"I'm sorry, Lindsey. I just can't do this anymore." Lucas heard those words leave his mouth and, almost immediately after he spoke them, he realized what they meant. In kissing Lindsey and finally, unknowingly confronting his feelings for Peyton, he had proved Brooke right. He was hiding. Hiding from his destiny, hiding from the woman that he had loved since before he had even met her, hiding from himself, and from the fear that opening his heart again would leave him as bruised and broken as his last real attempt at loving had.
"When you hide from something or someone, the only thing that you really hide from is yourself, your fear of failure, your insecurities, the belief that, when you truly love someone, the world is almost sure to pull them away from you, the tragic knowledge that hope is almost always the harbinger of heartbreak." These were the first truly meaningful words that Lucas had been able to write in months, and they seemed to simply spill out of their own accord, a river of letters swirling into a sea of words.
As he gazed down at them, he heard a knock at the front door. "Peyton, hi. I was just about to come talk to you about something. Do you want to…come in?"
Her legs and lips and sweetly scented hair were like poetry in motion as she walked shyly into the living room. "Well, I was just coming to see how you were doing. With Lindsey and all. So, why don't we start with your issue. What's up?"
"Well, first of all, Lindsey and I are over."
"Oh, Luke! Are you
OK? What can I do to help?"
"Lindsey and I ended things
because of you, Peyton. Because of our past…and present."
"Luke, I don't even know what to say. I'm sooooo sorry! I'll talk to Lindsey if you want me to; I'll go to New York, call her, just tell me what to-"
She suddenly lost her breath as he took it away, pressing his thumb gently to her lips. "I ended things with Lindsey, Peyton. Because of you. Because it's always been you."