Author's Note: My first One Tree Hill story. I'm half scared, half excited. Also, I would LOVE a beta-reader, so...if you have experience, please. Please!
Disclaimer: All characters were created by Mark Schwahn. They are his creative property; I'm just messing around with their lives.
H. Rider Haggard once wrote:
"It is curious to look back and realize
upon what trivial and apparently coincidental circumstances great events frequently turn
as easily and naturally as a door on its hinges."
Chapter One
A Door On Its Hinges
"Broody, have you seen my gold Manolo Blahniks?"
Brooke Davis, who was dressed to kill in a figure hugging strapless red dress, felt like she had gone to hell and back searching for her newest pair of incredibly expensive designer shoes. In reality, she had only gone to the living room and back, but as her boyfriend Lucas Scott could tell from the severe lack of fancy gold heels on her feet, not to mention the equally severe look of frustration on her prettily made up face, hell would be the thing to pay if she did not find said heels and find them fast.
"Have you checked the hall closet?" He ventured, quickly setting down his own shoes, lest the sight of them on his feet send Brooke into a jealous shoe tizzy. "Because you moved some things in there when --"
"Don't you lecture me about my closet, Lucas Scott!" she interrupted, sitting up on her knees, which were rose red from all the shuffling around she had been doing on them, and putting her manicured hands on her shapely hips. As she launched into a speech about how she never complained to him about his tacky basketball memorabilia on display in the living room, he found himself distracted by the way her lipstick-covered lips curved to form words.
"And don't even get me started on that ugly cookie jar of yours," she continued, oblivious to the route her boyfriend's eyes were traveling down. "I mean, sure it's cute that Lily made it for us and everything, but I think the clay is all chippy! People just don't find orange, icky clay-tasting chocolate chips in their cookies. They just don't!"
Lucas snapped out of his Brooke appreciation for two seconds to offer her a small, sincere grin. "It's shaped like a basketball," he told her, as if that made up for all the bits of clay they had digested since his little sister, Lily Roe Scott, had give them the homemade cookie jar for Christmas. Then he remembered what had started her on this quite amusing tirade about all of his bad decorating taste. "And I wasn't going to lecture you about your closet. I just mentioned it because you might have put those Manoli Blah...things in there because they wouldn't fit in THIS closet."
"Manolo Blahniks," Brooke corrected almost immediately. "Gold, brand new. Absolutely adorable." She paused, then added, "Also, incredibly expensive."
She looked at him with her eyebrows raised just slightly, as if she expected him to say something to that. When he didn't, she threw her hands in the air as she got to her feet. "SO I wouldn't put them in the hall closet! That's where I moved all of the old-ish stuff that there was a less likely chance of me wearing, but that I wasn't ready to get rid of yet."
Again, Lucas's eyes traveled down to her legs. For some reason, her carpet-marked knees seemed really, really alluring.
"What are you looking at?" she inquired after a few minutes of silence, noticing that his eyes weren't exactly on her face.
Grinning, he looked up into her eyes. "Your knees."
Brooke could not hold back the lighthearted laugh that leapt to her throat. Here she was, in the middle of what she classified as a total breakdown because it was fashion related, and he was looking at her knees. If it was possible, she felt her love for him swell, and she crossed the room in five quick steps so she could settle herself on his lap. Lucas received her almost automatically and wrapped his arms around her slim waist.
"Have I mentioned how much I love this dress?" he asked, eyeing her up and down quickly.
"You might have said something once or twice," answered Brooke as she wrapped her arms around his neck.
Their eyes met, and they both smiled as butterflies swarmed in Brooke's stomach. After all their years together, he still had the ability to make her feel all ecstatic and teenage girly with just a glance; but Brooke knew somewhere in the back of her mind that locking eyes with him had nothing to do with the butterflies. They had been born three days ago and had not gone away, not since she had begun to suspect... No. Not since she had found out. The big secret. The announcement. Tonight was the night. She felt it deep in her heart, in her belly, in her throat. Tonight was the night that their lives would change forever...
As she opened her mouth to tell him just how much she loved him, Lucas silenced her with a kiss. What started out as an innocent little peck quickly turned into something more passionate as the two fell back onto the bed and let their hands roam over familiar territory. Without a second's hesitation, Brooke parted her lips and allowed Lucas's tongue to dart between them and lovingly tickle the roof of her mouth. Withholding a smirk, she tiptoed her fingers underneath his dress shirt and let them trace the well-defined lines of his delicious abdomen. Just slightest feel of his warm skin against her fingertips had her craving more; they had made love not one hour ago, yet already she found herself wishing they had just stayed together in bed, tangled up in each other's arms. As if reading her mind, Lucas pulled away to kiss down her neck, and Brooke turned her head to allow him better access…and saw something in the back of the closet that she had overlooked before.
"My shoes!"
Lucas let his face hit the bed as Brooke rolled away from him and dashed happily to the closet to retrieve her gold Manolo Blahniks from their hiding place in, of all things, a shoe box. When she turned back around, shoes in hand and a genuine smile on her face that only high quality footwear could generate, she had to laugh at the sight of Lucas and his pathetic puppy dog face.
"Your shoes are really more important to you than I am?"
His ridiculous question was met with an eye roll. "Stop it. And hurry up and get ready; I want to make our reservations! They were really --"
"Hard to get." Lucas rolled over on his back and stared up at the ceiling. "I know, I know. Speaking of hard..."
Brooke chose to ignore him as she slipped her freshly pedicured toes into the brand new, never-been-worn-before, open-toe heels. "All ready!"
Excited to get to SouthPark and to the restaurant before the traffic got too bad, Brooke sauntered out of the room just in time to miss Luke murmuring something about being ready too...but not to go out. Five minutes later, he emerged from the bedroom, pulling on his suit jacket and brushing down the sleeves. "You know, we could always just skip this whole elaborate restaurant thing, and I could prove just how incredibly romantic I am by cooking for you." He grinned as Brooke moved forward to adjust his tie. "That way it won't take us so long to get from dinner to dessert."
Holding in a smile, Brooke swatted him playfully on the chest and buttoned his jacket for him. "We're going out, and that's that. I already know you're romantic. Now you have to prove you're cooperative!"
As it turned out, Lucas was incredibly cooperative. They arrived at the restaurant five minutes early for their dinner reservations, and were seated without any wait. After holding her chair for her, for which he was given a very solid kiss on the lips, Lucas sat down across from Brooke and grinned at her. The traffic on the way to the restaurant had been just bad enough to keep them stranded at a stop light for a good ten minutes, and most of the time had been well spent ruining Brooke's expertly applied makeup and messing up Lucas's lucky red tie.
"Stop grinning at me," she commanded with a mock glare after their waiter brought them their water.
Lucas reached for his glass and took a sip, the expression on his face the very definition of innocent. "Or what?"
Unfooled by his rather commendable act, Brooke reached across the table and fixed his tie for the third time that night. "Or no dessert."
"You drive a hard bargain, Pretty Girl," Lucas set down his water and pulled her hands away from his tie. Brooke felt the butterflies in her stomach welcome a new family of little baby butterflies into the world. She loved it when he called her 'Pretty Girl'. And just as if using the nickname he knew she adored was not enough for him, he had to start kissing all of her knuckles individually. Why had they left the bed again...?
Right! Because of the announcement. The big announcement that was making her nervous beyond all reason and freaking out all the butterflies in her stomach. When would it be made? When should it be made? Would he hug her? Kiss her? Hug her THEN kiss her? Would they get all teary-eyed and stand up to make the announcement to everyone in the restaurant? Would they be so overjoyed at the idea that they skipped dinner and got right down to the dessert? What would his mother say when they called her and told her? Would all of their friends throw them a huge party? The butterflies screamed 'YES, BROOKE, YES!' at her, and she suddenly found it very hard to breathe. Just the thought of all that happiness and pure joy...it made her want to cry, because what if it didn't go that way?
Before she could let her mind drift back to the daydream she had got caught in earlier that day, which involved him getting up from the table and walking right out without so much as a second glance over his shoulder, Lucas released her hands and picked up his menu.
"Hmm," His soulful blue eyes scanned the prices listed next to each item. "You're buying, right?"
Brooke laughed, and the butterflies all retreated into their little butterfly homes, for the time being. "I believe you're the gentleman at this table, Mr. Scott."
"Ah, damn." Lucas snapped his fingers, as if only just remembering that fact. "Well, you'd better not order -- "
"Oh! Look at this," Brooke smiled prettily at him over the top of her menu. "My favorite food in the world happens to be the most expensive thing on the menu!"
"Imagine that," replied Lucas, eyeing her strangely.
Suddenly self-conscious, Brooke set down the menu hurriedly and tried to remember if she'd brought her compact. "What? Do I have something on my face?"
It took her boyfriend a few moments to respond, but he finally did. "No, but you will!"
Before she knew it, she did have something on her face. Lucas. Giggling, Brooke gave into the deep kiss he initiated, but pulled back when she heard an old lady two tables over make a highly affronted noise over her chicken cordon bleu.
"Can't we go five minutes without you getting all mushy on me?" she asked rhetorically, reopening her menu and trying not to smile at the pleased look on Lucas's face. For a moment, she felt a small chill of fear run down her spine as she imagined what her life would be without that smile, without that face. Could she really do this? Could she really ask this of him right now, when everything was going perfect for them just as it was? More than that...did she even have the courage to ask it of him?
Stop thinking about, stop thinking about it, stop thinking about it.
Unfortunately, mental mantras had never really held much sway over the decisions her brain made for her, and she found herself thinking almost obsessively about it all the way through their appetizers. What if he told her it wasn't possible? Or that he wouldn't do it? Did she really expect him to commit to this after the four years they had just spent apart while he went to UNC and majored in Literature and she studied fashion in New York? The long distance had been hard on them, but they had survived, hadn't they? Didn't that prove that they were ready for this? And how could he say no? He loved her. He told her so every day, and she knew that it was true. Every fiber of her being, every inch of her heart told her and reassured her of it every single day, with every look he gave her and every touch they shared. She, Brooke Davis, was head over heels for Lucas Scott, and had been for so long that she could not even remember what it was like to not be.
He would not leave her because of this. He would grin and say 'YES!' and most likely hire one of those airplanes to write the news in the sky so that everyone in Charlotte could see. She loved him, he loved her, they were out of college, living together, having pretty much the best sex they'd ever had... and not two nights ago he'd told her that he wanted to spend forever with her. She had giggled girlishly and asked him if they were having a quote-unquote Naley Moment, and he had touched his nose to hers and told her that yes, he believed they were! That had to mean something. Nathan and Haley had just celebrated their 6th wedding anniversary earlier that year, and they were all settled down and madly in love, with their adorable thirteen-month-old son...
More than anything, Brooke wanted that with Lucas.
She was going to do it. She was going to do it... Right now, over their spaghetti and meatballs, she was going to do it.
All the butterflies in her stomach let out a raucous cheer as she leaned towards him and said, "Lucas, I --"
His cell phone rang.
The butterflies sank back down again.
Lucas held up a finger, told her to "hold that thought, pretty girl", and moved towards the restrooms to take the call.
Brooke spent an agonizing seven minutes at the table by herself, twirling the spaghetti noodles around her pristinely clean fork and contemplating the fact that her beautiful moment had just been utterly, utterly ruined. When was she going to find the courage to actually do it again? Instantly, all the fears she had managed to silence rose up again in one big gush. He would not believe her. He would laugh at her. He would walk away. They would be over. Their relationship would be ruined just because of three words. Granted, three words that added up to a pretty big deal when uttered together, but...still! Just three words! Could she really do that? Tear down their wonderful life with just three words?
She realized as she watched Lucas walk back to the table, that no, she could not.
As all the doubts and fears piled up on her, she managed to catch the solemn look on her boyfriend's face as he sat back down. The butterflies suddenly became dark, creeping moths.
"What is it?" she asked, studying his eyes for some kind of indication as to what could make him look so grave.
"It's Whitey," he told her, voice scratchy from holding back tears.
Brooke frowned and set down her fork. Whitey, or Bryan Durham as he was called by anyone uninformed, had been Lucas's basketball coach at Tree Hill High School, a guiding force in his life, a mentor, a substitute grandfather of sorts. They had kept in touch even when Lucas left Tree Hill and basketball behind, and Lucas spoke of no one like he spoke of Whitey.
The stony look on Lucas's face suddenly scared her more than it worried her. "What about him?"
His usually bright blue eyes cloudy, Lucas reached for her hand and gripped it. She squeezed back.
"He's dead."