A/N: Yay, I'm about to complete my first story! I had a 'ball' writing this. I laughed and I shed a couple of tears too. Well, I know you all have high expectations of this chapter. I do too. Without further ado, I present to you the final chapter of Locked In A Loveless Marriage.
Chapter 11
The three minutes they spent waiting for the results of the pregnancy test were the longest three minutes of his life. At least Elena put the test down in the bathroom and joined him outside of it so they could wait together. He knew it wasn't possible, but he thought he must have held his breath the whole time. Once his watch beeped that the time was up, Elena went in to retrieve the test. When she came out of the bathroom, she looked slightly disappointed. She showed it to him. There was a line in one window and a cross in the other.
"Doesn't the cross mean it's positive?" he asked her, unable to keep the frown off his face.
"Yup," she said with a grin. "We're pregnant. Congratulations, you're going to be a dad."
Words escaped him, but then when it came to Elena, the words always escaped him. He picked her up in his arms and twirled her around. She laughed and laughed until she told him to put her down because she was going to be sick.
Damon had never been happier. He could hardly believe that it had happened so soon. The best part for him, other than the fact that he was expecting to be a father, was that Elena seemed happy about it. She was as excited as he was that they were becoming parents and he found her enthusiasm just added to his own. It was early days yet, and they had a long way to go but he was over the moon.
Over the next few weeks her morning sickness worsened.
"It should be called all-day sickness," he'd grumbled more than once, since it never seemed like it was just the mornings where she was feeling ill.
Whenever he said that she would just smile at him and tell him that it was all going to be worth it. He knew it was true but it really took its toll on him seeing her so sick. He did everything he could to help, but it was easy to feel useless. What was ridiculous to him was that she was the one reassuring him that she was okay and everything was going well with the pregnancy. His wife was like no-one else he'd ever met.
He'd finally figured out that he was in love with her. For him it wasn't like one of those moments in the movies where the guy has a sudden epiphany and finally knows it without a doubt; no, it was a gradual awareness of what he'd been feeling all this time. Ever since Elena had opened up and told him how she felt about him, he wasn't trying to repress his own feelings and he allowed himself a little bit more time to think about what it was he was feeling. If he had to guess he would actually say he had loved her for some time. His feelings had been very deep since the beginning, and they had kept growing. He knew now those feelings were love.
Things were perfect between them, and he really wanted to tell her he loved her. She deserved to hear it. She was so patient with him, so understanding and so considerate that he never felt any pressure from her, but there was an internal pressure that was driving him to distraction. It was like he knew what he wanted to say, but he couldn't get the words to come out of his mouth. There had been so many perfect opportunities in the last three weeks to confess his undying love, but something was still holding him back and he didn't know what it was. Why couldn't he just say it? Why did he get a lump in his throat every time he went to tell her?
He puzzled over these questions as the two of them dressed for the ball. Elena had had her makeup and hair done downstairs earlier and now he helped her into her dress. He liked the dress. It was a royal blue gown with silver embroidery under the bust line and down the middle of the corset as well as around the skirt itself. She had blue matching gloves and a matching jacket. The only problem with the dress was that once he had her zipped up in it, he wanted to get her straight out of it again.
