Unstoppable | The Vampire Diaries

77. Good Mourning America

The sun was high in the sky, shining as brightly as it did every day. They lounged on the beach, enjoying the feeling of the sand between their toes.

"I could lie here for hours," Riley smiled, letting her skin soak in the sun's rays. Beside her, he chuckled.

"We have been lying here for hours," Aaron reminded her, a grin on his face. "You're gonna get seriously sunburned."

She raised an eyebrow and held up a tube of sunscreen, slathering an extra helping onto her forearms for good measure.

"See? I'm being safe," she winked.

He nodded, still smiling. "Even in your dreams you're responsible."

The smile on her face was replaced with a frown. She interlocked their fingers, not meeting his eyes. "Can we just... live in the moment? Please?"

Aaron sighed. "This isn't the moment. This is your subconscious. And sooner or later, you have to wake up."

Riley shook her head stubbornly. "If I wake up, then this is over. If I wake up, then you're really..." she trailed off.

"That's not why you won't wake up," he told her, kissing her knuckles. "It's not because I'm dead." She visibly flinched at the word. "It's because your best friend is the one that killed me."

"I'm not gonna bring you here again if you're gonna be a total downer," she forced a smile. He wrapped an arm around her and she leaned into him, kissing him. "Can we just stay here, just like this?"

He nodded, squeezing her tightly. "Just like this."

She closed her eyes happily, expecting the sun to still be beating down when she opened them again. Instead, she opened her eyes to darkness. She couldn't work out where she was, and to be honest, she couldn't care less.

"So you just found her lying in the middle of the road?" she heard someone ask. If she could bring herself to concentrate properly, she would know that it was Caroline.

"She was covered in blood," another voice said. Stefan. "It wasn't until this morning that I saw the body in the trunk of Damon's car. He killed Aaron."

"What?!" Caroline asked, the shock in her voice making it carry right into Riley's ears. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure that he's dead," Stefan confirmed sadly. "I'm guessing Damon did it right in front of her."

There was a silence. Then Caroline's voice came back harsher than it had been before. "Your brother has gone too far this time. I could kill him for this! I will kill him for this."

"Elena dumped him, he's off the rails," Stefan explained. "Challenging him to a fight isn't gonna end well... for anyone."

"When someone dumps you, you get drunk; you eat your bodyweight in ice cream. You don't go out and murder your best friend's boyfriend! How could he do this to her?!"

"He wasn't thinking straight," Stefan allowed. "He never would have done this if he was in his right mind."

Caroline groaned. "I get that he's your brother, but right now my sister is probably devastated and confused and overwhelmed, so could you please stop defending him?!"

Stefan sighed. "I'm sorry. But now that Elena's dumped him, Riley's probably the only person that can pull him back from this. I don't want her to give up on him."

Caroline angrily hissed something that Riley couldn't catch, because her mind was filled with images from the night before. She felt like it was a dream. Like her brain had imagined the most horrific event it could think of and, for some reason, it had come true.