Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing related to One Tree Hill.

A/N: Hey guys! It's my spring break so I'm pretty excited Anywho, I've had this written for a few days and it's based off one of the Leyton prompts from LukePeyTLA. I hope I do it justice. This is my first One Tree Hill fic even though it's what I've been reading ever since I found the site. Let me know what you think and whether or not you'd like me to continue and feel free to pm me with any ideas, I'm always open to suggestions and I love to know what you guys think will happen and what you would like to see happen. Enjoy!

Lucas Scott watched as the curly blonde, once venomous, strong-minded and stubborn, backed away from him with defeat and tiredness written all over her face. She was giving up on him. That's what she had said before leaving. She was letting him go and letting him be happy as the ultimate sacrifice of love. She wants him to be happy. Luke stood in the center of the gym, utterly perplexed as to why she had just done what she did when he had been swearing to everyone around him (maybe a little too often and too defensively) that they had been over for years, that he had let her go. So why did it feel like this time she wouldn't be coming back to him? Why did it feel like after she was out of those double doors and into her Comet that things would actually be over? Not just kind of over, where they skirt around each other and only share brief, furtive glances, but where they were both letting each other go? That had never happened before. There had never been a time that Lucas could remember when one of them didn't want the other, when one of them wasn't fighting or at least secretly pining over their blonde counterpart.

This was…different. Lucas felt his heart rate speed up a little bit as he thought of what an end to them would actually mean. This would be bad different. A different that he had never cared to experience and didn't want to experiment with now. This was moving on, for real, and though he had been claiming to everyone in Tree Hill that he had moved on long ago, he knew that her moving on would change things. She wouldn't be an option anymore. She wouldn't be his safe place to return to. She wouldn't be the one person he could always count on being there. It was like he was losing his home and his chest ached just a bit for what he was losing because not only was Peyton evicting him from her own heart, but it felt like she was packing her things and moving out of his as well. Despite what either had said or didn't say over the years, they had always resided in one another's heart, and it was scary to not have that space anymore. It wasn't right not to.

He heard the gym doors slam shut and it brought him out of his reverie. A part of him, the part that had always been a little more brave and a little less rational, told him to run after her. That part of himself told Lucas to chase her. It told him to fight for Peyton, just this one time. He had never done it before, for that other part of him, the side that was a little more afraid of being hurt and a little less secure in being with someone that he could love with the same intensity that they loved him, maybe even a little more, that side had always held him back. It really is truth; it seemed to him, that no one ever truly changes. He had been called a hero many times in his life. Mrs. James called him a hero the day he broke Haley's fall as they both began to tumble out of an oak tree one summer afternoon. He tried to play the hero when he jumped in to the water after Nathan on his second wedding day to Haley. Then there was Peyton. Her exact words to him had been you're always saving me, but he didn't feel like it in that library, and he realized as the one person he had ever really wanted a future with walked out of those doors and possibly his life that he was more cowardly than anything else. He never fought. Not for the things he wanted most.

As Peyton walked out of the gym, she knew her life was changing forever. As she looked up to the gray sky in the parking lot, she figured that the storm clouds waiting to unleash the rain were pretty fitting for the situation. She had just given up the one thing, the one man, she had ever actually needed. She hadn't let herself get attached to many people in her life, her mantra being people always leave; it seemed more appropriate to not let people in in the first place. Unfortunately, Lucas Scott, damn him, had weaseled his way into her heart and her mind and every crevice of her soul with his tender words and intense blue eyes filled to capacity with thoughts and feelings that had usually reciprocated her own. Not anymore, she thought to herself. Apparently, everything she thought she had seen, everything she thought would last forever, had gone away. The blank look on Lucas's face as she exited the gym spoke a lot to her; he was done, and the fact that she was letting him go was a relief to him. As she neared her car she was glad that she had convinced Brooke to come with her. Although all she really wanted to do was wallow in self-pity, being alone at a time like this wouldn't have been any good. Sometimes all it takes to heal a person is their best friend. Maybe it wouldn't get rid of all the pain, but Peyton knew that Brooke could help to mend her cuts, bruises and bitterly wounded and jaded heart.

They had been driving in silence for the past ten minutes and Brooke really wasn't sure where they were going. All Peyton had spoken was a question, asking if Brooke would drive, and the brunette had easily read the sign that whatever happened inside of Tree Hill High's gym had not gone well for her best friend and that it had left her battered and broken. She looked to her right, not broken…cracked. She had seen the cracks multiplying over the months they had been back in their hometown, but now it was obvious that if any more damage was done to her already fragile self, Peyton wouldn't last, and for that, Brooke hated Lucas Scott for a moment. She just didn't understand why he was so blinded by an ego that always seemed to get him into trouble. In Brooke's opinion, things were simple. All he had to do when they returned was to dump the Peyton 2.0, a lesser version if one was to ask Brooke, and be with Peyton because he was so gaga in love with her and everyone could tell except for Lucas.

Peyton's yelling of her name pulled her from her thoughts and she realized she'd not even been looking in the direction of the road ahead of her. She turned quickly, trying to regain her composure behind the wheel, but her eyes widened at the sight she saw. One of those giant trucks, the type everyone hates to be stuck behind because they are just so slow and shouldn't even be allowed on the same roads as people with normal sized vehicles, was coming right at them. They were in the middle of an intersection, their light green, and though Brooke wanted to swerve, to do so being her natural instinct, she knew if she did she would run into another car, making this even worse. She closed her eyes and her knuckles turned white as her grip on the wheel tightened. Her last thought before everything went black was that those damn trucks really should not have been allowed on the streets.

There was one thought remaining on both blondes minds at the moment the truck hit: things would never be the same.

A/N: I'm not too sure about this ending, but tell me what you guys think about it and whether you'd like to see it continue in a review. It really does only take two seconds. I hope you enjoyed it. Until next time…

Aryn