Author's Note: Okay, so I couldn't get this right to save my life, but I'm attempting. The next chapter is mostly in my head, so that should be up sometime soon as well. I sure hope you went on iTunes and downloaded this beautiful song as well!
When I got to Los Angeles, I stayed in "our" hotel room for a few days. Whenever Lucas left on tour or I had to go to L.A. to do label business, we got that same room, in the same hotel where he proposed to me… twice.
I knew it was a bad idea, because when I opened the door, the memories came flooding back. Six year ago when he proposed and I told him I wanted to wait, and then coming back four years later to say yes to the same proposal. I sat down, holding back tears and then realizing that no one was here to fix what had come undone.
A few weeks passed and I found a small condo to rent with two bedrooms and beautiful view. I spent the next few weeks sitting on my balcony reading or thinking about what I came out here to forget.
The next order of business was unavoidable, and probably hurt the most.
"Mrs. Scott?" the nurse calls out waiting for me to stand and come to the back.
"Why don't you sit down and the doctor will be with you in a moment?"
I nod, knowing that a moment meant more than that… I barely registered the knock before the woman came in to see me.
"Peyton Scott?"
I nod my head, acknowledging her and then answering the few questions that she had for me.
"All right then, let's take a look." She says before glancing down to my rings, "Did you want them to go get your husband from the waiting room?"
I shake my head quickly, and watch as she smears the cold gel on my stomach and starts moving the wand around.
"Hey," she says, putting a comforting hand on my shoulder when she sees the tears that I didn't know were falling down my cheeks, "the baby looks great… You're about ten or eleven weeks along… do you want me to see if we can hear the heartbeat? Sometimes early on we can't hear it, but I can see it, and it's looking good."
"Please." I say, in response to the idea of hearing what's going on inside of me.
When the whooshing starts, I come undone, not being able to hold in what was inevitably going to come out. It's the most beautiful sound in the world, but it's such a bittersweet moment.
And the distance between now is sheltering me, comes in full view.
I took the picture she gave me home, put it on the fridge, and laid down, crying out for everything that wasn't fair to me.
"Shhh… the baby's okay… you're okay, Peyton."
I shake my head, trying to bury myself in the scent that I know in reality isn't there. "No."
"You have to be strong through this, Peyton. You know that. It's you against the world, so you'd better start fighting."
"I don't have any fight left…"
He smiles, looking into my teary eyes, placing a hand on my cheek, "Peyton, you have fight in you… you can do this, and I'll be right here with you."
When I wake up, my next goal is to find something to occupy my time. He's right, I won't go down without a fight, and I need to put myself out there and I need to live life like I said I wanted to do. I found some art classes and a few prenatal yoga classes at a little rec center down the street from my condo the next day, and I tried.
Months later, I find myself in a great place… at least mentally. Lucas still haunts my dreams, as I would hope he would, I've befriended a few nice women who live in my small neighborhood, and what label business I do have to attend to, just requires a few phone calls to bands and managers. They don't have to know where I am, and I'm totally fine with all of that.
"Peyton, why is it that I know nothing about you?" Katie asks as we sit drinking our decafs outside on the sidewalk.
"You guys know plenty about me." I say nervously, knowing that she speaks the truth.
"No… actually, we don't. We see you every Tuesday and Thursday in class, sometimes take in a lunch or coffee after, but we know nothing."
"What is there to know?"
"Well, where have you been all my life, first of all… because you are one of the funniest people I know… Why don't we ever see you outside of this little bubble? Who's your husband and what's he like? Where are you from, because that accent is screaming south? And… most importantly… how can you be so tiny when you are farther along than everyone in our little coffee group!"
I laugh at the last comment. I think to myself that if Haley were here, she would be saying the same thing. At seven months pregnant, I looked like I was only five months along. The little peanut was there and growing perfectly, according to my doctor, but I was the envy of all the woman in my prenatal yoga classes. Which made me again think that if Brooke was here, she would laugh at me taking yoga of any kind That in itself is why I do it… the mental picture of Brooke laughing at the thought.
I take a moment to consider everything, knowing this specific woman from my first day of class a few months ago… never opening up to any one since I moved five months ago.
"Do you want the whole crazy story?"
"I do." Katie says, leaning in and putting her chin in her hand, letting her elbow prop up on the table between us.
She scoots back in her chair to almost examine my features before saying, "Peyton, I don't know you very well, but from the moment we met, I knew that you had gone through a lot. I don't know what that is, but I have a feeling that you don't have anyone around to get through any of it with. If you want, I can be that person. If you don't want, I can listen to you unload, and I can act like I never heard a word."
"I moved here five months ago, but I had lived here for a few years before now. I moved back to my home town in North Carolina to be back with my friends. I think the main reason I moved back there was to get back to Lucas."
"Lucas is your husband, I assume?"
"He was with someone else, which wasn't a surprise considering our history of not being in the right place at the right time. He was an author, and on the day he was going to marry his editor, she left him at the altar, claiming that his latest novel was about his love for me."
"That is like out of a TV show or something… that doesn't happen in real life."
I smile then, knowing that she's right for most people, "you didn't know me and Lucas. We were the couple that you rooted for from the beginning, and everybody said that we'd end up together. Our best friends told us later that they spent most of the time wanting to smack the two of us for not getting our acts together. So, a few months after the almost wedding, he called me from the airport asking me to marry him in Vegas. We didn't go through with it, but did so later on. We were married for two years when he took our nephew out to play basketball and died from a heart attack."
"Peyton…"
"I got through it, found out I was pregnant, and realized that I couldn't be there anymore. I needed to be away from Tree Hill and away from everything that reminded me of Lucas."
"So you are here alone? And you're about to have a baby… Peyton, you can't do this by yourself. I have two kids at home, and I'm telling you that this isn't a job you do on your own."
"I couldn't handle it there, and finding out I was pregnant wasn't exactly the easiest thing to do right after your husband dies."
"I wish I could say that I get that, but Peyton…"
"You sound just like everyone at home with the 'but Peyton's… I can't deal with that."
"Okay, what do you need?"
I furrow my brow for a moment, not understanding what she meant by the question, "I mean what do you need from me?"
"I don't need anything, which is why I haven't told anybody about any of this." I say with a smile and an arrogance that I really can't afford as of this moment.
"Okay, what do you want then? What does you in L.A. play out to be, because I'm thinking that a few months from now, you're going to regret leaving, and they're all going to want you and that baby back in North Carolina."
"They don't know about the baby… I couldn't tell anyone about it, and I haven't talked to any of them since I left that day. Knowing all of them, they have probably tried more than a few times to find me out, but with no contact, that makes it kind of hard."
"But why?"
"I needed a clean break. I needed time away from the place where all my dreams came true and all my dreams were taken away from me. Is that hard to understand?" I ask, watching her face digest that comment.
"Okay, well… my offer stands to be that person for you, if you realize that you need it."
"Thank you for that." I say, standing up and wishing her a good couple of days until I saw her again on Thursday.
"How did it feel?" Lucas asked me that evening, almost instantly after I closed my eyes.
"How did what feel?"
"Finally telling someone about all that you were going through in that pretty little head of yours."
"I don't know how it felt, but based on her reaction, I think she thinks that I'm crazy."
"Well, I knew that when I married you, and I'm sure that I knew that when I fell in love with you. Crazy works for you Peyton, but this is taking it to a whole new level. You haven't talked to anyone, and they are worried sick about you."
"Are apparitions supposed to tell you things that they see like that?"
"I don't know… are sane people supposed to talk to their dead husbands in their dreams?"
I just squint back at him, in the same manner that he used to do to me when I annoyed him with a silly question or banter.
"I'm just saying that I thought that this would only last a few weeks or a month at most. You're acting like you're going to have the baby here in L.A. and never go back to Tree Hill."
"And what if I don't?"
"That's not fair Peyton. That's not fair to our daughter or to our family and friends. And while we saying it, it isn't fair for you either. You've let out your feelings to one person, and even then it was the surface version. You aren't going to have the support system you need out here, and you know that."
"I don't need that though, Luke. I still have almost two months before… wait… our daughter?"
"I don't know for sure, but I'm almost positive."
"Can you do that?"
"I don't know, I haven't done this before…" he says with the smirk that I love on his face.
"I'll figure it out."
"You don't have as long as you think you do, Peyton. You need them."
My stubborn self wasn't going to listen to him. No matter how much he knows me and how much I know that it is probably my subconscious creating him in my dreams… I wasn't going back. Not yet. It was too soon.
She came sooner than I thought she would. Sawyer Brooke Scott was born a month too early, but with all fingers, toes, and everything possible absolutely perfect.
"Mrs. Scott, don't you need us to call someone? What about your husband?" the nurse says, coming in to check on me yet again.
"No, I'm fine, but thank you." I say, not taking my eyes off our daughter, sleeping beside me in a bassinet.
When the nurse was out of the room, I continued the conversation I had started with my daughter in hushed tones, "Sawyer, you are the luckiest girl in the whole world, because you have a mom who is going to love you more than anything, and you have a dad who wishes more than anything that he could be here with you. You have a family that would love you too…"
Lucas' words from a month ago were now fresh in my head, him saying how unfair it was to me, to Sawyer, to our friends and family, and even to him.
I took a picture that night of her sleeping on my phone, and did the one thing I knew had to be done, I sent it out to Tree Hill. I got three replies. Well, four actually. One said "She's beautiful, and I love you, Mom." The rest only had two words, "Come home."
Couldn't they understand that I couldn't? Not yet.
Hang my head, break my heart
Built from all I have torn apart
The weeks moved on, and Sawyer and I got into a routine. Well as much of a routine as you can with a newborn child. She would calm to her father's voice, which I loved, because it would calm me too, listening to him read our story over and over again.
A few of the girls, including Katie, from our yoga class came by to see the baby and see how I was doing, and surprisingly, not one of them asked the question that was evident on their face. Katie claimed that she wanted to help clean up, the perfect guise for staying after to talk to me and look into the surroundings.
"Is this you and Lucas?" she says, looking at the photo from our honeymoon two years ago.
"Yeah, that's Luke."
"You guys were happy."
"That we were." I say, sitting down on the couch, knowing that she would continue to scope out the pictures, and knowing that Sawyer would be fussing in just a few minutes, awaking from her nap. I needed the rest, but I dared not show it.
"And who are these people?"
"The girl next to me is my best friend, Brooke. The guy is my brother-in-law and good friend, Nathan and his wife Haley."
"And the little boy."
"Our nephew Jamie… Haley and Nathan got married when we were still in high school and Jamie came about a year after that."
"Do they know?"
"I sent them a picture right after she was born. Lucas' mom just said that she was beautiful and that she loved me. The rest of them just told me to come home."
"And…"
"And I think I'm good right where I am."
Just then, Sawyer started to fuss, as I knew that she would. I cuddled her for a little bit while Katie cleaned up in the kitchen, and then I couldn't take it any more. "Hey Kate?"
"Yeah."
"Can you hit play on the stereo?"
She hit play, and after a few minutes, Sawyer's cries quieted, and she looked up at me from her little pink blanket with tears in her eyes. It was right where we left off. My favorite part of the book.
…I knew that I was and forever would be in love with Peyton Sawyer...
The kitchen was silent which I took as a sign that Katie was just putting together everything that she had heard with everything that I had told her.
"I uh… I think I'm going to head out. You okay?"
"Yeah, we're good. Thanks for coming out today though, and I'll see you next week?"
"Honestly, Peyton, I hope you don't…"
I was taken back by her frankness… the short way in which she dismissed me. "What?"
"Go home."
"I am home."
"No, you aren't…" she says with a sad shake to the head and a quick departure.
After she left, I sat up for a while, looking at old pictures and listening to Lucas read over and over again, hearing her words play out in my head the entire night.
I heard him declare over and over again that I was the love of his life, and that the realization of that fact was an absolute moment of clarity. I flashed back to telling him that I was so terribly in love with him on our wedding day. I flashed back to the moment I realized that there was nothing that could possibly make me more happy than to have a baby with this man. All of these things flashed within me, and I realized that I surely wasn't over Lucas Scott, and I never would be.
And my burden to bear is a love I can't carry anymore
"Go home, Peyton."
"She was right, today… When Katie left and she said that I wasn't home, she was right."
"I know that, but when did you figure that out?"
"I love you more than life Lucas Scott, and I know that you loved me just the same. You cherished me and all that we had and were supposed to have together. You adored me, and I couldn't have asked for anything more than that, but I can't carry all of that with me anymore. I can't keep all of that inside me, and the only people that even remotely understand that are in Tree Hill."
"So you're going back?"
"As soon as the lease is up…"
"That's another few months, Peyton."
"I know, but I still need to wrap my head around the idea, and Sawyer needs to be old enough to handle the trip."
"But you are going back."
"I'm going back."
"What made you finally decide?" Katie asks me a week later when I tell her the news.
"You… and Lucas."
"Lucas?"
"I talk to him, you know? When my mom died when I was little my dad said that you can always talk to people after they are gone, because a part of them is always with you. So I talk to him sometimes, and he gets me out of all my crazy funks, and helps me keep sane."
"When are you leaving?"
"A couple months. I want Sawyer to be okay for the car, and I've got a few months left on my lease."
"Good"
Those weren't the thoughts in my head when I stepped out of the car that warm evening in Tree Hill some three months later.