A/N: Srry it's been so long. Got swept up in college and everything. Here is a loooong update just to make up for it :) Please review!

How come she hadn't have seen this coming? Why hadn't Peyton thought that far ahead? How had she ended up in the car with him?

On Peyton's request for Brooke to drive her over to Nathan's before taking over the situation with Haley, darling Brooke had pointed out that Lucas had been about the go over to play basketball with Nathan anyways, so he could just drive her over there at the same time. Although Peyton had plastered a fake grin on her face and agreed, it didn't mean she was happy with it. Trying not to make a scene with Brooke present, Peyton got in the car with a willing Lucas, who still wouldn't look her straight in the face. From what she knew, Brooke didn't even know that her and Lucas had been together over the summer. She was determined to keep it that way. For Brooke to know nothing about the summer, about the declarations her and Lucas had made to each other, about her still... it was just better off this way. For everyone.

"Peyton," his voice sounded quietly, coming into her thoughts abruptly. Peyton's gaze focused in on him, while he determinedly kept his eyes on the road in front of him. "About last night... the way I was acting..." He swallowed visibly. "I was being a jerk. I..." Why was this so hard to get out? "I just got overwhelmed... by memories... of us."

Peyton looked away from him and into her lap. That wasn't what she had expected. She nodded, trying to deny- to herself- that she had felt the same thing last night when they were dancing.

"I-" he went to continue, but Peyton stopped him, coming to her senses. They couldn't have this conversation. "Don't," she said with a fierce shake of her head. "There's no point in talking about this, Lucas. You and I are done. We were done years ago. We.." She needed a lie. A good, convincing lie to make him stop talking about their 'relationship'- in the past and the present. "I know I don't feel that way about you anymore."

She thought she saw a flash of pain cross over his face. But it was gone before she could really wonder about it. Maybe she imagined it. "Right," he said blankly. "We've both moved on in our lives. That's all there is to it." Hopefully, he sounded convincing. "I want to be friends, though- we are friends, right?"

Peyton could only bring herself to smile slightly. "Yeah, we are."

Lucas nodded, but Peyton could see that his eyes looked sad. "Here we are," he said.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Peyton and Lucas ran into Nathan in the hallway, a drink and a bag of chips ready in his hands. "Hey, you ready to play?" Nathan asked Lucas, until his gaze fell on Peyton. "Come to watch?" He asked her, with a smile that didn't quite reach his blue eyes.

"Actually, I came to talk to you about something- before I watch, of course."

Nathan's smile faded, and his eyes flicked between Lucas and Peyton. "What's going on?" he asked, slowly, but then his face became stiffer when he figured out what the topic of their conversation was probably going to be. Did Peyton know about the baby? She at least knew that Haley and him had argued last night. She was roommates with Haley, after all. "Do we have to?" he asked, Peyton, who nodded.

She turned her head to Lucas, who looked confused, at the least. "Can we have a few minutes?"

He nodded, his eyes betraying the questions he wanted to ask about what was happening. But he held his tongue. "I'll be in the gym, Nate."

Nathan didn't answer him, but motioned to Peyton for them to start walking down the street, hopefully in the direction of somewhere warm. She really, really hated the cold. Could they walk to Miami? I wonder how long that would take...

Pushing these silly thoughts out of her head, she dared a glance at Nathan. His eyes were darker today than she had seen them and his skin had a pale twinge to it. This was not good.

"I wanted to see how you were doing," Peyton told him. "So- how are you doing?"

Nathan sighed. "In general... or after last night?"

She gave him a look and he nodded once. "After last night, then."

"Uh-ha."

He didn't say anything for a few moments, and Peyton wondered if he was going to answer. Eventually they came to a bench, where Nathan sat down heavily, looking older than she had ever seen him.

"This is the bench where Haley and I initially decided to try dating again- when she came back," he said quietly, waving his hand at the bench. Peyton sat down next to him, probably in the same spot Haley had been. "I had been harboring feelings of anger towards her... feelings of frustration. I was so angry because she didn't come back to be with me at the end of the summer. To me- we were done. I no longer had Haley." He seemed to struggle with himself for a moment, but continued. "But when I saw her, when she came here to me... those feelings disappeared. Or I ignored them. I was so stupid," he interjected furiously. "She came back out of nowhere, after I had to end our marriage, and told me- what was the line? 'I was empty without you' or something stupid like that. I can't believe I fell for that!"

"Nathan, she-"

"No! Don't make excuses for her," he said, rounding on her. "I should've sent her away... I shouldn't have taken her back..."

Peyton bit her lip. "You did it because you love her," she said, earning a disgruntled noise from Nathan. "You were brave, Nathan. You didn't run from the person you love... like I did. You gave her a chance, and you opened up your heart again- even though you knew there was that chance that you could be hurt again by her. You loved her too much to let her go."

Nathan fiddled with the hem of his sweatshirt. "Maybe loving someone too much is the reason people can't be together sometimes. Maybe that's why it's always messed up."

"Don't think that Nathan.."

"Why not- look at me and Haley... you and Lucas. It's all the same, isn't it?"

Peyton shook her head, almost imperceptibly. "I... but I left Lucas. You took back Haley. You two are the ones with real love. Real, true love that comes around only once in life."

Nathan put his head back in exasperation, resting it on the back of the bench. She squeezed his eyes shut against the light of the sun. "How much do one know about why we argued last night?"

Peyton shifted in her seat, almost uncomfortably. "All of it."

He lifted his head back up to look at her, a little shocked. "I guess Haley doesn't have a problem telling people... other than me, of course."

"You know that's not true. I'm the only one who knows."

"Quite a secret keeper, aren't you?"

Peyton raised her eyebrows and nodded in affirmation. "Haley actually told me a little while after she found out she was pregnant. In September, after I had left for the Bahamas already... after she didn't come back for you at the start of the school year."

Peyton waited for the outburst.. she knew it was coming. "You knew!" he asked loudly, and Peyton cringed. "And you didn't tell me?"

"I'm sorry I didn't... it wasn't my place to tell you."

Nathan's chest was rising and falling as though he had just run a mile. "I could have known... I could have stopped her from giving the baby up..." his voice drifted off quietly.

No outburst? She had expected yelling, accusations... not this..raw, open pain. She put her hand on his arm. "Haley was desperate Nathan. You should have heard her on the phone. She was so... conflicted. The choices to her were this: First was keep everything to herself, give up the baby in the end, and continue life like nothing had happened. The one she ultimately picked. The other was to tell you. To let you have a say in the situation-"

"Which is what should've happened."

Peyton held her hands up in the air. "I'm not here to take sides. Haley doesn't even know I'm here. I just wanted give you some reasons of why she did it. What her reasonings were at the time."

Nathan sighed heavily and Peyton continued. "Haley told me that if you knew... that you would want to keep the baby. That your heart was too full of good to give it up."

He looked at Peyton with an unreadable expression. "She said that?"

"And she was right, wasn't she?"

Silence took the moment until a murmured 'yes' came from Nathan. "With that conclusion, she knew that both of you would have to give up what you loved, and your futures. And she didn't want that. So she didn't tell you."

Nathan ran a hand through his already disheveled hair, completing his haphazard appearance to match his confused state of mind. "I can't handle all of this."

"She made a mistake, Nathan. People make them."

"A mistake?", he asked, his voice disbelieving. "A mistake is putting down the wrong choice on a test, forgetting to go pick your pick something, not having a baby in secret and lying to the father of the child about it for three years!"

Peyton nodded sympathetically. "That's true. It's all true. There's no excuse for what she did... but I think I was in the same situation, I would have made the same decision Haley did."

Nathan looked like she had hit him. "What?"

"It makes sense. She gave up something for another, the one that made the most sense to her."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this," Nathan replied, getting up from the bench.

"You wouldn't understand unless you were the one put in the situation at the time, Nathan," Peyton said, still from her seat on the bench.

"Well, I wouldn't know, because no one bothered to tell me I was the father of a child!" he threw back at her loudly, earning looks from passerby's on the footpaths.

"It's different when you're the one carrying the child, Nate. Did you ever think about that? How scary it must have been for her... she was the one whose life was going to change majorly for months, and she kept it to herself. Instead of pulling you out of your life, she did the most unselfish thing possible and made it so if didn't affect your life at all."

"I wish it had affected my life, Peyton. Do you know how much I have wanted... maybe not necessarily a baby, but... I want a family again, Peyton," he said, his voice cracking. "I wanted Haley to be my wife again. Being married was different from dating. I woke up every morning next to her. I was able to hug her to me while she was still sleeping, hear things she muttered while half awake. There was this feeling of being the sole provider for her, the one with the responsibility to make sure that she was happy, that she got everything she ever wanted. I never really had anyone to rely on before her, or anyone that relied on me." He swallowed. "I'm not saying I wanted to try to have a baby with Haley at that time, we were too young.. but if the situation presented itself, like it did, I wouldn't have wanted anything else but to have and keep our baby. We would have been a family. A young, inexperienced family, but still... it would have been better than how I feel now." He collapsed back down on the bench. Shrugging his shoulders, he said in a cold voice, "And know I don't want anything with her."

"That's not true... you're just..."

"Betrayed, angry... heartbroken?"

Peyton didn't know what to say. There was nothing she could say to make him feel better about any of this.

"Could you not tell her- Haley, about any of this..please? If you're going to tell her something..tell her all the mean things I said," he said harshly.

Peyton smiled slightly. "Okay."

"Why do things always have to be complicated? Things should be simple. One person loves the other, while the other loves them back. What's so hard about it?"

"Sometimes there's other people... or other situations that get in the way. That are more important about loving that other person. Like friendship, or doing what you think is right." She paused. "But in the end... both people get hurt anyways."

Nathan knew that they were talking about him and Haley as much as Lucas and Peyton. "People always leave, right?"

Peyton shook her head, remembering the artwork she had done a long time ago. "Sometimes they come back."

"Yeah."

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Peyton had never felt more badly for anyone in her life. Nathan wasn't angry as much as he was... heartbroken, she guessed.

"You ready to go watch an exhilarating game of one-on-one?"

Peyton rose from the bench. "I guess so," she replied, feigning a look of disgust. "You're going to beat him, right?"

Nathan smiled again, but his eyes were still sad. They had lost that light, the glow that had always accompanied his eyes when Haley was in his life. "For you I will."

"Good. It's going to be okay, Nathan. Everything will work out in time." With a little prodding from her, it will. Nathan and Haley are going to be together if it is the last thing she ends up doing.

"Thanks, Peyton."

start flashback

"I've been looking for the perfect place to have a date at, Peyton, and I think I've found it."

He sat himself down in the stool next to her in his mother's cafe. Since she was still out of town, it was closed, so they had the whole place to themselves. And Peyton was definitely taking advantage of his newly discovered cooking skills.

"What do you mean- you've been looking?"

"I've been looking," he repeated with a shrug. "You'll just have to come get in the car with me and find out what."

A few minutes later, Lucas stopped the car in the middle of nowhere. "Did you bring me out here to kill me?" Peyton asked, looking around after she got out of the car. Lucas opened up the trunk, pulling out a blanket and a basket. "Maybe," he replied with a devious grin.

He managed to hold the blanket and basket with one arm, and he took her hand with his free one, pulling her along into the woods. The woods weren't very thick, but Lucas made sure that no branches scratched or hit Peyton along the way. Eventually, Peyton saw sunlight, and the trees opened up to an open area. It was a field, completely covered with flowers of different varieties. Stretched out in front of them was a sea of purples, reds, pinks, and yellows.

Lucas glanced at Peyton, whose mouth had dropped open slightly. Grinning at the response, he pulled her along more until they were to middle of the field. "Lucas... this is... how did you find this?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I looked."

"We established that already," she said as he laid the blanket down on a patch where no flowers had grown and plopped down on it. She sat herself next to him, but he pulled her closer so she was sitting in between his legs, her back and head resting against him.

"It smells like you."

"What?" Peyton asked, slightly taken aback.

"The flowers, this field. It smells like you. I've been looking for a place that would remind me of you.. and here it is."

She turned to look at him, which was difficult in their position. With a wistful smile, she kissed him chastely on the mouth, then the cheek and down his face and neck.

"You like it then?" Lucas asked, with a laugh.

She got up from her seat as Lucas started to pull food out of the basket. "You're trying to make me fat, I know you are." She found herself walking through the wild flowers, that were as tall as her knees. The serenity of the atmosphere was almost magic like. It was like they had transported to a separate world- one all of their own. Lucas grabbed her from behind and lifted her up, while she started in surprise. He twirled her around once, set her back on the ground and put his hands on hers hips to turn her to face him. Those same hands somehow managed to push her against him, so their hips and beyond were pressed together.

Peyton found herself staring in those brilliant blue eyes. He leaned in to kiss her, his hands still on her hips, while Peyton's found their way to his back. She deepened the kiss, one of his hands coming to her face to cup it. She loved it when he did that. It felt so possessive... so protective. The moment turned passionate, and Lucas began to kiss her senselessly... amazingly. The hand that was on her face was now in her hair, while one of her hands ended up on his low back, pulling him into her. The need for more exploded within Peyton, but Lucas pulled back from her, panting slightly.

"Peyton... I didn't come out here for this. I know you want to wait... want to take it slow." He was having trouble thinking coherent thoughts as he rested his forehead against hers.

"I thought you wanted to wait too.." she said slowly, trying to catch her breath.

"I want to do whatever you want to do, Peyt."

She kissed him with quick, successive kisses, leaving his lips tingling. "You know we only have four more days until the summer's over. Everyone's coming back home."

Lucas almost groaned. No one had to remind him of that. He had been dreading that day for weeks now. It would be the end of this... amazing summer. They had had their own little world for months now, and he didn't want to give it up. Ever.

He realized that she was waiting for a response from him. "Yeah, I know. But that doesn't mean that we have to sleep together just because the summer is ending. I mean- you know I want to-" he said, earning a slightly, embarrassed grin from Peyton, "but I don't want you to feel like we'd be rushing things."

Peyton hung her head slightly, and Lucas reached down to her, lifting her chin. "What's the matter?" he asked, gently.

Her tongue darted out over her bottom lip, increasing Lucas'... frustration. Focus, he demanded of himself.

"I don't want things to change... when everyone comes back. When Brooke comes back.." she said slowly.

"Peyton, how many times do I have to tell you that I don't care about Br-"

"I'm not worried about you. I'm worried about her. I don't want to hurt her again. I know that she still... I don't want to do anything that would hurt our friendship, she does mean a lot to me."

"I know," Lucas replied, ing his head to the side. "And you mean a lot to me." His hand cupped her face gently, and he leaned down to rest his chin on the top of her head, its cushion in her blonde curls. "More than you know," he added gently, nearly in a whisper.

Right there, in that moment, he wanted to tell her that he loved her. He was head-over-heals in love with her. That when he wasn't with her, nothing seemed right. That she made him feel whole and happy and scared at the same time. That nothing else mattered to him but her.

But then he remembered the last time he had spilled his feelings for her. In Dan Scott's bedroom, he told that he wanted everything with her. And then she had run from him. Pushed him away. Would she do that now? Was she ever in love with him before, like he had been infatuated with her? Was she in love with him now?

The answers were unknown to him... and he didn't want to risk this- what they had now. This carefree, but perfect thing they had going now. He didn't want to tell Peyton that he loved her, and kill what they had now. So he didn't.

Peyton moved her head beneath his, and he lifted it and their eyes met. The look in her eyes was so full of pure intensity and adoration, that he couldn't think but help that she at least cared for him too. That this wasn't just a summer fling to her.

She grabbed one of his hands, intertwining his fingers and hers. It was amazing how right her hand fit in hers- it was like their hands were made to hold each other. Was that possible?

Peyton took off through the flowers, letting go of his hand momentarily. He watched her fly through the flowers, her curls bouncing around her face and on her shoulders. The dance stopped, and she stood still amongst the stems and the petals, staring out across the field of rainbows. Pulling a flower from its stem, Lucas followed her trail and put his arms around her when he reached her, the flower still clasped in his hand. She laid her arms on top of his, putting her tiny hands around his, finding the flower.

"I never thought there could be a perfect moment. In all my years, in everything I've lost, I didn't think it was possible. One moment where everything seems... right and special. It's defining and remembered for years to come.. and you couldn't forget it, even if you tried.." She turned to face him, laying her hands against his chest. Lucas put the flower behind her ear with a smile on his face. She stood on her toes, claiming Lucas' lips with her own. Lucas' hands on her back and waist lifted her up slightly, so she wasn't reaching as far. Dropping back to her normal height, she pulled back from him, but only slightly, due to the fact that Lucas was still holding her up. Their faces were still only centimeters apart. "But it is possible... with you." She kissed him again, Lucas accepting willingly. Merely her touch was intoxicating to him, but her kisses... they took his breath away, left his mind blank.

Now she had his hand, and was pulling him back to their blanket. Kissing him feverently, her hands pulled at the bottom of his shirt and he lifted his arms to allow her to discard one of the layers of clothing that were separating them. "Every moment is perfect with you," he told her, his voice raspy and deep, the words finding their way over his swollen lips.

She smiled in agreement, and Lucas brought his hand to her face, rubbing it gently with his thumb. "Do you know that you mean the world to me, Peyton Sawyer?"

Peyton nodded. "It's in your eyes. I see it every time you look at me," she said in a whisper, her voice barely audible.

This time, it was Lucas who moved in for her lips, his hands becoming tangled in her hair. Peyton lifted her arms up as her own shirt came off, Lucas throwing it to the side.

He was now propped up on his arms, hovering above her on the blanket. Their clothes were discarded around them and there was nothing between them now, nothing stopping them. Lucas stopped kissing her neck and brought his eyes to hers. The sun had started to go down and it threw shadows across her face.

A kiss on the lips. A hand on his back, pulling him almost desperately to her.

"Wait- are you cold?" he asked her, feeling a bit freezing himself. "Cause I brought another blanket..." He reached over to grab it and brought it over next to them.

"I thought you said you didn't plan this?" she asked, a smirk on her face.

"I didn't," he replied as he repositioned himself over her. "But I hoped for it. There's a difference there."

"Uh-ha," Peyton said as they resumed actions.

end flashback

Lucas' dream ended when he had reached over, still asleep, to pull Peyton closer to him on the bed. He went to touch her curls... but they weren't there. Lucas' eyes popped open and he found Brooke in front of him. Pulling his hand back, he held her breath as she moaned softly and then resumed her slumber.

It was just a dream...

He looked over at his alarm clock- it read five minutes from the time his alarm was supposed to go off.

It was just a dream, he repeated to himself again, trying to calm his rapid breathing and excitation. But he remembered that day like it had been yesterday. The first time him and Peyton had been together. Thinking of the magic of that moment- the way they had laid together after under the blanket in the field, watching the sun set and the stars appear in the sky one by one. There was only one word for what he felt that day-completion. Completion of his soul by the girl in his arms.

Hitting the snooze on the clock, he eased himself out of bed- to take a very, very cold shower.

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