Author's Note: I've been writing this one-shot for a month or so, treating it a bit like my baby. I hope you all like it. Let me know what you think.
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"Lucas, what are we doing out here?" Brooke Davis-Scott asks her husband as the pair stroll on the shore's edge on this mild pre-summer day.
"I've heard long walks can trigger labor", the man answers.
"What, are you in a rush?" Brooke asks as she rests her hand on the underside of her nearly-9 months pregnant abdomen.
The couple continues to walk along the beach and Lucas shrugs in response to his wife, "Sort of. Aren't you?"
"Not really", Brooke responds, looking straight ahead, "You know that I like being pregnant."
Brooke and Lucas had two other children. Claire, the eldest, was born exactly eight months and fourteen days after the first day of senior year at Tree Hill High School, also the day that Brooke and Lucas got back together after several months apart. Claire is a precocious almost-8 year old, bright and kind, and obsessed with ballet. She resembled Brooke physically, but is a strange mixture of Brooke and Lucas emotionally. A spitfire like her mother, but gentle and thoughtful like her father. Christopher, the soon-to-be middle child is five years old (and three-quarters! He'd say) and a whiz at basketball. At least, on the 4 and a half foot hoop that sits at the end of the driveway. Brooke feared the idea of motherhood at first, but quickly embraced her pregnant form and the wonderful children that followed.
"You might be the most beautiful pregnant woman I've ever seen", Lucas says as he looks lovingly into Brooke's eyes.
"Then why are we forcing labor? I'm not even full-term yet."
"Don't you want to meet the baby? Find out if it's a boy or a girl?"
"Of course I do, Luke. But I can wait. I don't need to have the baby right at this very moment."
Lucas stops walking and looks at Brooke, "Do you want to head home then?"
Brooke looks back towards the beach house where the Davis-Scott family has lived for the past five years, "No. I like the quiet."
Lucas nods and then pulls out a beach blanket and spreads it across the sand.
"Can you sit?" Lucas asks.
Brooke chuckles, "I can try."
Lucas grabs his wife's arm and the couple lower themselves onto the blanket.
"You know, there are other ways to induce labor", Brooke tells Lucas flirtatiously, leaning closer to his face.
"Like what?"
"Like…sex", Brooke says as she passionately kisses Luke's lips.
Lucas holds up his hands as if to say stop and he pulls away, "Not now", he says.
"We'll go home", Brooke replies.
"No."
"Excuse me?"
"I don't want to have sex when you're so…"
"…fat?" interrupts Brooke.
"I set myself up for that, didn't I?" Brooke nods. "It's just that I'm afraid to hurt the baby."
Brooke turns to face forward, the ocean turning in front of her, "We've had sex when I was pregnant before."
"I know. But not this far along, and not when you've already had complications."
Brooke nods slowly as she thinks about the problems of this pregnancy. After Claire and Christopher were born barely two years apart, Brooke and Lucas decided to wait to have a third child. Unfortunately, when the couple decided to try to conceive again, it proved more difficult than they had anticipated. Brooke experienced two miscarriages before getting pregnant this time around. Twenty-seven weeks in, however, Brooke went into preterm labor. Doctors were able to stop the labor, but Brooke was ordered to a temporary bed rest. Now, at 37 weeks, all is well, but the threat of trouble is always hovering over the family.
"Okay…" Brooke says quietly, "can we go inside now?"
"Yeah, sure. Are you okay?" Lucas asks as he stands up and helps pull his wife into a standing position.
"I'm fine, Luke. I just want to get back to the kids."
Lucas knew that wasn't all Brooke was feeling. But he'd learned over the years not to push Brooke while she was pregnant. Even though she loved being pregnant, Brooke's emotions would hit her ten times stronger during those 9 months. Sadness was the worst. Imagine your worst depressed day, multiply that pain by a hundred, and that's how Brooke would feel. She hid the pain, of course. That's just who she's always been.
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By the time the sun sets that night, Brooke had settled onto the couch in the living room with Lucas reading one of his favorite novels in a nearby chair. Brooke was reading a magazine, but was fidgeting from time to time and resting her free hand on her swollen belly. Lucas was oblivious, and Brooke didn't want to worry him with her fleeting concerns.
After almost a half hour of pain, Brooke called for her children to come into the living room to join her. Claire and Christopher run in happily, clad in a nightgown and Spiderman pajamas respectively. The pair stood in front of their mother, waiting for what she may tell them.
"Hey guys, remember how daddy and I told you that you'd get to sleep over at Grandma's when I needed to go have the baby?" Brooke asks the children as Lucas looks up from his book.
Both children nod voraciously, "Yes!" they answer simultaneously.
"Well, go get your suitcases because you're going over to Grandma's now."
Claire and Christopher run off to their bedrooms while Lucas stands up gently.
"Brooke?" he asks.
"That long walk really worked", she says as she struggles to sit up.
"You're in labor?" Lucas asks, excitedly.
"Yes, I am, Broody. Let's go have a baby", Brooke says smiling, a line she's repeated before the arrival of each of her children, music to both of their ears.
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