Lucas Scott.
The name raced through her mind as if foreign to her. Nothing and no one could justify him in her eyes, though, as a trail of long, colorful words tagged along behind the name. It was as if the man she'd known in high school, who could already be called a douche bag, had turned into an even bigger one come graduation. Since the beginning he'd come off as an insensitie prick who'd done nothing but toy around with Brooke and Peyton's heart. And three years later, as sad as it seemed, nothing had changed.
How many times had he claimed to love Peyton back in high school? How many times had he trampled Brooke's heart because of said love just wouldn't fade away? Pain like that just wasn't caused out of the heat of the moment; Lucas did love Peyton and everyone knew that he would have literally jumped off a building to prove it to her. Which is why it made no sense to learn that he'd skipped town with his bimbo ex-girlfriend when he should have been standing at the alter with his beautiful fiancé.
Brooke was the only one allowed to run away from her problems, she thought bitterly to herself as she clenched her jaw. She was the only one who was allowed to leave town when things just got to be too much. Not Lucas. Especially not Lucas. He was the only one of the group who seemed to have it all right there, just down the street of where he lived: a mother, a brother, a best friend, and a fiancé who loved him just as much as he did. There was no excuse for his disappearing act and whether he liked it or not, Brooke was going to smack some sense into him if and when she laid eyes on him again.
Peyton was missing.
The clock on Brooke's night stand was flashing big, red numbers. 12:00 AM. tracing the outline of the picture frame that sat on her dresser across the room with her eyes, she took a breath and tried to think of all the places her best friend could have run off to at such a late hour. An entire day without her had overworked Brooke's nerves and as selfish as it sounded to her, the only reason she wasn't out there looking for the runaway bride-to-be was because everything was so wrong that one look at Peyton would have made her crumble. Now she was holding back tears for her best friend, who'd done nothing but devote her time and life to Lucas, tears for her own pain that had resounded in church the day before.
As much as she wanted to find Peyton, a microscopic part of her wanted her to stay out there in pain, suffering the same way Brooke had been forced to suffer back in high school when she'd found out Lucas and Peyton had been seeing each other behind her back. Even though she didn't feel anything romantic for Lucas anymore, Brooke still felt like karma had caught up with them and that this... this was their punishment. A larger part of her, though, wanted her best friend to turn to her. She understood was Peyont was going through; Lucas had always been a tortured soul, and along with that, he had been a very confused one. He had never been able to make up his mind and when he did, he tended to second guess himself which only hurt the ones he loved.
"Brooke?"
It took a great deal of effort to peel her eyes away from a smiling Peyton and transfix them on her guest in the doorway. Putting on that brave face she was always making sure she wore when something went wrong, she forced a smile for Nathan, motioning for him to come in and make himself at home, not that he needed an invitation.
"I thought you might be up," he returned the smile.
"How can anyone sleep with this worry?"
"Apparently all of Tree Hill," Nathan chuckled softly. "Goes to show you how well they really know Peyton."
"I know she's fine," Brooke sighed, her voice a little shaky. "I'm just more concerned about how she's doing than where she is."
"She looked pretty bad," Nathan thought out loud.
"She was pretty bad."
"I figured I'd stop by, check and see how you were doing," he gave her a reassuring smile as he sat down beside her, leaning against the backboard. "Maybe it's just me, but I think yesterday stirred up a lot of old memories."
"Well, aren't you observant?" Brooke chuckled.
"I get it from Dan," Nathan shrugged, accepting of the idea for once. "Every time I think he's let me down again, I find some new characteristic we have in common."
"He is your dad," Brooke smirked.
"Unfortunately."
"Don't say that," she said sadly. "Even though he's been pretty bad your whole life, you know he loves you more than anything."
"Right," Nathan scoffed sarcastically, not taking her words seriously. "If your definition of love is torture, than you're dead-on."
"Like you said," Brooke turned back to the frame, "they never gave us a chance. Just accept it and move on."
Nathan followed her gaze to the picture, the one he'd taken of Lucas, Brooke, and Peyton back when they'd gone camping a couple years back. Peyton's bright eyes made the picture so much more beautiful then it would be had she not had that spark in them that day. It would've been just like every other picture lying around, lifeless. At the same time that the picture made Brooke feel secure, Nathan knew it was touching a couple nerves that hadn't been touched in years and that thought worried him.
"He does love her, Brooke," Nathan spoke clearly but softly. "I know it doesn't seem like it after what he did, but he does."
When he heard the brunette beside him sniffle, his eyes immediately shot towards her face and sure enough, there were a few tears brimming the rims of her eyes. Crying had never been a selling point for Nathan when it came to women; if anything, it had always been a deal breaker for the sole reason that he just didn't know how to react around them. But with Brooke, and his wife, it had always been different. He still didn't know what to say but he at least knew that by simply being there with them, he helped.
"He better," she whispered.
"Come here," Nathan smiled understandingly as he raised an arm to let Brooke sidle up to him and rest her face on his peck.
"I'm being selfish," she admitted to him, her voice wet with the attempt to keep her tears from spilling over the edge. "I'm being completely selfish."
"No, you aren't," Nathan snapped at her. "If I'd gone through half the things you have, I would expect the same amount you do."
A pregnant silence filled the beige room as brooke forced the tears back and Nathan just held her, hoping she wouldn't hurt herself keeping everything bottled up like she usually did when it came to her friends. Actually, no matter what it was related to, Brooke Davis seemed to hide everything from everyone, the fear that she might burden someone else the way she'd always been burdened too strong to ignore. Nathan being there for her helped; it didn't soother all of it but it definitely relieved some of it.
"Do you think she left Tree Hill?"
"No," brooke shook her head against his chest. "Knowing her, she's probably back at her dad's old place."
"And we aren't heading over there now because...?"
"Because she needs time," Brooke explained. "As much as I want to drive over there and drag her back, I can't. After everything she's been through, if she doesn't sort this all out in her own head, she's going to be walking around, brooding, and as much as I hate to admit it, Lucas was the reason she stopped doing that."
Nathan chuckled as he wrapped an arm around the girl he'd grown to care for a lot more over the years since they'd graduated high school. Granted, they'd always been friends, even when she'd tried to mess him and Haley up; she'd proven to be a good friend the day right after by trying to set them up on a date. So much had happened between them, good and bad, that even though they weren't the most obvious, their friendship had become stronger and a lot more serious. The only thing about his friendship with Brooke that irked him was that the one responsible for it was Haley. Since she always saw the good in people, even if they walked all over her, she'd insisted on giving Brooke a chance. So he had.
"She'll come around," Nathan smiled. "She always does."
All Brooke could bring herself to do was nod along to his words of comfort as she stared at her perfectly pedicured toes; a French pedicure could really do wonders for a girl when things weren't looking too bright. And lately, it'd been doom and gloom ever since she had gone dress shopping with Haley and Peyton. Whether the happy couple had shown it or not, the wedding preparations had stressed their relationship to a point where both were just itching to make a break for it. And look at where they were now.
"He may be your brother, Nate, but if Lucas even thinks about showing his sleazy ass around here," Brooke stared at him with so much instensity, "so help me God I will tear his testicles off with my bare hands."
"I guess that answers my next question."
"Which was?"
"How upset are you?"
"I'm upset," Brooke breathed heavily. "At first, I think I was more depressed than angry, but now, I think I could rip a textbook in half."
"I'm right there with you," Nathan shrugged.
"Why are you angry?"
"Hello," Nathan scoffed teasingly. "Am I not the moron who found out his wife cheated on him with some wannabe rockstar?"
"Oh, Nate," Brooke smpathized with him, his marital porblems having been pushed aside by the lack of marital problems happening with Lucas and Peyton. "I wish I could say everthing's goign to be alright but I don't know that."
"I know it's not," Nathan shrugged. "Too much has happened for this marriage to survive. It's just become too much for me, you know?"
"Have you guys talked?"
"Once," he told her, "before the wedding and according to her, I'm the reason she resorted to kissing Kellar in the first place because I wasn't being supportive of her dream." Shaking his head unbelievingly, he continued. "Can you really blame me, though? She chose Kellar over me and that's not easy to forgive."
"I don't blame you," Brooke looked at her hands.
"I just don't know how we're going to break it to Jamie," Nathan finally voiced his concern. "This is going to kill him."
"Don't you think you're jumping a head a little too quickly?" Brooke asked hurriedly, the worry seeping into her voice all too quickly. "You guys have been together for years now and I've seen you two overcome everything together." She paused before looking up at him with her sharp, hazel eyes. "I mean, you're Naley."
"Honestly, Brooke," Nathan smiled half-hertedly, "the amount of faith you have in us amazes me at times."
And amazed he was. Had there been words deep or storng enough to describe how in love Nathan and Haley had once been in, Nathan was pretty sure that coming from Brooke's mouth, they'd be capable of bringing a grown man to his knees in tears. It was no secret to anyone how much Brooke was involved in Nathan and Haley's relationship; it was part of the reason she'd been named Jamie's godmother. Even though Nathan was the only other being aware of how much Nathan and laey meant to Brooke as a couple, others did understand that any bit of turbulence in the relationship would feel like an earthquake to Brooke. Which is why he was selfish with her sometimes.
Brooke had a habit of comforting people even though she'd never exactly been aware of her ability to do so. She was always putting her friends first, never resting until she'd figured out a way to solve their problem and it was because of that attitude that she helped Nathan feel like everything was great in his marriage whenever it really wasn't. When things looked sketchy between him and his wife, he could always turn to Brook and feel the same comfort and joy he normally would have felt with Haley. All the issues they were having disappeared when Brooke was with him and he loved that.
"You two are the onyl people I've ever seen madly in love," Brooke pointed out with a cheery smile. "If you two don't last, then how am I supposed to expect anything?"
"You don't honestly believe that if Haley and I don't work out, you won't find the right guy, do you?" he asked, slightly amused.
"So what if I do?" she shot back defensively.
"Brooke, if you don't find the right guy," Nathan's blue eyes met her hazel ones, "then how can any of us expect anything?"
——
"Brooke?"
The brunette in question gradually became aware of a voice somewhere in the background of her mind, compelling her to wake up. It was very faint at first, drifting around the edges of her consciousness, and she couldn't make out what it was saying. But as it got closer, it started to become clearer. Her name was being called, and a little desperately at that, she thought somewhat sleepily.
"Brooke!"
It could have just been her imagination, but when she realized she was still in her room, still lying on her bed, and the TV was still chattering away somewhere in the background, and the voice belonged to the one person she had been dying to see from the moment everyone at the wedding had found out Lucas wasn't showing to when she sat on her bed, everything felt like some warped reality.
It was Peyton.
The realization hit her like a bucket of cold water and as she made to jump up and hug her best friend so tightly, she'd probably suffocate in her arms, an obstacle made itself known in a very awkward and compromising manner.
As she took in the arched eyebrow, the expectant stance, and the teasing smirk on her best friend's lips, Brooke finally peeled her eyes away from Peyton and felt the blood rush up into her face when she saw what exactly the obstacle prohibiting her of suffocating her best friend with her arms was.
"Wow," Peyton smirked even wider. "I leave for a night and already things are starting to get crazy around here."
Ignoring the comment, Brooke bit her lip as she took in the sight of the big, bad Nathan Royal Scott, high school pimp and basketball star, lying beside her, shirtless and obviously oblivious to the commotion going on in the room around him. Brooke scarcely remembered him asking the ngiht before to crash at her place, and considering the news he had given her before that, she couldn't exactly refuse.
"Peyt, I can explain," she shot her friend a pleading look.
Peyton just gave her a 'not getting involved' look before crossing her arms and leaning back against the dresser to watch the comical scene play out before her. the skin-on-skin contact was making Brooke uncomfortable, as was Peyton's smirk, but ignoring both, she started looking aorund for Nathan's shirt, feeling ridiculous under her missing friend's questioning stare. It had taken a long time for Brooke to leave her days of hooking up back in high school in the past and the fact that there was a chance she had hooked up with her best friend, who happened to be married, terrified her.
"Where the hell is it?" she muttered as she searched through the white sheets and all around the floor. "It's fricking royal blue, for crying out loud! How does it just blend in?"
"Um, Brooke," Peyton interrupted her rant.
"What?"
Trying exceptionally hard to wipe the smirk off her face, she pointed down at Brooke's chest as anothr one of the most stomach-clenching realizations of that morning to hit the anxious brunette like a speeding eighteen-wheeler. She'd been scuttling around the room like an idiot in vain, looking for Nathan's blue shirt, when all she'd had to do from the moment she'd woken up was look down to see she was wearing it.
"Tree Hill's got some drama," Peyton teased as she walked out of the room. "A little more than you're average dosage. But hey, at least we have fun."