Brooke pushed herself off the kitchen stool and walked to the front door and the man standing on the threshold with a smile.

"We've been waiting for you," she exclaimed, walking into the arms he held open for her and nuzzling her face into his shoulder.

"Sorry I'm late," Jake replied. "Someone here refused to leave the house until she found her new shirt." Jake's finger poked into the shoulder of the girl next to him and she grinned sheepishly in response.

"Come here you," Brooke said, folding the girl into her arms. "I missed you! You and your dad are never allowed to go on vacation again, you understand me?" She said sarcastically.

Jenny laughed. "Don't worry Auntie Brooke, we missed you too." She extracted herself from Brooke's grip and found the faces she was looking for, Jamie and Ella, waiting impatiently for her to say her hello's so she could run off and play with them.

Brooke linked her arm through Jake's and they walked back to the kitchen with Nathan and Haley. "No, I'm serious though," Brooke said. "You are never allowed to leave again. Ella drove me crazy asking me every day when Jenny and you were coming home."

Jake blushed. "I told you, you should have come with us!"

Brooke shook her head. "Too much work to do. I just couldn't make it happen."

"I know," Jake said. "We had a good time but we're glad to be home."

"And we are all glad you're home," Brooke said and Haley and Nathan nodded in response.

The foursome grabbed drinks from the kitchen and headed into the living room while the kids ran off to play, their shrieks of laughter echoing down the halls.

"So Nate, what did Lucas want?" Brooke asked.

"Lucas?" The surprise in Jake's tone was unmissable.

"Yeah," Nathan replied. "He called a couple days ago."

"Wow." It was the only word Jake could come up with to mask his surprise.

"Tell me about it. He said he was just checking it, wanted to know how everyone was doing. He didn't really say much about what was going on in his life."

"He didn't say where he was or what he had been doing the past five years that he decided to ignore everyone?" Brooke asked, a hint of anger creeping into her voice.

"Sorry, Brooke. Nothing like that. It was a pretty short conversation," Nathan said.

Silence fell through the room. Jake sighed. He knew what the implications of that phone call meant for Brooke and he worried for her. Worried how it might affect her, worried that she would take it too hard. It had only been a phone call but for Brooke it was so much more. It was the reminder that somewhere out there was a man who had a daughter he didn't know about because he took off with her mother's best friend.

"You okay?" He asked her.

She nodded but a slow blush of anxiety had crept it's way up her cheeks. She was worried, too.

"Can we please talk about something else" Brooke asked and everyone nodded a silent agreement in relief.

"Tell us all about your vacation, Jake!" Haley suggested.

OTHOTHOTH

It was late by the time everyone was ready to head home, much past Ella and Jenny's bedtimes, so somewhere along the way the suggestion was made the Jake and Jenny just spend the night at Brooke's as opposed to driving the ways back to their own home. It wasn't the first time, in fact Jake and Jenny spent a vast majority of their time at Brooke and Ella's.

Over the years a certain bond had cemented without anyone's intention or knowledge of it. Jake was the single father of a motherless daughter. Brooke was the mother of a fatherless little girl. They begun hanging out, bonded over their similar situations. Their daughter's were like glue, best friends in their childish manors, just four years apart in age. Jenny was like a big sister to Ella and Ella was Jenny's own personal little doll. Brooke was the mother Jenny never had. Jake was the father Ella was deprived of. Along the way they became their own sort of little family, not bonded by blood but a foundation equally as strong.

Jake and Brooke stood at the mouth of the door to Ella's room, peering inside to the two little girls asleep in the same bed. Ella and Jenny refused to have it any other way. They were their girls, the two little ones fast asleep. Neither belonging to one nor the other, but both belonging to each.

Brooke pulled the door towards her until it was almost closed, leaving it open a crack as always, and her and Jake tip-toed back down the stairs to the living room where they sat in exhaustion.

"Where's your head at girly?"

Brooke turned her head to gaze into the face she adored. The face of a man that had been so much more than a friend to her over the past four years but had never asked for more, had never expected it.

"I'm happy, Jake. Ella is happy. She might not have her biological father but she has you. She adores you. I think somewhere along that line I convinced myself that I would never hear from him again, that he would just disappear and never be a part of my life again. But now, with him calling Nathan, it's like everything has just come right back to the surface again."

Jake stroked her arm soothingly. "Do you miss him?" There was no envy in his voice.

"For myself, no. But for Ella, definitely. I decided that when I had kids I would be in love, married, and my baby would grow up with two loving parents. Never in my life did I imagine that I would be raising my daughter without a father. That he wouldn't even know of her existence because he ran away." She fought the tears that threatened to choke her.

Jake pulled her in for a hug and ran his fingers through her hair. "I know this is hard for you, Brooke. I know that you want him in Ella's life."

The tears subsided and Brooke pulled away to gaze into the face she found so much comfort in.

"She has you, Jake. And honestly I don't think we could ask for anything better."

He smiled, his heart warming.

"How about we go to bed?" He suggested.

Brooke smiled and nodded and they walked up the stairs together, into her room despite the readily available guest room, and crawled into her bed together, just as they had done a thousand times before.

It was the first night Ella slept through the night in weeks.

Okay so just in case there's any confusion here is the deal: Brooke and Jake are not together. They've just bonded over being single parents and are very very close because of it. Coming up will be Brooke's job and what she does for work, also the history behind what happened with her and Lucas that made him leave.

And very soon Lucas and Peyton will be making their re-entrance to Tree Hill! I hope you all review and I'm looking forward to writing more for you.