to open up. I forced them open, though. I looked out my window at the snow that was falling down. How nice, I thought sarcastically. A white Christmas. The first Christmas I would have loved to spend with Damon.

"Merry Christmas Hayley," I said to myself. "Your gift is a dead boyfriend." I mentally slapped myself for that. NO! You cannot think like that. Think positive. Think like he's alive and well. Oh, please let him be okay! I lazily rolled over and came face to face with Aliyah. I shrieked in surprise and nearly fell of the bed. Her eyes flew open in alarm, and she screamed and jumped up too.

"What the- when did you get here?" I asked her. She rubbed her eyes and yawned.

"Last night," she said. "After you ran upstairs yesterday afternoon, Joyce asked Seth, Jordan and me if we knew what was wrong with you?"

"You didn't tell her anything, did you?" I asked quickly with wide eyes.

"No, of course not," Aliyah sighed. "We told her that Damon said he was moving back to California and that he didn't think it was going to work out between the two of you because long distance relationships never work."

"You came up with that on the spot?" I asked, surprised.

"Hell no, that's what I said to my last boyfriend," she grinned. I giggled and hugged her.

"Thank you," I said.

"No problem," she said, returning my hug.

"You know, you didn't have to spend the night. I'm sure your moms would have loved to see you for Christmas," I said.

"I told them that you went through a rough breakup and needed me and, I would be back by noon."

"And the time is...." I looked at the clock. "Nine o'clock."

"Want breakfast?" she asked. "Because I...smell pancakes."

"Me too," I said. "I hope they're chocolate chip."

"Did you know that waffles are just pancakes with syrup traps?"

"And did you know that cupcakes are just slutty muffins?"

"I did not."

"And now you do," I said seriously. She laughed and got out of bed.

"Let's go," she said. I followed her out of my room and downstairs to the kitchen where Joyce was indeed making chocolate chip pancakes. She turned around when she heard the kitchen door close.

"Hey," she said gently, mainly to me. "Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas," we returned.

"How do you feel Hayley?" she asked me.

"Fine," I lied. No, I didn't feel fine. I didn't even feel okay. I felt terrible, horrible, and depressed. I missed Damon and he hasn't even been gone twenty four hours. Then again, he could be gone for much longer than....I need to stop thinking about this before I cry. Joyce served me and Aliyah with pancakes and eggs. She and Aliyah went into a conversation about....I don't even know. My mind kept drifting back to the last time Damon's lips met mine. I should have known then. He kissed me like a person would be kissing the person they loved most for the last time. A goodbye forever kiss. Tears welled my eyes and I wiped them away quickly before Joyce or Aliyah saw them. I didn't need them to see me in pain.

"Hayley?" Joyce said. I looked at her.

"Yeah?"

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I whispered. She came around the table and hugged me.

"I'm so sorry Hayley," she said. I'm so sorry. It's what I heard every time I told someone my mom was dead. It was what I heard every time I heard every time I told someone that I haven't seen my dad in twelve years. It was also what I heard whenever I told someone my uncle was in prison. A constant parade of pity and I hated it.

"Yeah, well..." I sighed shakily. "Life is life. Sometimes it hands you lemons and sometimes it chucks them at you."

"I like life better when it hands lemons over. I can never catch when it chucks lemons," Aliyah mumbled the last part. I knew what she was talking about there. She was obviously talking about the whole gang thing that she was now, unfortunately, apart of. Life chucked her a lemon. A lemon she wasn't prepared to catch.

"Yeah, neither can I," I said softly.

"Alright, enough of this depressing atmosphere," Joyce said joyfully. "Time for gifts!"

"Gifts?" I questioned. Then I shook my head. Duh.

"I got both of yours. Hang on, they're in your room," Aliyah said. I stood up with her.

"So are mine," I told her. "Let's go get them quick." Both Aliyah and I ran upstairs, and grabbed our gifts then came back down to the living room by the fireplace. Yeah...Joyce and I didn't really bother getting a Christmas tree this year. We exchanged gifts and opened them. Joyce got a new Coach purse from me since she had been complaining a lot about how she hated her purse and wanted a Coach one, and a fifty dollar gift card to The Pottery Barn which was her favorite store in the world for some reason.

"What did you get me?" Aliyah asked, looking inside the small box I had given her.

"Why don't you try calling your moms?" I asked her innocently. She held up the object that was in the box.

"First, is this a clue?" she asked. I nodded while looking at the food bowl in her hand.

"I know it's not a dog, it's way too small to be a dog bowl..or a cat bowl for that matter," she said.

"Uh huh..."

"What did you get me?!"

"I had it delivered to your house," I said.

"Delievered?" she furrowed her eyebrows. I smirked at her. "Don't leave me in suspense!"

"But it's so fun!"

"Not for me!"

"I didn't say it had to be fun for you!"

"Butt face!"

"Jerk!"

"Cootie queen!"

"Lint licker!"

"Ugh!" she groaned. I snickered at her and opened the box that she had given me. It was a silver and gold charm bracelet with a charm that had my initials on it. It actually looked expensive.

"Aliyah," I said. "How much did you spend on this?" 

"An amount of money," she said casually.

"Aliyah," I warned. "How much?"

"I'm not going to tell you because then you're going to be all 'oh, that's too much! I can't take it!' and I'm going to be like 'no, you are going to take it whether you like it or not!' and then...yeah," she said. I sighed and gave up. She would never tell me how much she spend on it. I could only hope that it wasn't too much. I would spend money on other people, but I didn't like it when they spent so much on me. Especially since my birthday was tomorrow and I was one hundred and ten percent sure that they were going to get me gifts, no matter how many times I would tell them not to.

"Time for my gifts," Joyce said. Aliyah and I both looked at her and waited for her to tell us what they were or hand them over. "I really wish Seth and Jordan were here."

"They'll probably stop by later with their parents," Aliyah said. "I know my moms want to come over too."

"Then maybe I should wait to give them to you..." Joyce trailed off. "I think it would be more fun to keep it a surprise for you all." Aliyah and I exchanged looks and then agreed to it. Surprises were fun. The only thing that sucked about them...was waiting for them. I hated the waiting game. Just hated it. The time came for Aliyah to go home and Joyce retreated to the couch to watch the twenty-four hours of A Christmas Story. I went upstairs and plopped on my bed. Dammit, I thought. My thoughts kept going back to Damon and every time I thought of him, I always cried. Kind of like I was starting to now. Just as the water works were about to be turned on full blast, my phone vibrated.

"Hello?" I answered, wiping away some tears.

"Hayley?" a desperate voice came over. I didn't recognize it for a second, but then it snapped in my brain.

"Damon?!" I breathed, bolting up in bed.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Forget about me!" I nearly screamed. "Are YOU okay? Where are you? Are you coming back? What the hell were you thinking? Do you have any idea how much I cried yesterday?!"

"Calm down, Hayls-"

"Oh, don't you 'Hayls' me! Where are you?!"

"Would you relax for a second?" he begged. I took a deep breath and bit my tongue back. Let him talk, I told myself. Just let him talk. "Okay, I'm fine. Merry Christmas by the way-" I rolled my eyes at this. "-and as to where I am, right by your window." I cocked my head to the side and pulled my eyebrows together. What? Did he just say that he was outside my- I turned around and saw his smiling face, waving at me in the window. A couple tears slid down my cheeks as I got up quickly to open the window for him. He came in after I opened it and embraced me.

"I missed you," he breathed in my hair. I smiled and took in his scent. We pulled apart and just looked at each other for a minute. The distance between our lips grew smaller and smaller each second until....until I woke up. I opened my eyes and realized that I had put on the hoodie I had stolen from him when he gave it to me to wear in the car on the way back to Aspen. I pressed my nose into the sleeve of it and took in the scent. It smelled like him and it was making me cry.

"Where are you Damon?" I asked myself. I took out my phone and went to his name on my contacts list. I know he wasn't going to answer the phone, but there wasn't any harm in trying...again. It rang, and rang, and rang, and just kept ringing until it hit his voice mail. I dropped the phone to my side and shook my head sadly. Christmas was supposed to be a happy time. A happy time that you spend with your family, laughing and sharing stories about past experiences. Something that I wanted to do with my mom and dad and uncle and grandparents....but I couldn't. Don't get me wrong, I love Joyce like a mother because she HAS been one but she wasn't my real mother. No one would ever be able to replace her. That was making this Christmas depressing, but what was doing the biggest job was the fact that Damon wasn't here. I wanted to enjoy this Christmas and I thought that I was going to be able to even more with Damon, but I couldn't. I couldn't enjoy this Christmas. I was too busy trying to recover from the damn lemon that freaking life had to chuck at me. Why doesn't life give up on chucking lemons for a change?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Don't hate me! This isn't the end! It's not like I killed Damon, or anything so technically you can't hate me because...yeah, he's not dead. But he IS gone. He's like freaking Edward Cullen, isn't he? Lol, no....he's not.....at least, he doesn't have to be for you EC haters. But no, he's not leaving her and NO he is NOT dead. This is NOT the end. You know what? I might kill him....I just might....or I may not. I could if I wanted to, but then again I don't really want to. I don't really feel like hurting Hayley more....so I might not kill him. I don't know. Depends on how I'm feeling at the time. I could be mad and kill him or I could be happy and bring him back early. We'll see. Just wait until Friday and you shall all find out what Damon's fate is. Comment and vote please!