Author's Note:
Okay, so I know that I've started fics in the past and not totally finished them, but this one is one that I'm determined to finish. It will be short, maybe two or three parts, but it is based on the song "Breathe Again" by Sara Bareilis, and that song is AMAZING. I have twisted the words in my head to make this story, so I hope you will all enjoy it. Review it if you please!
I am a coward.
It's a simple way to describe what I'm doing, standing in front of this house, staring at a door that was the center of everything for so long. I took some things out of the closet, just favorites of mine that I know I'll want with me. Honestly, it isn't going to matter much soon anyways. Every picture I could find is in the back seat, favorite books, favorite albums… only some are mine.
I'm leaving, and I know that it's cowardly. I know that years down the road, or perhaps months, I'm going to regret this. My heart can't do this anymore. It can't slip back into the regular routine. There can be no routine. It doesn't work without every part present.
Car is parked, bags are packed,
But what kind of heart doesn't look back,
At the comfortable glow from the porch
The one I will still call yours…
"Peyton Scott…" I say dreamily for what is probably the thousandth time today.
"While I do love hearing that, you really need to stop."
"Shut up, I'm just happy. Aren't you happy?"
"You know, Peyton? Happy looks good on you…"
"Yeah?" I say with a kink in my brow suggestively.
"You are going to be the death of me though, you do realize that, right?"
I just laugh, letting my head fall to his bare chest again that evening as we sat outside on the small porch that led to our bedroom.
We had come a long way, Lucas and I. We thought that we would never be in the same place at the same time, and it seemed like every time we got there, something would still be in the way. Our friends kept saying that it was meant to be. He was engaged to another woman, and they still said that one day it would be Lucas and Peyton at the altar. When I was in L.A. I was living with a man whom I thought was going to be it. If I couldn't have Lucas, then Julian was just as amazing. In that statement alone, you find that the problem was that part of me was obviously thinking that I still needed Lucas.
I did.
It was a big ceremony, which was totally unlike me and very much like Brooke and Haley. Luke and I were excited and couldn't wait really, but we wanted small. They said that they had waited long enough for this event, and they weren't going to let it just be a few people in a court house. Brooke even had a binder.
"You're a nut, you know that?" I tell him a few years later, while we are sitting in our room one morning getting ready to spend the day with Jamie, while Nathan and Haley went to yet another doctor's appointment for the newest addition to the Scott family.
"Why does this make me a nut?" he says, gesturing to the outfit he sported, which consisted of a sweat band and socks pulled up to his knees.
"Luke, you look like a big dork…"
"Well, you were the one that married me. And besides, it's for Jamie… he wanted to be 'cool' today, so this was what we decided."
"yeah… real smooth there, Uncle Luke." I say, laughing at him, scrunching up my nose at the thought of him wearing that get up in public.
"You know, if our kids ask me to do this, I'm doing it. I will paint myself blue from head to toe, wear princess tiaras, and go to teddy bear sleepovers. I'll shave my head, break my ankle rollerblading, and rock out to Hannah Montana. It's how I roll Peyton, cause that's what matters to me."
"Luke…"
"Years down the road, Jamie may not remember lots about his childhood, but I bet that somewhere in his head he is going to remember the day that he and his Uncle Luke wore socks to their knees and sweat bands to play basketball on what I will swear was the hottest day in the history of North Carolina."
I just kiss him then. There were so many reasons why I felt the need, but mainly because I love him. He talked about our kids as if they were already there, when they were only a twinkle in our eye, and he talked about his nephew as if he were his own. That was Luke.
"All right my dork of a husband, go play basketball, and get back home to me, cause there is a very good chance that I will have a fantastic lunch planned for you. There is also a good chance that the second our beloved nephew leaves, I'm not going to be able to stand the heat and have to strip down to nothing to survive the rest of the day."
"Is that a promise?"
I just smile at him, walking into the bathroom and telling him that he would just have to see, and hearing him shout an "I love you" through the door.
My stomach rumbled, I took a shower, and I proceeded to sit on the bed and work on random label business until I had to start lunch for our boys.
"Peyton?" I hear, coming from the living room just an hour or so later.
I stand when I see Nathan enter the room in an apparent panic. "What's wrong? You and Haley had an appointment."
"You, um, you've got to come with me…"
"Nathan?" I try to get him to tell me what's wrong, but all he does is lead me to the waiting car outside.
"Is it Haley? Why aren't you with her? What the hell's going on?" I start screaming as we pull up in front of the hospital.
"God, Peyton! It's not Haley, okay? You just… you have to come with me…" he screams back at my panic, falling more into a whisper as he starts pleading with me for a moment, which causes the panic to change into a crippling fear that silences me as I walk through the doors of the hospital.
"Mrs. Scott." The doctor says, walking towards me with a look on his face that I vaguely recognize, and then immediately understand when I see Nathan off to the side with Haley and Jamie.
"No." I say, shaking my head repeatedly, trying to force him in the opposite direction.
"Mrs. Scott, your husband-"
"No." This time I walk out the door, not needing to hear anything that the doctor has to say to me.
The cemetery was just a few blocks from the hospital, so I found myself there, my feet walking on autopilot to the place of secondary comfort for me.
I find myself wishing that there was a way to feel my mother's arms around me again, smell her perfume as she whispered words of comfort in my ears. Instead of finding warm arms wrapped around me, I find myself falling to the ground in front of her grave crying out to the heavens and all that would hear.
"How could you do this to me! Haven't I had enough? Is there some cosmic joke going on that I'm unaware of? You took my mother when I was eight years old, you took Ellie from me when I was seventeen… you took Keith away from Lucas… we finally had it. Lucas… we finally had everything. It was perfect, we were in love, and I could see nothing better in my future than being his wife forever. And you took that too… What did I do? Please… We had plans. We were going to start a family, we were going to travel. He was going to write another book… all these plans… please…"
Some time later, I feel arms lifting me but I don't bother to allow myself to fully wake up, choosing to stay in this hazy state of shock, because frankly it was easier that facing what I knew was going to happen next.
All those words came undone, and now I'm not the only one
Facing the ghosts that decided the fire inside still burns
His arms are around me when I wake up, just like they always are. No matter how we fall asleep, we end up in each other's arms when we wake up.
"How does that work?" I ask him as he kisses my shoulder.
"Hmmm?"
"I was just thinking how we always wake up all snuggled next to each other in the morning."
"When it's meant to be, it's meant to be." He says, smiling down at me and pulling me closer to him for another kiss.
We stay like that for a while, kissing each other while the light streams in. In an instant I feel something change and pull away from him.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing, I just got the weirdest feeling."
"What kind of feeling?"
"I don't know, it's like you… I don't know…"
"You know it's going to be okay, right?"
"What?" I ask, totally confused.
"It's going to be okay. I'm always going to be there. I know you don't get that now, but I will."
"Lucas, what are you talking about?"
"You've got to wake up and face it Peyton."
"Luke, I don't know what you're saying."
"Wake up, Peyton." He says finally.
I sit up in bed automatically, searching the room to realize that it is the middle of the night. Looking around I find that I'm not at home, but I'm in the guest room at Nathan and Haley's. I had heard them downstairs before, calling Karen thousands of miles away to let her know. Part of me is glad that I didn't have to be the one that told her that her son had died. I know it's selfish, but I couldn't get it right in my head, so I knew I couldn't explain it to her. He had taken Jamie to the River Court and one second he was fine and the next he wasn't. I heard Haley talk about Jamie calling 911 and trying to get him to stay awake while the ambulance came. By the time he got to the hospital, it was too late. The doctors say nothing could have helped.
Still reeling from my dream, I leave the house, walking down the street around four in the morning back to our house. I see him there, sitting on the small porch leading to our bedroom. It's not really him, I know, just the high school ghost of himself sitting there, reminding me of all the time we wasted.
Right after we got married, we started sitting out there at night, watching the stars, and thankful that we weren't in a large city. In the city, you couldn't see the stars that you could in Tree Hill. It was everything to me, those nights when we were there, just talking about everything we could imagine.
"You know that you could have saved us a lot of trouble if you wouldn't have left that night…"
"What night?" I ask, fully knowing what he was talking about.
"That night Junior year when you said that you couldn't betray Brooke by being with me. We could have had it then, Peyton"
"And then what?"
"Well, knowing how crazy we can get, maybe I would have proposed and we could have been the ones married with a baby on the way Senior year…"
"Don't you think that everything had a reason though? It all led us right here, right back where it began, and while it sucked in the interim; I'd do it all over again. Wouldn't you?"
"Every moment."
When I'm standing here, staring at the home we made, I'm thankful that they don't come after me that night, or even the next day. It's Brooke who finds me a few days later, lying in the middle of our bed, sleeping in Luke's ratty old Keith's garage hoodie, surrounded by his clothes.
"Peyton…" she says, and I instantly open my eyes. The curse of a best friend is that you can just look at them and know what's going through their head. She was taking in the sight before her and I saw the moment she realized how broken I was.
"I… I need to feel him again… to have him around me… I just can't do this without him Brooke…"
"I know." She says, laying down beside me.
"No… I just… I would give anything for just one more second."
All I have, all I need
He's the air I would kill to breathe
Holds my life in his hands
No one got it… except Karen. She understood what it meant to have the man you love die before you even got to live life with him.
She found me the morning before we buried him, sitting in the middle of the empty extra room. There was a chair and a desk in the corner, and at one point we thought it could be an office.
"This is the only room in the house that I thought I would be safe from him."
She sits beside me on the floor, not moving to hold me or ask me anything. She just listened.
"But I came in and realized what this room was." I say, letting a tear slip down as I look up at an equally teary-eyed Karen. "When we got married, Lucas wanted to turn this into an office for me, so we put a desk in here. But every time I would try to work in here, he'd come in saying that he missed me. So we'd move to the living room or the bedroom so he could write and I could work. Just being in the same space was necessary for us. Every now and then, he'd say something about how we needed to finish that office. Then one day I catch him glancing at the door while we walk by and he gets the biggest grin on his face…" I stop then for a moment, trying to catch my breath as I recall the memory that is still so fresh in my mind.
"Why are you smiling?"
"No reason." He says with another enigmatic smile.
"Thinking about the office?" I say back at him with a smile that tells him I'm in on the joke too. But what he says next isn't a joke. It's a proposal and a hope-filled promise that I can't believe is happening.
"No… thinking about the nursery."
"I'm… I'm not…Luke, I'm" I say, stuttering back at him, trying to find the words as he just laughed at my stammering.
"I know that this is sudden, but it just hit me the other day… what the hell are we waiting for? The label is doing well, my book is coming along, and you and I…" he says grabbing me closer to him, "you and I are amazing. I know that this is big, and I know that we have to… Peyton?" he asks as I grab hold of his hand, leading him down the hallway as he keeps questioning my lack of a response.
His eyes widen as my hands start working at the buttons on my shirt, "Peyton, what are you-"
"Well, these things don't just happen on their own you know, we've got to practice." I say with a quirk of my eyebrow.
I don't know when it happened, but when I snap out of my memory, Karen's arms are around me, and she's crying nearly as hard as I am.
"My whole life is wrapped up in him. We had plans, and we… my life is in him, Karen…"
"I know." Is all she says as she strokes the top of my head, rocking me in the middle of the floor of a room that I thought would be covered in teddy bears and building blocks in the near future.
Still I'm searchin' for something
Out of breath I'm left hoping someday I'll breathe again
You never see it play out on your wedding day… the ending of it all. You are so focused on what lay ahead and all the happy memories that you'll make, that you don't think about what it's going to be like when one of you isn't there anymore.
Brooke stood beside me on one side, while Karen took the spot to the other side. I didn't cry. I couldn't cry anymore because of the simple fact that I didn't have it in me anymore. Not after this morning, talking to Karen, and thinking about everything that was going on in my head. I listened to a man who didn't really know Lucas talk about the small town basketball coach and author. He talked of his love for his wife and family, but he didn't know Lucas. He didn't know about how long it took us to get here, to get to the point where we could finally be together. He didn't know about the pain he got through to become this wonderful man. He didn't know Lucas.
I still stood there, waiting until everyone else left the cemetery and I shook the hands of all his basketball players and their families.
"Peyton?" I hear a small voice ask me and look down to see Lily standing there beside me.
"Yeah, Lils?"
"Luke is in heaven, right?"
I smirk then, knowing that Lucas is watching us from that very place. "Yeah, he's in heaven."
We start walking to the car, with her making small talk like eight year olds do, telling me that she was really sad when she heard about her brother, but she wanted to be strong for her mommy. That right there was a Lucas gene if I ever saw one… obviously something that Karen passed on to both of her children. They both had this unbelievable strength to put everyone else before themselves.
That was my goal for the next few weeks, surviving and showing on the outside my strength, that Lucas said was always there. When the night came, I could dream, and I lived in those dreams, with Luke beside me.
"You know what you have to do, right?"
"Lucas, it's nothing, stop."
"It isn't nothing… it's everything…" he says with a smile, bringing me closer to his body.
"I'm dreaming again, aren't I?" I ask, full well knowing the truth.
He just nods, "But you aren't dreaming all of it."
I shake my head, letting the tears start to fall freely down my cheeks as I feel his thumbs come up to wipe them away.
"I can't keep doing this, Lucas. I'm starting to think that I'm like going crazy."
"Peyton, I'm still here."
"You aren't though, you can't be, so don't tell me that you are!" I yell at him.
He laughs at me then, and I can feel the anger boiling up inside me until he explains himself, "Peyton, I'm glad to see that the fire inside hasn't gone away."
"So in my dreams you're calling me a bitch?" I say, still angry.
"You're stubborn, and if I'm not here, then why are you arguing with me?"
"Lucas…"
"See…" he smiles, "You just have to trust me on this one, Peyton, I know you."
"I can't…I can't do this alone."
This time, when I wake up I can feel the tears streaming down my face, and I'm forced to replay the dream over and over again until it nears noon.
"Peyton?" I hear coming from somewhere inside the house, and after making a few things disappear, I call out.
She finds me coming out of the bathroom and wiping tears from my face quickly, willing myself to stop crying.
"Hey…" she says, pulling me into her embrace, with a look that tells me she knew that I hadn't been as strong as I had been putting on.
"I'm sorry." I say, pulling away from her as quickly as she would allow me to.
"Peyton, you don't have to say you're sorry, we all understand. It's going to take some time, you know?"
"Yeah, I know." I say, nodding and trying to convince myself that she's right. "So… what's up?"
"Well, Jamie was wondering if you wanted to come over and come swimming with the fam. He said that you were the most fun cause Haley can't get crazy with him cause of the little alien, and I don't like to get my hair wet."
I laugh at that, knowing that the kid had it right, but trying to come up with an excuse in my head, knowing that I really did have the perfect reason to not come running over to the Scott pool.
"You know what, I think I'm going to take a bit and get myself presentable and run some errands. I could swing by later if we wanted to do dinner or something?"
"Since you're only half dodging it, I won't totally yell at you, but are you trying to dodge?"
"No, Brooke, I just want to get some stuff done. And you came in a got me out of my funk, so I'm ready to do that." I say, which seems to convince her because she tells me that she'll see me later and smiles when she walks out the door.
I got through my much needed errands and appointments, with a few hiccups along the way. When I made my way through the front door of Nathan and Haley's house, I was practically assaulted by a running eight year old.
"Aunt Peyton! I'm glad you're here!" he says, looking up at me with a huge grin on his face.
"Hey, Jamie! How was swimming?"
"I didn't really go swimming, cause I wanted you to be here, but me and dad played basketball, and mama and Brooke worked on more stuff for the baby."
"I see." I say, looking around for the adults, "Where is everybody?"
"They're outside getting ready for food. Dad's grilling some hamburgers."
"Sounds good… lead the way little man."
It was all going well until someone made a comment about a barbecue we all had last summer, when all the adults for some reason or another ended up in the pool, fully clothed. It was fun to remember until the awkward silence fell over everyone and I felt eyes trying to not be caught staring at me, and told a white lie about having to use the bathroom.
Jamie found me sitting in the kitchen a few minutes later and approached me without a word. He sat and watched me for a moment as he took a seat on the stool next to me.
"I'm sorry about Uncle Lucas, Aunt Peyton… I know that you're sad."
"Jamie, you have nothing to be sorry about."
"If we weren't playing basketball, then his heart wouldn't have had problems, and he would still be here."
I turn to him then, realizing that this little boy had taken the world upon his shoulder at his Uncle's death.
"James Lucas Scott, come here…" I say, getting off the stool and crouching down so I could be at eye level with my nephew. "You didn't do anything wrong. Uncle Lucas had a problem with his heart and there was absolutely nothing that you could have done to fix that. I do not, nor have I ever, blamed you for what happened to your Uncle Lucas."
"But you're so sad." He says with the wisdom of a much older person coming through.
"And I'll probably be sad for a while, but you need to know that you didn't do anything wrong here Jamie. Okay?"
He nods his head and I hold him a little while longer, knowing that he needed the reassurance from me more than anything else at the moment. After a bit, he tells me that Haley was getting ready to serve dessert, so I should hurry up and get outside.
"Okay, you go ahead…"
I sit for another minute and start when I hear Nathan, "He blames himself for that, you know?"
"Yeah, I figured that one out tonight."
"I think all of us do in some way. We've said it… If Haley and I had just taken Jamie with us to the doctor's appointment, or if Brooke had been in town to watch Jamie that day instead of you and Luke. We all think about it, Peyton."
"You guys have no reason to blame yourselves."
"Well, neither do you." He says with a bite.
"I'm not blaming myself, Nate."
"Then what the hell do you call it, Peyton? We were remembering the good times, and one look at your face and it shut everything down. You've got to remember the good stuff, Peyton, or you can't go on."
"Well, maybe that's the point."
"Peyton…"
"Dammit, Nathan, I don't mean it like that. It's hard for me. You know me and Lucas… you guys were the ones who swore up and down on us and our love and how we were meant to be together. Now it's all gone, and I've been trying to be fine about it, and you all have been walking eggshells around me, waiting for me to finally break. And I take a moment and suddenly, you hate that I'm grieving? I can't keep shifting around."
"Peyton, we knew that you were hurting… we didn't buy that act any more than Lucas would have if he had been here. You're just being stubborn."
"Nathan, you have no clue what I'm dealing with right now."
"I lost him too, Peyton."
"Yeah, but you don't have a…" I catch myself before adding the constant reminder at the end of my response. "Tell everyone that I went home, I can't be here right now."
Open arms next to you,
And my secrets become your truth
"They're hurting too, Peyton… you know that."
"I do, but they don't get it."
"Well, I don't know why you won't help them understand what's going on."
"What, the fact that I'm talking to a ghost in my dreams?"
"No, that's not it."
I stay there for a moment, letting him hold me close, feeling his arms wrapping around me, an arm circling my stomach and a hand holding mine above us. It felt so good to be there again.
"I'm leaving."
"What?"
"I can't be here any more. Being around everyone, having that constant reminder of you around me. Maybe the dreams will stop if I just let myself go away for a while."
"Peyton, that's going to hurt a lot of people."
"No… they get me, Luke. You would have understood that I needed my time."
"Peyton, you act like I don't know all your secrets."
"Lucas…"
"It's going to hurt them if you leave. Only because I know you'll come back… and when you do, it's just going to hurt them."
"So you think I'll be better here?"
"Peyton, you'll have everyone around you… Haley, Brooke, Nathan… my mom. Why would you think it better to be alone?" he asks me, searching my eyes for another answer.
"They aren't you… I'd rather go it alone… Stubborn nature and all."
"But what about—" he starts, and I silence him with a finger to his lips.
"If this is the last night I get to dream, let me dream in peace Lucas Scott."
"I'm still here, Peyton."
When I woke up… I started packing.
I am a coward.
It's a simple way to describe what I'm doing, standing in front of this house, staring at a door that was the center of everything for so long. I took some things out of the closet, just favorites of mine that I know I'll want with me. Honestly, it isn't going to matter much soon anyways. Every picture I could find is in the back seat, favorite books, favorite albums… only some are mine.
I'm leaving, and I know that it's cowardly. I know that years down the road, or perhaps months, I'm going to regret this. My heart can't do this anymore. It can't slip back into the regular routine. There can be no routine. It doesn't work without every part present.
Before I get in the car, I do one more check of the house, making sure everything is unplugged and the note is where whoever comes to check on me will find it.
I told them that it was too hard to stay here and be surrounded by everything that was Lucas and our relationship. I told them that I would keep in touch, which I knew was a lie when I wrote it. I told them to not follow me, which I knew each would try to do. I told them I loved them more than life, and explained that I need to grieve on my own for a while. When I was done, I would come home. I didn't tell them everything.