Red Passion

Chapter 5

When Elena and Bonnie open the door to their dorm room, they find her sitting on the floor next to their—ahem, more like her (it was, after all, a gift from Klaus)—mini fridge, her legs crossed in front of her and a half consumed blood bag in hand, three already empty lying at her side.

"Caroline!" Elena exclaims, although it comes out more as a question, two matching, confused frowns on both of her friends' faces.

Honestly, deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression aside, she can't really blame them.

Truth to be told, the day before, she hadn't exactly thought about the actual amount of time it would have taken her and Klaus to drive all the way to Montgomery and back—Math had never been her favorite subject, sue her—which, added to the hour they spent with Darlene and the other three (or four) they spent engaged in other activities, amounted to around more than twenty-four hours, a whole day. A whole day without blood, at that.

So, as soon as Klaus had dropped her off at her campus—both ignoring the feeling of being ripped in two as the other left the best that they could—she ran to her room, relieved to find that Elena and Bonnie had already left for their first class of the day. She took a quick shower, which didn't help her calm her nerves at all, and then finally went through her and Elena's blood bags stash.

Usually, Caroline consumed no more than two blood bags a day, maybe three if she was really stressed or angry for some reason, but the day before she had completely forgotten her morning one or to bring any along with her for the small trip with Klaus, so she wasn't too surprised when she found herself quickly emptying two in the matter of a few seconds and then still needing more, being at her fourth when Elena and Bonnie finally arrived. Not to mention that the bite marks situation—with its potential, attached problems—was really starting to take a toll on her, and so was all the sneaking around with Klaus, which, admittedly, was what she was currently doing, there was no point in denying it (at least to herself).

"Hey..." she hesitates, bringing the open spout of her current blood bag back to her lips almost mindlessly.

"Are you okay?" Elena asks her with furrowed eyebrows as Bonnie closes the door behind the both of them. "We sent you at least a dozen texts, and also tried to call you."

She gulps, brushing her still slightly wet hair to the side of her neck to hide the bared bite mark that she forgot to cover up in her haste to get something to drink.

"Yeah," she answers, shaking her head. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright. But we were worried. Where did you sleep last night? Did you just arrive?"

She somehow resists the urge to roll her eyes at their far too prying parental dynamic, because, honestly, she knows that she would act the exact same way if she were in their shoes and one of them had disappeared on her for a whole day and a whole night without a single word.

"I know, I'm really sorry, girls," she repeats with a genuinely apologetic look on her face, although she doesn't feel sorry about the lack of communication on her part as much as she does about the fact that she's about to feed them a very well organized lie that she had a whole journey back home to think of (and also set up, thanks to a small stop at the grocery store—alone, of course, God forbid the mighty Klaus Mikaelson did something as trivial as food shopping—on their way to Whitmore).

"I did some mostly useless shopping—toiletries, human food," she grins as Bonnie glares at her jokingly. "And then I wasn't sure if you had found Elena, and I also really missed my mum, so I sort of went back to Mystic Falls."

Bonnie immediately gasps. "God, I'm so sorry, Care!" she apologizes as her eyes widen in realization. "It totally slipped my mind! I should have texted you. I'm such a terrible friend."