Chapter One Hundred Fourteen: Give Me A Reason to Stay

Author's note: Try to imagine the following scene as like a movie, with intercut bits, maybe with a soundtrack in the background. It'll make it make a lot more sense.
Ryan tightly clutched her young daughter's hand while Jake went into Peyton's room. She felt slightly guilty, as though she was flaunting something, but Jake had insisted, after all. Jamie smiled up at her and she smiled back.

"Daddy?" she called into the bedroom. Ryan made to shush her daughter, but her words stilled when Jake appeared.

Draped in his arms was a long, slender form. Her head thrown back, her blonde curls falling, was Peyton Sawyer, seemingly lifeless, held lovingly in the arms of her beloved. Ryan let out a startled gasp and dropped Jamie's hand to run to her love and his ex-lover.

"Is she..?" Ryan let the question hang in the air and fall to the ground.

Peyton was white, her skin unmarred. Until Ryan's eyes reached her stomach and discovered the wide, gaping stab wound. Despite this she looked beautiful, as ever. Ryan touched her hand. But so cold…

"Mommy, what's…" Jamie's voice was high and complaining. Ryan shushed her daughter in annoyance.

"CPR?" she suggested weakly, laying a hand on Jake's arm to awaken him from his reverie.

"Yeah. Get her out of here. Call an ambulance!" he said, his voice strained. She nodded and grabbed Jamie's hand, pulling her reluctant body out the door.

Ryan held her daughter tightly as she began to cry out complainingly. She didn't soothe her, knowing that there was no way she could. She listenened to Jake breath into Peyton, listened to him attempt fruitlessly to give life to his old love.

Jamie let out a cry of alarm as three paramedics rushed down the hall, carrying a stretcher between them. Ryan leapt up and cradeled her daughter in her arms, directing the three of them silently in to the room.

"Are you okay, Miss?" asked the third, pausing as he passed, glancing between Ryan and her child.

"We're fine. She's in there," said Ryan stiffly, watching as the three of them attempted to revive her. Ryan had always known it was over but as Jake saw them shake their heads, he knew it as well.

Ryan, Jake and Jamie watched as Peyton was carried off on the stretcher. Ryan dropped her hand and linked it with Jake's.

"Come on, baby, let's go home," she said softly.

Ryan slowly approached where Jake sat on the edge of their bed, staring ahead. This she couldn't handle. They'd lived asexually together for years, raised a child, but never this. This was unfathomable.

She sat down beside him on the crisp cotton sheet and took his hand in hers again.

"If there's anything I can do..." she began.

"Just..." he broke down in sobs.

Ryan moved onto his lap and wrapped her arms around her neck. She tried to quell the feelings that rose in her. It had been so long...

She comfortingly kissed his shut eye, his cheek, his ear, the corner of his mouth. She pulled away and their eyes met. His were now opened properly as he leaned forward.

"So, do you want me to move out?" he asked.

"Nathan..."

"Do you want all the money, too? After all, you are the victim of course. You're the poor defenceless woman," he burst out angrily. He angrily grabbed a vase from the table, one which was his and her's, and threw it at the wall. Haley clamped her hands over her ears as the chrystal shattered.

"Don't do this, Nathan. I've fulfilled my prenup, I've done everything you asked. I just want out," she said miserably.

"Maybe we should split the kids up, too. You get the girls, I get Kade. We wouldn't want to hurt them, after all. Well, I don't. Don't know about you, you don't seem to care who you hurt anymore," said Nathan.

"Nathan, I just can't do this anymore. Can't you understand that? I love you, but it was never meant to work out. You know that Nathan, as much as you've tried to deny it. I can't stay with someone who's hurt me as deeply as you have. You lied to me just to get me. And maybe it excited me once. All of it. But it doesn't any more. All there is is pain. And I can't spend the rest of my life with someone who'd treat me in the ways you have. Maybe if you did it the right way, or if I hadn't been so proud, it would have worked out. If we'd been honest to each other from the beginning. But we weren't. So we can't."

"You're just doing this to punish me, Haley. I know you. You can't reason with yourself that you could love someone like me. But you do. And you know this isn't over."

Haley scowled at him and picked up the portable phone perched on the shiny wood dining table as she did.

"What?" she barked. Her face softened. Her eyes gradually grew and dominated her face, making her appear smaller and childlike. Nathan slowly walked across the room and somehow appeared by her side. He put a comforting hand on her elbow as she dropped the phone.

"Who?" he asked gently, knowing that it was someone. Haley looked up at him in amazement.

"Peyton."

Jake tangled his hands in Ryan's hair, their lips on fire. She could not remember a time like this, when such pain had transofrmed itself into such desperate need. He held her wrists on the bed beside her head after he stripped their clothes, and trailed kisses down her stomach
Nathan wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her tiny body into his as he'd done countless times. They couldn't be over. He couldn't let it happen. He leaned down to kiss her.
Flesh touched flesh. Lust found its roots and began to flourish in them, the so long denied. Jake toyed with her nipple, wondering how he could be with her so often and not be truly with her.
Haley deepened their kiss, leapt up, and put her legs around his waist. He lowered her onto the dining room table, his hand already working at her bra strap, hers already working at removing his shirt.
Jake groaned as he slid into her lubed space. He began to move rhythmically, responding to her breathy cries for him. She leaned up and kissed him, hoping desperately that to be this close to him was what he needed.
Haley raised up her arms for Nathan to pull off her shirt, giving him silent permission to do his will. He lifted it off, letting his thumbs trail over her naked self, over her erect nipples. She shivered in response and kissed him again.
Ryan and Jake rolled over and began again, this time with her on top. They kissed passionately, relishing the rare opporunity to speak soley through their actions.
As he held her slightly above him against the wall of the dining room, Nathan plunged inside his wife and moaned in satisfaction as she began to move up and down his length. Digging her fingernails into his back, she let out her own moan of desire and allowed herself to take pleasure in what was most likely the last.
Jake cradled Ryan's body to his and kissed her shoulder. Hoping, yet knowing this would not cement them. That this would, in all probability, tear them apart once again.
Nathan carried Haley upstairs and lay him beside her on the bed. They hadn't shared a bed in weeks, ever since their divorce proceedings had begun. It was a relief, to know he'd finally be able to sleep.
Jake reached across the bed for the phone as it began to rang. He held it to his ear as the NYPD announced itself.

"Yeah. Jake here," he said.

"Miss Sawyer was discovered to be living with a Davis Ryan. Is she an aquaintance of either of yours, Mr. Jagielski?" asked the officer. Suddenly memories flowed through his mind: of Davis conveniently leaving town the day Nathan was shot, of Haley being shot around the time of Ryan's graduation, when Davis was back in town. He clenched his jaw in fury, suddenly certain of who'd destroyed his love.

"Yeah. And old friend of hers," he said nonchalently, unwilling to sell her out.

He didn't need them.

He'd extract his own vengence, in his own time.