Author's note: This chapter picks up where the last one ended. The chapter-title is from a song by Tracy Chapman and the lyrics are from the song 'Stand still, look pretty' by The Wreckers. Beautiful reviews as always... I didn't have time to write personal thank you's this time but i will go back to that in the next chapter. And i hope you keep reviewing. ;)

This chapter goes out to Cami and Eva on fanforum because i know that they feel my pain! LOL

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CHAPTER 21 – All The Matters Of The Heart

People have problems that are worse than mine

I don't want you to think I'm complaining all the time

And I hate the way you look at me, I have to say

I wish I could start over

Lucas watches Brooke sleep beside him. For the moment she looks peaceful, but he expects her to start twisting and turning again soon, she has done it off and on the last hour.

He thinks about waking her up, but a quick glance at the alarm-clocks fluorescent digits tells him that it's almost morning anyway and she might as well sleep as long as she can. His mom has told him how tired being pregnant makes you and even though Brooke hardly complains, he guesses that the nightmares that keep waking her up ads on to that tiredness.

"Mental note to self;" he thinks, "I need to read up on this pregnancy-thing… I know way too little about what's actually happening to my girlfriend's body…"

He was never able to go back to sleep after Brooke came up and forced him to go back to bed. Too much is on his mind. The game, his father and worrying over Brooke is just half the load. On top of that he has his mom and her pregnancy, the finals that are soon approaching, collage and the always lingering worry over money…

Staring into the ceiling he silently counts the months left until collage starts. If everything went as planned the baby would be born on August 5th, which would hopefully give him a month at home with Brooke before the semester started. But it's already March and he once again ads 'finding a job' to the mental list of must do's.

If Brooke was awake she would kiss him senseless and tell him to stop worrying and that they had enough money on her bank-account. But his girlfriend had grown up with a different level of funding, and 'saving' wasn't really a word in her vocabulary. He is a little bit more realistic and he knows that keeping a baby fed, dressed and diapered is expensive. And since Brooke has turned eighteen and doesn't live with her parents she didn't have valid medical insurance, so just the hospital-bills for the child-birth would probably chew out a big chunk of what they had saved.

And several nights lately, when Brooke kept him awake with her tossing and turning, he had been on his back like this, hypnotized by the pattern of the small cracks in the ceiling and terrified of failing Brooke or their baby in any way. But now Brooke turns in her sleep and flings an arm around his chest, making cute sleeping sounds in the process. Her hand is warm against his skin and when she snuggles up against him she also scatters most of his fears of the future.

"We'll just have to take this day by day" he thinks. "Hopefully it'll get easier with time…"

And with just an hour left until the alarm-clock would go off, he finally drifts off into sleep.

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Brooke wakes up alone in the bed but she can hear the sound of the shower. She yawns and stretches her hands over her head and then the water stops running.

"Morning pretty girl…" Lucas shouts from the bathroom and she laughs at his intuition of her being awake.

"Morning boyfriend… thanks for letting me sleep in…"

As she gets up he says; "No problem… You know, I'm thinking that I should get a job… I heard that they need help down at FootLocker."

She wraps the sheet around herself, too tired to find her robe, and walks over to the open bathroom door. And she watches him, leaning towards the doorframe. He's standing in front of the mirror, drying his hair with a towel. Another towel is draped around his hips but hanging dangerously low and she bites her lower lip at the sight of his toned muscles.

"You don't need to get a job Luke, but I love your six-pack though…" she sighs smiling, eyeing him up and down. "You could definitely make money off of that body…"

He looks over at her. "Thanks. But stripping is not really a line of business I'm planning on getting into."

"Why?"

She tries to look innocent, but she can't help but to start giggling when his eyebrow shoots up as if he wants to say; 'Do you really want to go there?'.

"Okay… I wasn't talking about stripping. Believe me; I'm fully aware of your lack of dancing-skills baby… But you could model…" She leans over and grabs the loose towel, snatching it of him so that he's completely naked. "I mean look at you! You would be so cute in a Calvin Klein underwear-ad."

She's been with this guy off and on for a year and a half and he's been naked in front of her hundreds of times… And still, she can't keep her eyes of him. He blushes slightly under her intense stare but he doesn't reach for his clothes. Instead he looks back into the mirror with a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He pulls his fingers through his hair before saying;

"You were very cute as a lobster..."

She freezes. "Hey! I wasn't a lobster! I was a crab!! And you're mean… I'm standing here, giving you sexy compliments, and you tease me about the only crappy job I could get? Thanks!"

He laughs, especially when she shoots her bottom lip out in a pouty way, and he turns and leans towards the sink. She points at him.

"Lucas Scott, you should be very careful to say stuff like that when you're naked! I could… hurt you!"

But he just grabs her hand that's still pointing at him and pulls her to him.

"I'm not mean. You did look very cute, whatever crustacean you were supposed to be… But I seriously still don't get why you took that job. You, if anyone, could have made money from modeling. Have you seen yourself Brooke?"

He kisses her and she closes her eyes when their tongues meet briefly.

"Yeah? Well, that crab-thing was actually kind of rewarding and I always did look good in red…"

She kisses him one more time before pulling away from him sighing. His naked skin against her own is starting to get the best of her and they are already running late.

"Now get dressed before you get us in trouble" she says. "You have to play your best tonight and I wouldn't want to exhaust you…"

He gives her a slightly disappointed look and of course she can't help but to tease him just a little bit more. So she drops the sheet where she stands and stretches her body in a slow but lithe movement before stepping in to shower. She knows he's watching her which makes it even more fun to pull the shower-curtain closed just in front of his face.

When she hears him sigh on the outside, she laughs.

"Clothes Broody!" she says and turns on the water. "And make me coffee…"

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After lunch Lucas sneaks up behind Brooke in the school corridor and puts an arm around her shoulders. He's a bit tired after not having had enough sleep, but the game-nerves keeps him alert and energetic.

"Hey beautiful… Where are you off to?" he says and kisses Brooke's temple.

"I have to go get the music for our cheer-routines to Mouth before my History-class. And I need to find Rachel…"

She looks stressed and he guesses that she feels really weird about not leading the girls tonight. But they had talked this over for days now and he knows that in the back of her head she's agreeing with him that she shouldn't. After what happened at the last game she cheered at, he really doesn't want her in harms way. So she had decided to let Rachel have the middle spot tonight and have herself standing in the back. He couldn't tell her to stay away entirely, but at least she would be a whole lot safer then if she was in front, just by the sideline. He finds it a little weird though that she didn't put up more of a fight, he had expected her to, but he's happy she agrees with him.

"I just saw Rach" he says. "She was heading towards the tutor-center."

"Oh, okay…"

Brooke turns and grabs her books out of her locker and he touches her lower back, stroking her skin gently in an effort to make her less distraught.

"What's wrong baby? You seem a bit spaced out..."

"Yeah… I'm kind of nervous about tonight."

"Well so am I, pretty girl. But we'll both be good."

Now she finally looks up and smiles. "No baby… You'll be great! You always are. And you took your medication this morning, right?"

He nods before leaning down and he kisses her while putting his hand on her belly. It's been almost impossible for him to leave her belly alone lately. It's like he wants to take every chance to touch it.

"You hold your fingers crossed in there, okay?" he says, pretending to talk to the baby inside of her. "Cheer for daddy, alright?"

Brooke giggles and pushes him away.

"Stop harassing my child!" she says playfully and ushers him to go. "Get to class! You'll be late…" And when he still won't let go of her she pulls him in and whispers;

"If you're a good boy I'll meet you in the empty chemistry-lab in fifteen minutes… I bet I can work some of that excess energy off of you…"

He laughs and kisses her again before she heads off in the other direction with a stack of books and cd's in her arms. And he starts walking towards an hour of Geography. Nathan catches up with him halfway.

"What's up dude? Are you pumped for tonight?"

"Yeah, but I'm nervous as hell… Pontiac High, you know they're top-ranked right?"

Nathan smiles sheepishly. "Who isn't nervous? But don't let it get to you… How's Brooke by the way? More sleep tonight?"

"Not really… she still wont talk to me about the nightmares. And I think she's nervous about tonight too. She's 17 weeks along and this is her first game since… well you know… I think she stresses about what people are going to think."

Lucas doesn't want to remind Nathan about the accident since Nathan still feels bad about it, but at the same time he knows that Nathan is aware of it and there is no use trying to hide it.

But Nathan just nods.

"And Hales?" Lucas asks. "I've hardly seen her at all lately…"

"She's fine. She's been busy tutoring Rachel and it's proving to be a handful… Hey, by the way, Haley told me you had a run in with dad last night… Is it true that you punched him in the face?"

"Um… yeah. Sorry for that…"

He laughs a little awkwardly but Nathan looks like a big question-mark. "What are you sorry for? I've already done it twice. I bet it felt good, huh?"

He raises his hand in the air and Lucas 'high fives' him. "Let's just win this game tonight Luke. That way we'll piss him off even more. His team never made it to State."

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Just before the game, people are running back and forth in total confusion. And while the atmosphere in the boys lockerroom is tense, the spirit in the cheerleaders lockerroom is high. The air is filled with laughter and gossip and there are make-up and half dressed girls everywhere.

I want to paint my face and pretend that I am someone else

sometimes I get so fed up I don't even want to look at myself

Brooke looks at herself in the full-length mirror. She's wearing the skirt of her uniform but the top is still in her bag. Instead she has her warm-up jacket on, which is loose enough to hide the small rounded belly. People that didn't know she was pregnant would probably find it weird but she realizes how stupid she would look in the tight little top ending just above the 'bump'. Watching her reflection she is grateful for her so far minimal weight-gain. Her legs still looks the same and so does her arms and face. Besides her belly, the only thing that has changed is her boobs, but hey, she isn't really complaining about that. And neither is Lucas, she thinks smiling.

Rachel comes up beside her and puts her make-up kit on the counter under the mirror, and Brooke silently hands her the blue and white color-kit from her own bag.

"Why are you giving me that?" the redhead asks, giving Brooke a weird look.

"You need it to paint the Raven's 'R' on your cheek."

Rachel just hands it back. "Forget it. I'm not captain. You are."

"Yeah, but you're doing my job tonight so you might as well have the honor of the captain's R…"

Brooke hands her the make-up again but Rachel shakes her head smiling. "I said forget it. I knew you were a little slow but are you deaf too? Paint the R on yourself Brookie. This is our last game and I'm not taking you title, just your spot on the floor."

Rachel starts to put on some lipgloss but then she smiles wickedly and lowers her voice. "I'm telling you though, if Nathan decides to do that rampage-thing again, I'm pushing Peyton in front of him."

Brooke can't help but to giggle. She then leans against the counter and skillfully paints the letter on her cheek, silently remembering the first time she did it after Morgan Finley handed her the captaincy at the end of freshman year. It had taken her forty-five minutes to finish the letter the first time and then it had still been a little blurred and shaky. Now she could probably do it perfectly in two minutes with her eyes closed.

Theresa walks by in just her underwear, flaunting her toned cheerleader-body, and Brooke notices that Theresa looks her over.

"What?" she snaps, feeling her insecurities starting to get the best of her, and Theresa smirks.

"Nothing, I was just thinking that your ass looks bigger…"

Brooke squints evily back at her and bites her tongue not to throw out a bitchy comment. She had complained about the girls bodies and movements for two years and she probably had this coming to her. But it hurts never the less and gets even worse when she realizes that she's blushing. Rachel smacks her lips together and turns to go back to the others, but then she looks back.

"Hey Brooke" she says and winks. "You look really good."

Brooke smiles back thankfully. She's not sure if Rachel knows how much she needed to hear that, but she does.

And you might think it's easy being me…

…just stand still and look pretty

A couple of minutes later the group of girls enter the gym and Brooke is amazed at the number of people that has shown up to watch the game. Her heart beats faster out here in the bright lighting and the sound of the crowd's cheer makes her take a couple of deep breaths.

Lucas and the rest of the team are finishing off their pre-game warm up out on the floor and she stops and kneels down to tie her brand new white sneakers. She had thrown the last pair away since the bloodstains never really washed out, not even with bleach. Then she hears Rachel's voice beside her.

"Um…Brooke… What's up with Lucas?"

"What do you mean?"

She looks up again, and now Lucas is at the team-bench, talking to Dan. Her boyfriend and his father have the same tense body-language and Dan is waving his hands furiously.

"Damn it!" she mumbles. This was not a good start of the evening.

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Dan shouts at him and the people around are starting to look at them. Nathan drops his ball out on the floor and comes over as well.

"Come on dad! Just get out of here! None of us are interested in what you have to say…"

Lucas looks at Nathan. "It's okay Nate. I've got this." Turning back towards Dan, he clears his throat. "What do you really want?"

"I want you to pull your head out of your ass and at least talk to the recruiter from Duke… They are offering you a scholarship identical to the one they gave Nathan. You two could play together on the same team in collage as well!"

Lucas shrugs. "I told you, I don't care about Duke. I'm going with Brooke to UNC. And since you are not my coach, I don't really need to listen to you right now. Get out of my way so I can warm up."

He tries to walk around Dan but he moves to block his way again and Lucas is actually a little surprised that Dan is talking to him at all after their fight last night.

"I might not be the coach but I AM your father! And when I talk, you listen!"

Now Brooke comes up at his other side and her green eyes pierces into Dan.

"What's your damn problem? Stop yelling at Lucas!" she says angrily and his petite girlfriend suddenly seems six feet tall. But Dan turns to her and spits out his answer with despise in his voice.

"I'm not talking to you Miss Davis. Why don't you just stand over there and look pretty… or whatever it is that you do best. I need to talk to my son!"

Lucas watches his father and realizes how pathetic the man is. A power-hungry shadow of a person. And the purple bruise underneath his eye makes him look ridiculous in his tailored suit. In the corner of his eye he catches the movement of Nathan's arm but he holds out his hand to stop him. He knows why their father's words to Brooke trigger Nathan so much. Lucas has no trouble remembering what Dan said to Nathan when Haley left for the tour…

"It's not worth it son, pissing your life away because of some girl…"

"Some girl? She's my wife, dad!"

"Really? Well, someone may want to tell her that."

Dan seemed to like to trash everything Brooke or Haley did, but then again, it had just led to Nathan punching Dan, just like he himself had last night.

"I have nothing to say to you…" he says slowly "and I told you last night to never speak to my girlfriend again…"

He puts his arm around Brooke's tiny shoulders and leads her off to the sideline, but after a few feet he looks back and ads;

"And don't ever call me 'son' again. We might be genetically related but nothing else."

Dan is red in the face with anger and with a clenched jaw he hisses "You watch your back Lucas. No one treats me this way, you hear? No one… If you walk away now, you might as well be dead to me."

The words don't really bother Lucas as he walks of with his arm around Brooke, but he still finds them funny in a strange way. Because in a matter of less then three weeks, both him and Brooke had managed to be threatened by their own flesh and blood.

And before leaving Brooke with her squad, he cradles her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him.

"I love you" he says seriously and he really needs her to understand that it's true. "I really, really love you Brooke Penelope Davis…"

She doesn't answer but her eyes and the kiss she gives him tells him everything he needs to know. The weirdest thing is that in the corner of his eye he can see Peyton watching them, and she is actually smiling.

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I wish that everyone would just shut their mouth

I'm not strong enough to deal with this

The game starts and Lucas forgets about everything except the ball, his teammates and the opposing team. He's not even sure if Dan is still in the gym and frankly he doesn't really care either. Thousands of people cheer as they start off the game a little rocky, but they soon pick it up and the first quarter ends 26 – 21 in their favor.

During time-out he watches Brooke and she winks at him with a big smile. She looks beautiful with her long dark hair flowing down her back and he wishes that their life could be a little less complicated. But as long as she's with him he feels like he can face anything. Her squad does a great job and she watches over them as a proud mother would. And he's relieved to see that she actually doesn't participate.

The second quarter goes better but when the team gathers up for a team meeting in the locker-room in half time, Lucas can't help but to see the worried look on Whitey's face. Pontiac High is better then they all thought they would be and the strain form carrying the team on their shoulders is evident on both Nathan and Skills. Lucas listens to Whitey's monolog about team-effort while bouncing the small container with his HCM-medication in his hand. He knows that the pills are keeping his speed down, and what use was a shooting guard without speed? If he is supposed to be able to help the others, then he has to make a choice. And if he ever wants to show his dad that he is the better basketball-player, then he has to make that choice right now.

Nathan has probably seen him holding the container and as they leave to go back out on court Nathan walks up beside him.

"Dude, you took the pills, right?"

"Yeah, don't worry…"

And he's not really lying. He did take them. At least the dose earlier this morning. How big a deal could it be that he hadn't taken one more now, as he should have? It was only half a game left and he had played lots of game before without taking any pills at all.

People have problems that are worse than mine

I don't want you to think I'm complaining all the time

But I am slowly falling apart

I wish you'd take a walk in my shoes for a start

And you might think its easy being me…

But in the beginning of third quarter Skills gets fouled out, and Whitey has no other choice than to put Skills on the bench. This means that even more pressure is put on Nathan and by the end of third, Pontiac's team is doubling their defense on him, and Lucas is left off trying to find Daniel or Zach. But it's not the same as having Nathan and Skills flank him and by the end of the quarter, they're down by five. His chest hurts from the physical exertion and it's nights like this one that Lucas really misses Jake. Yeah, so the guy's free-throw percentage pretty much sucked, but Jake always kept his cool. He would have been a rock to lean on steadily in a game like this, when everything was at stake.

But Jake is still MIA somewhere in Savannah and Lucas reaches into his last power-reserve and dribbles the ball up midfield. He feels better now, faster and lighter on his foot. He aims and takes the shot and the three-pointer goes through the net just as the third quarter ends.

Running back towards the huddle at the bench, he passes the cheer-squad. He looks over to check that Brooke is still in the background as she has promised, but of course she's not. He motions for her to back up although Brooke just smiles at him.

"It's okay Luke" she shouts and waves her pom-poms at him. "Just win this!"

But he backtracks his steps and stops in front of her.

"Brooke… please be careful…"

She grabs his face and kisses him passionately. "I'm okay baby, really!" she says laughing. "I just want to be able to tell our baby that I cheered for his or her daddy at his final game in High School…"

Right then Whitey calls for him and she lets go of his face. "Go Luke! I'll be fine."

He nods and runs back. He wants to believe her but he has this bad feeling.

The forth quarter starts and already after a few minutes he feels like his heart is beating so hard that it might come out through the chest-wall. His vision blurs a little at the edges, and he knows that he has played much more than his allowed fifteen minutes. But with Skills still on the bench, Whitey really doesn't have anyone to replace him with. At least not if they're supposed to be able to win. He glances at the clock. Three more minutes to go and they are down by six. He makes another three-pointer and the point-guard from Pontiac looses the ball back to Nathan who puts in another two.

They are now down by one and as Zach passes the ball back to him, he looks for his brother, finding him just up underneath the basket. The crowd is already counting backwards from ten and he shakes away the blurriness and struggles to get enough air to be able to continue running. He makes it up on the left outer side of the court and takes the shot. It goes to high but he yells out:

"Nate!"

And then Nathan takes the jump and slam-dunks it right through the waiting net.

Lucas looks at Nathan and he can see confusion covering his little brother's face. The same confusion he himself is feeling. The ball had gone in and that would make the score…?

It's like someone has just pushed the 'slowmotion-button'. He and Nathan both look up towards the score board and as the signal buzzes to mark the end of the game, the red digital numbers finally flip. 112 – 111. They look back at each other and digest the information at the same time. The Ravens had just won the State Championship by one point.

Then the crowd in the gymnasium goes wild and Lucas throws his arms around his brother in a wild hug before the rest of the team snatches Nathan and carries him away on their shoulders.

Lucas laughs out loud at the sight of Nathan and then turns towards the cheerleaders.

Brooke comes running towards him and he picks her up and spins her around. Laughter bubbles up inside of him and he kisses her passionately before setting her down again. We won, he thinks. They had actually won the state championship…

The feeling is almost unreal and everywhere around them people are cheering and screaming. Somewhere from the ceiling the big bags of multi-colored pieces of paper are released. He's still out of breath and his chest heaves up and down painfully as the confetti is falling all around them. Then Brooke suddenly stops laughing. Total confusion spreads over her face and both her hands quickly falls down to cover her belly.

"What Brooke?" he says freezing. For a couple of seconds his heart stops in fear of something being seriously wrong. A weird tingling feeling works it's way up his right arm and his fingers start to go numb.

But then the smile is back on her face, even bigger than before. The dimples in her cheeks are deeper then he has ever seen them.

"I think your baby wants to say 'congratulations'…" she says, and he doesn't understand.

"What do you mean?"

He takes a deep breath and he has a little trouble to get the air to go into his lungs. Her green eyes are glistening at him and she has purple, blue and orange pieces of paper stuck in her hair.

"I think it just kicked, Luke…"

At that moment he doesn't think he's ever been happier. He has just won the state championship, he has the most beautiful girlfriend in the world and their baby just kicked for the first time. But the air he needs to breathe just doesn't seem to be there. And then everything goes black.

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Author's note 2: Well, as I said, if you don't like basketball then this chapter was probably pretty boring to read. But basketball is the red thread of OTH, right?

And since I clearly remember all the hate-mail (lol) that I received after Brooke's almost miscarriage, I must say I'm a little scared…

But PLEASE review and I promise to have the next chapter up as soon as possible.