Alright, so sorry for the delay. Don't even have a good excuse, but I'm back now! I'm working on updating my stories and if you haven't seen it yet, I'm restarting my story Be My Baby. Hope you are all still reading and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Also all faves and follows are appreciated. Love you all and I promise you will be hearing from me soon! In the mean time, Happy Holidays everyone! And stay safe!
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"I'm serious Nathan. If she so much as squeaks I want you to call me and I'll be right back here." Brooke spoke sternly with a perfectly manicured finger pointed threateningly at her friend.
"I know Davis. Calm down, I got her. And besides, if she does have a nightmare, I'll be right here to help her too. I told you before, you don't have to do this all by yourself." The basketball player reassured the stressed woman. He rolled his eyes at the huffy face she made.
"Nate, I'm serious. You don't understand. You REALLY need to just call me if something happens." She stressed to the man.
"Brooke, it's eight o'clock at night, my son is staying at his grandmother's house, my wife is running around to get some fun stuff for us to do, and the both of us are pretty much ready to spend the whole night here with Peyton. Stop worrying so much."
The two kept a steady gaze for a moment before the woman sighed. Rubbing a hand over her face she mumbled about.
"What was that?" Nathan asked, not hearing her grumbled speech.
"You just don't understand. I don't think she'd handle waking up to a man very well Nate."
Red flags immediately went up in his mind. "What!? What's that supposed to mean?"
His questioning gaze met her nervous hazel ones as she shifted her weight, unsure if she should share what Peyton had told her only the night before.
"Brooke, what is it? Did something happen?" He tried again. "Does it have something to do with why she's here? Why she left?"
This finally broke her silence and she sighed harshly before taking in a shaky breath. She only shook her head before silently moving towards the kitchen. Nathan followed her, frowning at her actions. He stayed silent though as he watched her open the drawer under the sink. Careful hands shuffled a few things around before pulling out a small stack of papers. Without a word she sat them face down on the dining room table and went off down the hall. She returned a moment later and sat down at the table before regarding her friend.
"Peyton is still asleep. She'll still needs to wake up in an hour though for her last dose of medicine and some dinner. When is Haley supposed to be getting here?"
Confused at the sudden change of subject, he stood in his spot before hesitantly sitting down across from her. "She should be here in a minute. I told her to just come in and be quiet since Peyt was still out. She was bringing over some dinner and a few movies and stuff, in case blondie up there didn't wanna go right back to bed."
Brooke nodded and idly fingered the papers in front of her. Looking up to Nathan and nodding, she softly spoke, "okay, well I'd rather only have to do this once so we'll wait for her."
Nathan could only nod back, still not sure what exactly was going on. They didn't wait long. Not even ten minutes later the young wife snuck in hands full of pizza boxes and various bags of chips. She smiled as she joined the other two, setting the food down at the table. She gave her husband a quick peck before asking him to bring in the rest of their stuff. He shook his head with a smirk before going off to do his wife's bidding. Haley turned to Brooke once he was out the door.
"Hey, why the face?" The mother in her came out seeing her friend looking so unsettled.
"Hales you need to sit down." Brooke informed while glancing up at her friend.
The smile on the teacher's face slowly left as she settled in the chair next to the other woman.
"Brooke, what's wrong?"
The brunette only disregarded her question, countering it with one of her own. "You know I'm only going for the night right? I probably won't even be gone that long." She joked, trying to lighten things up as she saw Nathan stumble in with bags full of what she guessed to be movies and games and even more snacks.
Haley blushed lightly before defending, "well I thought it'd be better to keep her mind off the fact that you won't be here. I kinda figured she wouldn't be able to sleep very much without you here tonight either. I just wanted to be prepared."
The mention of her favorite blonde's sleeping habits brought her mind right back to the papers that she was currently messing with. To that horrible image that she couldn't possibly get out of her mind since Peyton had first shown it to her the night before. She shook her head as she realized that the married couple were both now sitting at the table with her, staring at her with concern. Taking one last deep breath, she flipped the papers but kept her eyes only on the couple.
"Listen, about yesterday and what happened at the diner...well, I got Peyton to open up about a few things. Actually, she's been opening up, but some of it really wasn't making sense until last night."
"What do you mean Brooke?" A by now very concerned Haley questioned.
"The nightmares, the clinginess...I mean Peyton has always hated being alone to some extant but we all know she would still need some alone time. Now she, well it's like she literally scared to be alone."
The married couple shared a glance before Nathan stepped in to say, "I really think it's more her being scared to be without you Brooke."
The designer held their gaze before stealing a glance at the dreaded papers. "Yea, that's probably true. But it's more than just that. It's...these drawings..." She trailed off.
"Drawing?" Nathan wondered.
Brooke held their gaze with a sudden fierceness in her eyes, as if questioning their resolve. A moment later she relaxed again and silently slid the papers towards her friends. "These drawings. Ever since Peyton's been back she's been using drawing to communicate-"
"Yea, we knew that part." Haley cut in.
"But, she's also been drawing her memories as they come back to her or as she makes new ones. She usually asks me whether they actually happened or not or if they were just a dream. Sometimes she'll ask me to tell her the whole story about them instead of just the snapshot her remembers. I usually only tell her parts of it though and she remembers more of it over the next few days." A small smile came upon the brunette's face, thinking back to how happy Peyton was when she remembered a memory mostly by herself and also how proud she'd be of Peyton in those moments. It faltered though when her mind came back to the present.
"But some of these drawings, these memories of her's...I just... I have no clue about. But it's not just that. They're just odd little moments. None of them really made sense until last night. Like the one on top there. It's just her on her bed, staring out towards her window. The whole room is painted black and there's nothing in there but her bed. And I know you can't see her face, but I swear... I swear I can just feel how scared or worried or hurt she is there."
Brooke kept her now trembling voice low as she carefully observed her friends analyzing the pictures. Their expressions would change as they slowly shifted through the pile of odd sketches. Brooke would occasionally voice out about them, memorizing their exact order from going through them so often by herself. She'd torture herself over them, trying to figure out why these exact memories of the blonde's struck her as so strange. But she was always careful to keep them from the blonde herself. Whatever was weird about them, she had a bad feeling about it. And she didn't want these sketches hanging around to bring back bad memories for the woman she loved. She wanted to protect her from them. So she kept them hidden, away from the rest of the sketches the blonde would make and often revisit. The next one in the pile caught her attention and she spoke out to her friends who by now both had concerned and disturbed looks on their faces.
"That's another one. She was perfectly happy that day. We had laid in bed all day, watching movies and laughing. There was the most relaxing bath that night and she had even fallen asleep on me while we were in it. She was so happy. And then she woke up sweating like crazy and hyperventilating. She wouldn't talk to me but she just kept shaking and she drew that before she broke down crying in my arms." Brooke gazed absently at the paper, replaying the moment in her mind.
Haley stayed silent as she heard her husband let out small, quiet disgruntled noises. She could practically feel the tension radiating off of him. She wasn't doing too much better herself though as she stared down at the sketch Peyton had made of herself crouched down into a tiny ball in the corner of the shower. Although the spray of the shower and the fact that Peyton's face was hidden in her arms, the mother just knew that her friend was crying. And that made her heart hurt. These sketches...Brooke was right, something was definitely off about them. As they sorted through them, her concern for her recently returned friend grew exponentially. Something in this picture caught her attention though.
"Brooke, what's in the window?"
"What? What window? Peyton's show doesn't have a window?" The confused brunette mumbled.
"Yea, it looks like..." Haley trailed off as she brought the paper closer to her face for a better look.
"It looks like a guy." Nathan stated in an odd tone.
"What!?" Brooke said a little loudly before snatching the paper from the teacher's hands. Chocolate eyes scanned the paper for the questionable art. They widened once they saw a familiar looking shadow figure. "That fucking asshole!"
"What!? Brooke!" Haley sputtered, taken aback by the brunette's outburst.
"It's the same guy Haley. The same guy!"
The married couple only showed concerned and confused faces at their friend's ranting.
Brooke shook her head. "Just skip to the last picture!"
Haley followed the order and moved a few more sketches out of the way before her eyes met the one that had been made only the night before. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at but once she did she gasped from shock. Nathan violently grabbed the picture up from the table, nearly wrinkling the whole paper from how tight his grip was. His eyes were dark with rage as he heated spoke towards Brooke.
"What the fuck is this!?"
"THAT," the brunette spit out, "is what I wanted to show you. That's what Peyton told me about last night." Her voice went from angry to watery as the memory of the blade breaking down in her arms replayed in her mind.
"Wha-but. How? When?" Haley jumbled out.
"Prom." Was all the designs could choke out.
"What? Prom?" Nathan echoed.
Brooke only nodded back, tears now falling from her eyes as she shook her head.
"She broke down last night and told me about it. Somebody came and attacked her on prom night. He-," she caught on a sob, " he raped her!"
The married couple both had raised eyebrows at this. Haley's eyes began to water as the black and white image crept back into her mind. Nathan could feel this blood boil the longer he sat there. He glanced down the hall where he knew his friend was sleeping and shook his head.
"Who did this!? I'll kill the bastard!"
"Lucas." Brooke had calmed down but had said the name with a mix of both venom and disgust.
"What!?" Haley asked, shocked by what she just heard. "Brooke no. Just no, there's no way!"
"Yes Haley! She said so herself!"
"What!?" Haley couldn't believe it. Lucas would never hurt a woman like that. There was no way.
"Brooke are you sure? I mean you know Lucas. You know he'd never do something like that." Nathan tried to settle his angered friend and distraught wife.
"What, are you saying Peyton is lying!?"
"No, but how can you be sure she even knows what she's talking about?"
"Nathan-" Brooke started to yell, ready to tear into him.
"No Brooke. I mean think about it. There's no way. I'm not saying she's lying about it happening. There's no reason for her to lie about something like that happening." He swallowed and continued a little more calmly. "But it happened on prom night. Luke was with me all morning getting ready. And then he was with all of us that night while we were at the dance. We all left together because we had rooms at the same hotel. You were going on and on about how amazing that night was so I know he never left you that night."
"She's not a liar!" Brooke cried, knowing that Nathan was right. It really wasn't possible when she stopped to think about it. But Peyton wasn't crazy and she wasn't lying.
"No, no I'm not saying she is. Actually, THAT happening would explain a few things about how she's been acting." He shook his head sadly at the thought. "I'm just saying that with the accident, maybe Peyton doesn't clearly remember who it was."
"She's not damaged Nathan!" Brooke defended.
"No, but even in these sketches the guy isn't really clear. He's either a mess of black scribbles or a shadowy figure. The only clear thing is that she drew him with clearly blue eyes and blonde hair. She didn't even remember who we were so it's not like she'd recognize us. Maybe Lucas just kind of looks like the guy that did it."
Brooke and Haley both stayed silent for a moment, taking in the new theory.
Haley hesitantly spoke up. "It would make sense."
"But," Brooke nearly started crying, "but that monster is probably still out there then."
"Well, maybe not." Nathan stated.
"Yea," Haley nodded along. "Maybe she reported it back then and they caught him! I mean there should at least be a police report right? We could check in at the station for public documents and see."
"I doubt it. She left after Larry kicked her out on graduation day. But I do want to see if there were any reports. It could help us find him. I was already planning on getting a private investigator. That monster needs to pay for what he did!"
"Wait, Larry kicked Peyton out?"
Brooke sighed before telling the couple about the phone call she had shared with their friend's father.
"Wow," was all Nathan could say.
"I can't believe he'd say that. Poor Peyton. She was so alone..." Haley reared up again, broken up that her old time friend had seemingly been through so much without anyone knowing.
Brooke only nodded. They all stayed in a depressed silence before Brooke glanced at the clock. "I need to get going. I'm late as it is."
The couple watched her get up from the table and collect her coat and purse. Nathan stood up to meet her as she slipped on her shoes. "Brooke where are you going anyway?"
"I'm just helping get all of this settled. Don't worry about it Nathan."
"Brooke-" Haley let out in concern.
"Haley, really. Don't. I'll be back in a few hours at the most. Peyton needs to get up in about ten minutes. I felt a little note for her on the counter. You have my number if you need me or if she needs anything." She turned and gave the married couple one last look before heading out the door.
Once the brunette left, Haley turned to her husband. "I can't believe this Nathan. What do we do?"
Nathan hugged his wife into his chest, taking comfort in having her safe in his arms for a moment. "We settle down and really help them, hales. It's about all we can do. I think it's about time we all really started being there for Peyton."
Haley nodded into his chest and sighed. Pulling away she whispered to him, "tell you what, you get the living all set up and cozy and I'll get blondie up."
"Okay." Nathan sighed once his wife was out of sight. He rubbed his eyes. Things were so much worse than he had ever imagined...