Her heart begins to ache the moment she finds the small black box half-hidden beneath Lucas' fingertips. For some reason, this preemptive sighting isn't the dream come true she had always hoped it would be. It doesn't feel epic or romantic or fateful.

As she gingerly removes the box from his lax grip, it doesn't feel real. The box feels clumsy in her slender hands and almost too heavy for her to hold as she stands frozen at Lucas' bedside. Shaken, she wanders slowly toward the stiff green chair in the corner of the hotel room and sits staring blankly at the small black box she wishes she would have never seen.

One of her hands runs lazily along the crease separating the top of the box from the bottom while the other clamps it shut. The harebrained voice inside of her head is almost too curious to silence, but the part that aches is much louder and reminds her that this small black box is far better suited for Pandora's reckless grasp than her own.

When Lucas wakes up, the glint in his eyes is too much for her. This entire situation is too much for her. With wide eyes and a nervous smile she knows looks crooked and counterfeit, she shows him the box and tells him she's been thinking of how much she loves him.

Her words ring truer than any than any she has ever spoken. She does love him. She loves him so much. But she can't do this. She can't look at the ring she knows is waiting in the darkness of Pandora's Box. She can't look at the wistful glint in his eyes. She can't say "I do" because she doesn't.

It occurs to her as he begins his untimely proposal that she never really has.

So she clasps her hands around his before he can open the box. She clasps her hands around his and doesn't know whether to hold on to him for dear life or to wrench what little part of her he still has away from him.

Panicking, she gets to her feet and paces to the other side of the room. Her voice is pitchy with excuses, and she knows he isn't buying a single one of them. She can hardly believe herself when she collapses beside him on the foot of the bed and pleadingly tells him that she does want to marry him someday.

Someday.

One word, and she's in Savannah again. She's sitting with Jake on his front porch, asking him to marry her because there is no possible way for her to survive without him. There is no life for her without Jake and Jenny, and she is desperate for an escape from the Sunday evening feeling that is creeping in and closing in around the warm summer evening and the smell of Jake's skin and the sound of Jenny's laughter.

Someday is not meant for her and Lucas. For the first time, she is sure of this, but for the thousandth, she is too frightened to say it aloud, so she doesn't. Instead, she lowers herself and Lucas to the mattress below and lays her head on his chest as she trills on about their dreams and their future (a future she knows will never come).

---------

The next morning, Peyton awakened to the cool, empty silence of a hotel room. Lucas had gone, leaving only her mix CD in his place. Her heart began to thud in a broken, wounded rhythm as she took the abandoned CD into her hands and climbed slowly off of the bed. She walked slowly toward the stiff green chair in which she had left her purse, and rifled through it for a moment before pulling out her cell phone and flipping it open.

She scrolled through her contacts as her eyes began to water and nose began to go pink with held back tears. After a few seconds, she arrived on the name she had been looking for (a name she had probably been looking for for longer than she knew).

She took a deep breath before pressing the talk button and bringing the phone to her ear. The phone rang rang six times, at a maddening pace, before someone finally answered.

"Jake?"