Chapter Thirty-Eight: Nobody Said It Would Be This Hard

Author's note: Just to answer a few general questions I've been getting: This story is looking to be shorter than AWR, about 80 chapters. Which puts us at about halfway through. For a list of the ages of the kids (all of them) you can look at chapter um... 112, I think, of AWR. And as for the queries on whether or not brucas will break up, come on, people. Have a little faith.

"I'm taking the kids to the movies," said Lucas.

Brooke slowly turned away from the window, where she'd been watching the rain fall down from the sky and onto the busy grey street, splashing in puddles and sliding down windshields.

"Have fun," she said, her voice oddly detached.

"Want to come?" he asked hopefully.

"No, you seem to have much more fun without me," she said coolly. He nodded and left silently.

Brooke wrapped the silken night gown she was wearing tigher around her body. She knew she should change into actual clothing, shower, be less pathetic, but it didn't seem quite worth it. She knew the best alternative.

"Hales?" she asked when her call had gone through, her voice small and broken.

"Brooke? Sweetie what's wrong?" she asked in surprise.

"Can you come over here? I kind of need you," she said.

"Of course. I'll drop the kids at Nathan's and be over as soon as I can," she promised.

"Is Ry still on her honeymoon?" asked Brooke.

"I dropped Jamie off there this morning, so I think we're good. I'll swing by there on the way, okay?" she asked. Brooke nodded, and realized only afterwards that Haley wouldn't hear it through the phone.

Brooke ran down the stairs when she saw a company car pull up on the curb, smiling gratefully when her two sister-in-laws arrived, bearing ice cream and tequila. She threw herself at Haley, sending the shorter girl off balance as she threw her arms around her neck.

"What's wrong babe?" asked Ryan worriedly. Brooke detached herself from Haley and stepped back to look at them both. She briefly let her hand fall to Ryan's stomach and looked at the optimistic glow of hope and newfound happiness in her eyes.

"Come on. We're going to need all that," said Brooke, leading them upstairs to her bedroom.

"Wow."

Ryan Scott was the first to speak. She looked between her two sisters, faces so different but wraught with such similar tragedy. She cautiously leaned forward and took her hand.

"Are you going to be okay?" asked Haley. Brooke shrugged.

"I have to be. It's not like I can just leave him. We can't just give up on it. I wouldn't do that. Not to my children, or to me," she said. Haley looked down guiltily. Brooke glanced up at her, immediately realizing her error. "I didn't mean you. That's different."

Haley smiled, letting it slide as she might have otherwise not.

"What a pig," said Ryan vehemently, surprising both of them. Haley would have suspected Ryan to side with her family, but she knew that the long years of marriage had made the two of them family to her, as well.

"How old is she?" asked Haley softly, her curiosity getting the better of her.

"About nine," said Brooke. Devon's age.

Ryan looked down, shame evident on her face. Somhow it seemed traitorous, to feel so indescribably happy while her two best friends were both so miserable. Unwilling to bring it up, to let them comfort her, she molified herself with the memories of being so miserable for so many years before. She banished this thought instantly, realizing that she wasn't the one who deserved comfort just then.

"So Lucas has seven kids. That's insane," said Haley in disbelief. Brooke sent her a scathing look, but said nothing. She'd added up her husband's children many times in the last twenty-four hours, and had come up with seven every time. It was not much of a novelty any more.

"All this time I thought he was cheating on me. And you now what the worst thing is? I feel like I'm being petty, somehow. Like I don't have the right to think like this, to be this angry, because I did the same thing."

"You didn't," said Ryan instantly, her loyalty instantly triggered. Brooke smiled slightly.

"It turned out I didn't, but it could so easily have turned out that I had. I mean that's why he went. He never would have left if I hadn't slept with Mouth. Things would have turned out so differently," said Brooke.

"No they wouldn't. You were pregnant," said Haley softly.

"I know. God, how am I supposed to explain this? To my kids? Devon? Everyone we've ever met, who's eyes are constantly on us? When this gets out..." said Brooke, shuddering.

"You'll stand by him, and people can speculate all they want. We'll get through this," promised Ryan.

"What would you do, in my place?" asked Brooke. Her question was ostensibly aimed at both, but Ryan knew her newlywed opinion would not be valued. Haley shrugged and looked down.

"Honestly? What I'm already trying to do."

Hours later Lucas returned home with their six kids and Haley and Ryan left, frostily ignoring him on their way. Haley stopped on her way home outside of Nathan's house to cry her heart out, and Ryan went home to Jake.

"What was the crisis?" he asked softly, when she came in the door. She smiled to see him waiting for her on the couch, flipping aimlessly through channels.

"Lucas has a love child," she said briefly. He nodded, holding back questions with difficulty as she sat on his lap. "If you ever do anything stupid tell me, okay? So we can fix it before I start to suspect you and get all bitter?"

He pulled her in to him and she rested her head on his chest, staring into the darkness.

"I love you," he said eventually.

"Well I knew that, stupid."

After he was silent for another moment, she spoke up again.

"I'm going to change my name," she said.

"Okay. If that's what you want."

"It is."

Ryan tilted up her head to kiss him, and he kissed back, knowing she was vulnerable and needed it. And as she and her husband slowly made love to each other, another woman across town and tried to sleep, knowing she could never love her own man in the same way again.