Chapter Eleven: The Missing Link


Author's note: So once again, it has been ridiculously long since I've updated and once again I'm SO sorry. Basically I started college and my life was crazy and I feel bad because you guys deserve to know what happens, so I'm going to do my best to keep updating. Please review, hope you enjoy this one.

If nothing else, Brooke Davis had always been able to see the best in an opportunity.

And if nothing else, this was an opportunity. A terrifying one, and one she thought she would never have to face, but an opportunity just the same. As she stepped out of a cab and onto the sidewalk, she forced herself to remember this.

In her right hand she clutched the now faded photograph she had with her for eleven long years. The picture of the dark haired baby with the hazel eyes who looked stubbornly and irrevocably like her, and would forever even if Peyton Scott was always her mother, even if she never knew Brooke existed.

She had only had this photograph of Cassie, had not known her grown up face until she had seen her in the grocery store. Cassie had looked different, but not enough. Not enough that she didn't recognize her. Not enough that when Brooke saw her for the first time in eleven years she didn't fall in love with her all over again, love her just as much as the one and only time she had ever held her in her arms and cried tears of happiness and pain.

It did not take her long to locate her destination. Tree Hill was a place she had once known well, and it had not changed much.

The man sitting on the bench did not turn to face her when she sat. She crossed her legs and waited for him to speak.

"Hello, Brooke," he said eventually. She smiled to herself, glad not to be the one to speak first.

"Hey Nathan."

Nathan finally turned to face her. She looked more different than he had realized. More makeup, less of her dimpled smile. He looked older, too. More solid, less of a boy. A man now.

"How's Daytona?" asked Brooke after a moment, realizing he was not about to speak again. She had only met Nathan's wife briefly, but had remembered liking her. Nathan frowned.

"She died after Celia was born."

Brooke winced, and mentally tried to think of anything she could have said that possibly would have been worse. She decided there was nothing.

"Nathan, I..."

"It's fine. I didn't ask you here to talk about that," he said.

"Why did you?"

"Peyton's back."

"Back?"

"I keep forgetting how much you missed out on. It didn't turn out how you wanted it to, Brooke. Peyton left Lucas when Cassie was six because they could never get over what happened between you too. She's been pretty much absent since. But now she's here, again."

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked.

"Because I'm not going to let Peyton and Lucas get back together out of habit just to fall apart and break Cassie even more. She deserves better. She deserves to know her mother. At least when you abandoned her, you thought you were doing it for her best interests. And Lucas..." Nathan paused and Brooke stayed silent, well aware of how difficult this would be for him to say. "Lucas deserves to be happy. And he's never going to be, without you."

"But you hate me."

"I don't hate you. And this isn't about me."

Brooke nodded. She let herself imagine her future in its most ideal light, as she only let herself do in moments of weakness. Pictured finally knowing her beautiful daughter, being with Lucas and finally living out the love that had been tormenting them for over a decade.

"I don't understand what it is you want me to do. Cassie is Lucas' daughter, legally. I can't just go in and announce I'm her mother and that I want to be part of her life. I wouldn't. It's not fair."

"Start slow."

"Where could I possibly start?"

Nathan nodded at a figure in the distance. She gasped in recognition as he drew closer. As Nathan got up to meet him, she fought the impulse to get up off the bench as well.

"Don't blame her. I told her to meet me, she didn't even know you were coming," she heard him mutter.

Lucas walked toward the bench and stood in front of her. She blinked rapidly. She could not see him properly with the sun behind him. She rose to look directly at him.

She stood unsteadily. He reached out to touch her arm as if to steady her. She could now see his face – the same scruffy facial hair, the same blue eyes that were just as full of pain now as they had been then. She resisted the urge to touch him, to make sure he was really there, to wallow in their closeness, to drink it in with the eagerness she desired. Brooke shut her eyes tightly and found herself wondering whether or not she was affecting him just as deeply.

He sat down on the bench where Nathan had been sitting. He sat just as she remembered – back straight, feet both on the ground and far apart. She sat now demurely, her left leg crossed over her right. She tried to remember how she used to sit and found she could not. With surprise she realized how much more of him she remembered than she remembered of herself.

"You look different."

Brooke frowned. In a movie, these would not be the first lines spoken between ex – lovers after a decade of being apart. But then, their relationship never had been conventional.

"You look the same."

But he did not. Even as she spoke she knew it wasn't true. He looked older in the same way that Nathan did.

"So Cassie didn't figure out who I was?" asked Brooke bluntly. He shook his head.

"She's still trying to put the pieces together. I still can't figure out if I want her to."

Lucas looked sideways at Brooke, who was looking at him so entreatingly. He laughed cynically.

"I'm mad at you. Why is that? You did me a favour. You honestly thought that it would be best for all of us, and I think a part of me did too. You really thought that letting her grow up with a real family would be best for her, so I let you leave. You could have stuck around, and everything would have been different but we both knew I wouldn't have been able to stay away from you. I never could. So you left, and I let you. I was in love with you. I'm mad at you, and it's not even your fault," said Lucas bitterly.

"Don't do this."

"I've been doing this for eleven years."

Brooke looked away when she saw the intense look on his face, the one he had worn so often when they were together and he had felt guilt over cheating on his wife so shamelessly. The look he wore when he knew what he was doing was wrong but just loved her too much to care.

"Peyton left?" continued Brooke. Lucas laughed at her complete lack of a subtle buildup.

"Years ago. I guess she thought she was doing the right thing, too. You know, I never got to choose what I thought was the right thing."

"You did the right thing. Always have. I saw Cassie in Raleigh. You did good with her, Luke," said Brooke.

"I kept expecting you to come back. And call me Luke again, and Peyton wouldn't even matter. We would figure it out, right? But you never did," said Lucas.

"I wanted to. Every day," she swore.

"There have been a lot of days between then and now, Brooke," said Lucas skeptically.

"Trust me. I know."

Lucas sighed and thought back to the first day in the long string of days. He had not thought about the day in years, and realized that part of him wished he could forget it.

Flashback

"Are you Lucas Scott?"

Lucas clumsily placed the cup of coffee he'd been holding back on the table and stood up to greet the woman who had spoken to him. He raised his eyebrows in surprise. He'd been expecting a slightly older woman, one who was obviously already a mother. Without realizing it he already had a clear vision of what the potential surrogate would look like. The woman standing before him did not match it in the slightest.

She was of average height and slender, though not as much as his wife was. It struck him instantly how utterly different this woman was from Peyton – dark haired as opposed to light, shorter and curvier, cheerful and not moody. He smiled awkwardly at her and wondered what the correct protocol for this meeting was. He gestured to the seat opposite him.

"Sit down. My wife is running late," he said. She sat across from him and he forced himself to stop scrutinizing her.

"It's fine. I was hoping to get to know the both of you, anyway," said the woman.

"Yeah. I get that. Peyton said she talked to you on the phone, but she didn't mention your name..."

"Oh, Brooke. Brooke Davis."

Lucas nodded and reached out to shake her hand, their introduction now complete. She smiled a dimpled smile at him and instinctively he found himself smiling back. He relaxed slightly. He was beginning to enjoy being in her company, somehow it was so much less oppressive than being with Peyton at home, where everything was to tense and unhappy.

"I wasn't expecting someone like you," he admitted frankly.

"Yeah. The agency didn't even want to let me. They said I was too young, and was too likely to get attached. I just wanted to do something good, help someone," she said.

Lucas nodded in apparent understanding.

"Did you grow up around here, Brooke Davis?" he asked.

"Not really. I came out here after I got tired of the city. Did you?"

"Yeah. Both of us. Peyton and I got married pretty soon after high school," said Lucas.

"That's sweet. I don't even remember the names of all the guys I dated in high school."

Lucas opened his mouth as if to comment, but seemed to realize it was inappropriate and closed his mouth again. She stifled a giggle.

"It was hard for us when we found out we couldn't have a child. We had everything going for us, and then... I really appreciate you doing this for us." Lucas frowned at his words. "I mean, if you do decided to do this for us..."

Brooke reached across the table and put his hand over his.

"Like I said. I want to help."

Lucas smiled at her, but quickly removed his hand when the door to the cafe opened. Brooke looked over her shoulder and was instantly intimidated by the leggy blonde that came to their table and smiled at the pair of them.

"Hey. Brooke Davis, this is my wife Peyton."

Peyton shook Brooke's hand before sitting beside her husband. Brooke looked downward uncomfortably while Peyton briefly assessed her.

"Who don't you tell us about yourself, Brooke?" inquired Peyton pleasantly. Brooke looked back up and tried to think of something intelligent and useful she could say and found she could not.

"Brooke grew up outside of Tree Hill and moved here recently," said Lucas helpfully, jumping in to rescue her. Brooke sent him a grateful smile and continued, the playful atmosphere of their meeting now gone.

Lucas took Peyton's hand as they walked toward their car after the meeting. Brooke walked away in the opposite direction.

"So? What did you think?" he asked.

"I don't think she's the right fit," said Peyton bluntly. He frowned.

"Really? I thought she seemed good."

"I noticed.

"Peyton..."

"Sorry. It's just hard," said Peyton.

Lucas put his arm around his wife's shoulders and squeezed them reassuringly. In that moment, he was quite sure he would never see Brooke Davis again.

End of Flashback

Lucas broke out of his reverie when he realized that Brooke was staring at him. He briefly remembered the events that had followed – Peyton and him meeting other potential surrogates, him slowly forming a friendship with Brooke that began with the two of them discussing his difficulties with Peyton and blossomed into their affair. Brooke becoming pregnant, which eventually "solved" all of their problems, albeit leaving them all in misery. He sighed painfully and stood up.

"Are you leaving?" asked Brooke.

"No. We are. Nathan was right. Cassie does deserve to know her mother."

Brooke stood as well, looking shaky.

"What? You want her to learn everything? Now?"

"We can start slow."

"You mean you want her to meet me, but you don't want her to know I'm her mother?"

Lucas nodded.

He took her hand as if by instinct and led her toward a parked car. As they drove toward Tree Hill Elementary School, she thought once more of the girl she had been thinking of every day for eleven years.