Chapter Thirty-Seven: Strike a Spark

Author's note: You guys have been amazing with the reviews, thanks so much for that. I'm almost at 400. So cool.
Lucas frowned as he stared into his darkened bedroom. With the lights dimmed and his tall frame leaned against the doorframe, it was barely possible to distinguish him from the darkness.

Brooke was sleeping on the bed. She'd been sleeping for what had seemed like days to him, and showed no signs of awakening into her normal self. She'd long outslept the jet lag, her pregnancy tiredness. Now all he could assume was that she had no life in her.

Lucas silently shut the door to the bedroom and walked down the hall to where a portable phone was resting. He sighed before he picked it up and dialed a memorized number. In the past he'd never dream of going out of his way to talk to his brother about romance, but in the past they'd never been far apart enough to have to resort to the phone.

"Brooke?" said a voice excitedly into the phone as soon as it picked up. Lucas raised an eyebrow, surprised that Haley was there.

"No, this is Lucas. Is Nathan around?" he asked awkwardly.

"Uh yeah, I'll go find him. How're you guys doing?" she asked.

"Good. You too?"

"Yeah. Here's Nathan."

"Hey Luke," said Nathan expectantly.

"Hey bro. Is she there all the time now?" asked Lucas.

"For a lot of it. What's up?" he asked. Lucas hesitated.

"It's Brooke. She's been kind of less than herself," he said.

"Are you sure it's me you want to be talking to this about? Haley's still in the other room…"

"No, it's okay. What'd you do when Davis was in a bad mood?" asked Lucas.

"Davis Ryan was an android. It didn't make much of a difference," said Nathan.

"Come on, work with me here. Got anything?" he asked.

"When was the last time you had sex?" asked Nathan bluntly.

"Long enough."

"Work on that, I guess? At least it's a way for you to get close to her again," said Nathan.

"It seems kind of cold."

"Spin the romance angle," suggested Nathan.

"Are you taking your own advice?"

"On the sex thing? Not remotely. But I do have to do something romantic, and soon. She's expecting me to keep sweeping me off her feet, and she has to go away soon," said Nathan, looking with a smile at his girlfriend.

"Do something in a park. Girls love parks. Oh, I have to go. Look like mine's stirring," said Lucas, hurriedly dropping the phone and running to the bedroom.

Haley snuggled up closer to Nathan as he came into the living room and sat down on the couch beside her. He put his arm around her and inhaled the scent of her hair.

"What did Luke want?" she asked.

"He's worried about Brooke," said Nathan.

"She loves him," said Haley, seeming convinced that this was enough. He kissed the top of her head.

"He loves her, too. I don't think I knew that before today."

"Feeling better?" asked Lucas as Brooke sat at their kitchen table halfheartedly sipping at a cup of coffee. She smiled her dimpled smile, the smile that he hadn't seen in days. His heart lifted.

"I'm fine. Just tired. Pregnancy thing, I guess," she said innocently. He knew this wasn't true. She even knew it wasn't true.

"Why don't you go out? Buy something. Have fun," he suggested, pulling his credit card out of his pocket and handing it to her.

"Thanks," she said softly, her green eyes shining.

Haley took a steadying breath as she taped closed yet another cardboard box. It was the fourth of the morning, and she didn't know how much more she could handle. Packing up her life was harder than she ever could have imagined.

Her heart panged slightly as her eyes fell on her mirror and she recognized her next task.

Sitting cross legged on her desk chair, she faced her vanity mirror. Taped around the edges were pictures of her and her friends, dating from that very summer back to the third grade. Haley reached forward and pulled down the first one her fingers made contact with. Her and Chris at their ninth grade homecoming. That was an easy memory to be rid off.

Peyton and Jake playing at the River Court came down next. This was more painful.

Haley forced herself into denial when the third picture came down. The four of them. The only four that mattered. The three others she'd love more than any man unto the end of the world.

She couldn't make herself press the photo into a scrapbook, or throw it out. She let it fall to the floor and disappear behind the dresser. This was an easier strategy.

Brooke and Haley at the school's annual carnival, smeared with cotton candy, fell to the floor and ceased to exist.

The three girls, posing in their cheerleading uniforms, fell face down onto the vanity.

Peyton and Haley, dancing at Brooke's Sweet Sixteen, stopped dancing for the first time in years and were laid to rest.

Haley angrily grabbed another of Chris and ripped it into shreds, immediately regretting letting him ruin whatever beautiful moment the photograph had captured.

Brooke, in the midst of a middle school experiment with hair dye, fell next. Followed quickly by Jake with his arms around Haley and Peyton.

Looking up in horror, Haley realized there were no more pictures. Only her face, her fake blonde hair. All that she'd never let herself see. She buried her face into her knees and sobbed inaudibly.

"Haley?" came a pannicked voice from the door. Suddenly NAthan was on his knees beside her, his loving arms around her, his lips kissing away her tears.

"It's like it never happened," she said, when she could finally speak.

"What did?" asked Nathan in confusion. Of course he didn't know. He'd never the chance to see it all happen.

"I can't let them go," she sobbed.

"You used to have pictures," he said in slow realiztion. Shaky fingers lifted the sole photo that had dropped on the vanity: Brooke, Peyton and Haley cheerleading. He smiled at their matching, perky hair, the Ns tattoed on their cheeks.

"It's stupid. I never even liked cheerleading. It's just..." NAthan stuided the picture. It was small, not of normal photograph sized. On impulse, he pulled his leather wallet out of his pocket and slipped the photograph into the empty plastic slot.

"Look. I'll keep it here. And as long as I have it, you know that at the very least, I'll never let go of you," he said emphatically.

Brooke dropped her shopping on the ground near the door and headed to the kitchen. Pulling a water bottle out of the fridge, the lamented the unbearable, undending heat that only stopped in the closed confines of their well air conditioned apartment.

It hardly seemed possible that all the wanted to do was to bury herself under the covers and sleep until morning.

She paused in the doorway. Something was wrong but her senses, dulled for so long, did not immediately pick up on it. First the vaguely flickering lights came to her. Candles. Lighted all around the bedroom, making their intoxicating smell. Spread across the bed were red rose petals (the red roses were her favourite), and draped across her pillow was one long stemmed rose.

He appeared behind her and brushed a soft kiss onto her neck. She took a shakey breath. He was real. He was there. He was forever.

"Thank you," she whispered. Though he couldn't see her face, he could sense the salty tears spilling out of her eyes. It was wrong, Brooke Davis crying so much.

"I wasn't trying to make you sad," he said. Sensing his confusion, she spun around and looped her arms around his neck.

"Don't worry. You could never make me sad," she promised, kissing him and letting him carry her to the bed.