He hears the car door of her Range Rover close as he looks over his shoulder dropped yet another candle into a small votive. Jumping to his feet, he grabs a lighter and waves it for her to see.

"I need your help."

"Doing what? Burning this place down?"

She laughs as she walks towards him examining his river court project.

"You're funny." He waves his index finger just in front of his face flashing a sarcastic smile. "And you can be as funny as you want after we finish this."

"Deal." She shrugs before stopping at the center of the court. "If you tell me what all of this is about."

He nods expecting this, as he takes out a familiar tin box from the back pocket of his jeans.

"I thought you might ask that. And since you're my best friend in the world Haley James Scott, here…" He tosses the small box her way as her arms lurch forward catching it.

"The predictions box?"

"Read the last one."

He waits as she opens the box and unfolds the aged piece of paper. Suddenly, she looks up at him with wide eyes.

"This year, I'll fight to make Brooke mine forever?" She reads it aloud as she drops the paper below her eyesight now only devoting her eyes to him.

"Haley you sat here and you told me that the only thing wrong with love and faith and belief is not having it. You were right. I lost myself, and in the process I lost all of those things. And when I look deep into my heart, I know exactly where I lost them. I saw all of it walk away when she did. I know my track record doesn't really corroborate what I'm saying here, but I'm asking you from the bottom of my heart to trust me on this. I love her. And this time I won't let her just walk away."

She looks around the court, and folds up the piece of paper back into the tin box before walking towards him.

"Lucas, you better look me in the eyes and tell me without a shadow of a doubt that this is what you want. I love you and I want you to find every happiness in this world, but I love Brooke, too. And I won't stand by willing and watch her crumble again."

"The first time me and Brooke were together it was physical." He shrugs not knowing how else to say it. It was true after all. "And then I came back from Charleston, and I found that this friend in her. And the closer we got, the more I realized that it wasn't just physical, it was love. That's why after we broke up we couldn't be friends. We could never just be friends. Sometimes, I think about it all and I realize how transparent all of this was. I was friends with Peyton for three years before we got together and there was never a single point where I felt any other than platonic feelings. All these years later, we tried the friendship thing, and here we are again. I don't want to lose another five years, and keep riding this merry go round right back to her. This is how it's always going to be. This time I'm doing something about it."

"So, is this all a part of some elaborate declaration?"

"It's a start. I just… I gotta try. I have to."

"And you want me to light me the candles?" A small smile creeps over her face, and he feels an enormous weight lift from his shoulders.

"I couldn't do any of it without you."

"Well, you're damn right about that." She walks over and reaches for the lighter at his side. "Let's go get your girl." She lights the lighter just before his face as she saunters off to the nearest candle. And all he can do is smile.

XXXX

The door swung open as she was greeted by the smiling face of her godson. On just about any day, no matter how down she was or how lost she felt, he healed her with that smile. Today, though, he seemed to remind her of one person. His sandy blonde hair and blue eyes could have fooled any outsider that Jamie was in fact the son of someone else. It was almost uncanny their resemblance. For a split second, her mind wandered off to wonder if that's what their son might look like….

"Aunt Brooke!"

She wants to thank him for bursting her fantastical momentary illusion. This is reality, and the reality is her and Lucas couldn't be together. Despite whatever "blessing" Peyton may or may not have been trying to give yesterday or whatever fight Lucas promised to supposedly put up, she knew the crushing blow of what losing Lucas meant to her heart. She simply wouldn't survive it again.

Yet, the thought still lingered in her mind.

"Hey handsome man." She kneeled enveloping him in kisses garnering laughter from Jamie.

"Hey Brooke." Nathan appears as he leans against the doorway with his arms folded and a huge smile across his face.

"Hey Tutor-dad." She says standing up taking a step into the house.

"Aunt Brooke I'm going to go try on my new basketball jersey to show you! I got dad's number!"

"Wow, the same number? I bet you have a better jump shot than your old man though." She kinks her eyebrow earning a laugh from Nathan as Jamie disappears up the steps and they make their way in to the kitchen.

"You're lucky my son is obsessed with you cause otherwise I'd have to kick your ass for a comment like that, Davis."

"Oh, please, Nate. You and I both know you need two things to keep you in check: Haley and Brooke Davis mockery."

"That may just be true."

"Speaking of which, where is that wife of yours?"

"She went to meet Luke."

"Oh." She realizes her voice comes out no louder than a whisper. It's been a week since she's seen or heard from him, and hearing about his whereabouts almost knocked the wind out of her. She supposed, though, that she should have known better. She sees now that Nathan has furrowed his eyebrows at her reaction to that sentence. "I was just hoping to see her."

"You okay, Brooke?"

"Yeah, sorry. My mind is just tracking slower these days. Works been kind of crazy."

She watches as he shifts weight between his feet leaning against the kitchen island.

"I know this might be more of Haley's territory…" He laughs a little at this. "But, let's not forget that I have known you since I was three years old. So, I like to think that I do know you, Brooke Davis."

"Sure, you do, Nate." She laughs at his sudden seriousness. "What's going on?"

"I haven't said anything yet to anyone. Not even Haley. I didn't want to assume anything, but like I said I know you, and I know my brother, and you two both do that voice-gets-strangled-in-throat-eyes-deviate thing whenever each other's names are brought up."

"And to think I thought you stopped drinking months ago." She quips trying to make a lighter atmosphere, but she knows he sees right through her.

"Something's going on, isn't it?"

"I'm not sure that there is anything that's going on." She answered honestly and she felt a sinking sensation coarse through her stomach.

"I always wanted whatever it was that made Luke happy. It wasn't for me to decide who or what I thought was right or wrong. I tried to stay out of it as much as I could, and I hope that it didn't seem like I favored anyone. Because truly when I look back, I see when he made his real choice."

She wasn't sure she could stomach much more of this conversation. She didn't want to hear another syllable of Lucas' path to choose Peyton. She could sit back and force a smile, but she couldn't talk about it. Not anymore.

"We know the choice, Nate." She musters up her best form of a smile. "So does all of America. It's okay. Really. You don't need to sift through words to comfort me. We've been over for a really long time."

Nathan looks confused and begins to shake his as if to disagree with her.

"He chose you." His eyebrows shoot up and the words are swallowed up in his throat. "It was right after he refused to take his HCM test. I told him there was something in his heart he was running from, and that he needed to tell the girl how he felt. I didn't name names. That night he broke up with Anna, called Jake to help Peyton out of the mess she was in, and showed up at your door. He saw you with Felix, so you never knew, but he looked into his heart without any solicitation and chose you. Maybe that doesn't make much of a difference now, but I thought maybe you would want to know that even if 'you're not sure if there's anything going on' between the two of you."

A small smirk dances across his lips and feels her heart beat accelerate at this story. How had she never known that? And did it really matter?

"Aunt Brooke! Look at my uniform! And dad bought me LeBrons!" He said as he came barreling down the steps modeling his shoes and uniform.

"Woah, check you out super star!" She says as she tears her eyes away from Nathan who smirks at her.

"Can I wear it to the movies?"

"As long as it's okay with your dad."

"It's okay. It'll be okay."

And she knows he's not talking about the outfit.

XXXX

He virtually jumps up from his seated position on the picnic bench on the outskirts of the river court edge at the sight of her BMW. She gets out of her car timidly and takes even more tentative steps as she makes her way towards him.

"Hey."

He had texted her to meet him here at 9 and to his absolute elation she had come.

"What is all of this, Luke?"

"I just wanted to tell you something." He can't help but to feel like he's smiling so hard his cheeks may burst but he can't help it.

"And the candles?" She gestures to the hundreds of tiny votive candles outlining the river court.

"Ah, they just build the drama of the announcement."

"You don't say anything for a week, and now you have an announcement?" She kinks her eyebrow, but the usual subtlety of humor is missing.

"I just needed to make sure that the first thing I said to you was exactly right."

"Luke, I don't want you to have to try. It should just be."

"Do you know the difference between a soul mate and destiny?" He decides to forego an answer to her previous question.

"Not off cuff." She laughs dryly almost irritated by his question.

"Well, a soulmate is a person ideally suited for another as a close friend or romantic partner. Destiny is a little more tricky. It's a hidden power believed to control what happens in the future. We have no say over it. It's fate."

"Okay, thanks Merriam Webster." She crosses her arms staring at him with curious eyes. "What's the difference to you?"

He grabs the basketball standing at his feet and softly jogs toward her as he stands at the elbow of the court.

"You see this spot right here?"

She nods as he feels his adrenaline begin to go into hyper drive.

"The night of the fantasy boy draft date I mopped all over this court. I told Rachel that you were the one for me. She didn't seem to think that anyone at eighteen could possibly know that. So, she wanted me to prove it. She stood me right here and blind folded me and told me to make the shot. She left it up to destiny that if you were the one I would make the shot." He twirls the leather of the ball through his hands smiling at the memory. "I can still remember standing there feeling my heart beating against my chest. I made it, Brooke. Maybe that seems like a really silly story, but to me it wasn't. When I saw that the ball went in, I realized that it wasn't just in my head that you were the one for me. You were destiny. I couldn't control it. I didn't have any say over it. It just was. Peyton was my soul mate, sure. But Brooke, you were and are and always will be my destiny."

"What happened in between then and now?"

"We'll get there. Look…" He shrugs fighting the urge to just kiss her. In all of her strength, she still had such a vulnerability to her and he wanted to take her small form into his own. "I know that we are way past the point of a few pretty words. I have a lot of proving to do. And all the questions you have, I have answers to. I'll give you each and every single one. I'm not in any rush though because I know that I'm not giving up on this fight. I just want you to see the past in the way that I see it. And I want to see through your eyes too. Somewhere, we hit this gap, and I know we can bridge that. I see a beautiful and crazy future for us because of the past that I know is there. It's the same past that came to life these last few months, Brooke. So, like I said I'll give you all your answers."

"Why didn't you ever tell me that you came to my house to tell me how you felt after your failed HCM test?"

"There's a lot you don't know about back then, Brooke." That very concept used to make him angry. Now, it only made him sad; sad that she never really knew the extent of how he felt, sad that their love story got buried beneath that of Peyton, and sad for the time they lost. "It's crazy, you know? I publish a memoir about my life and the funny is no one even knows the half of it."

"After everything we've been through, I don't even know where to begin with us. The last four months was… good, easy. We didn't have to face what we've built walls against."

"Just because it's easier doesn't make it better."

"I'm not sure I could ever do it again." She whispers out into the night sky and he pauses momentarily looking out over the lights of Tree Hill bouncing off the river.

"That doesn't mean I'll ever give up." For the first time all night, the composure of his voice is broken. "Give me a shot at this, Brooke. Give me a chance to fight. Maybe you find out that you can't do this. Or maybe we get everything we've ever dreamt of."

"Maybe."

It was a start to a future he saw no limits to. It was a start to the rest of his life with Brooke Davis. Maybe.