Hey, lovely people. Thank you for sticking with me and this story, here's the next part!
...
Peyton glances at her reflection in the mirror, wondering where the creases around her eyes appeared from. Perhaps it's her imagination but she can't remember them being so pronounced before.
With a sigh she reaches for the night cream that Brooke bought her for her fortieth birthday. She uncaps the top and dips her finger into the no doubt expensive product before dotting it onto her face. She rubs it in using small circles, focusing particularly around the soft crow's feet that have arrived suddenly. She can barely believe that she's forty, that any of them are forty, it seemed to creep up so quickly on them. She's sure that five minutes ago they were all back in high school squabbling over boyfriends and girlfriends, then almost overnight, the days layered up and she was mother to teenagers who themselves were in high school, no doubt squabbling over boyfriends and girlfriends.
She flicks a glance again to her reflection as she squeezes some toothpaste onto her brush. She knows really that in all honesty she's probably lucky not to have more lines on her face. The Lindsey saga is just one of many stressful events that have made up her forty years. Even back in those high school days she had her fair share of white hair events; shootings, stalkers, car crashes and, well, surprise birth mothers. She wonders how they all got through high school with so much drama happening upon them. It's everything she never wanted for her own kids, but now it's happening.
"Hey," Lucas fills the doorway to the bathroom, his frown heavy.
Peyton arches her eyebrows in response, questioning him silently as she brushes her teeth. She watches him expectantly as he seems to wrestle slightly with himself. She sees the adjustment in his shoulders as he tenses and the sigh he hasn't quite let out yet. Sometimes she loves this expression on him; brooding and deep. It's most present when he's writing and debating a storyline, a character, or even a single word he's planning to use in a book. Ordinarily she loves to see him wearing his furrowed brow and tight set lips, knowing that she'll usually be able to ease him out of his brood with one of the finely tuned tricks she's learnt over the years.
Tonight is different though, she can tell that his agonising is down to her. She shivers slightly under her thin dressing gown and cami set, the tiled flooring suddenly cold under her feet. The shiver brings with it a memory, from when they were back in high school.
Peyton sat in a storm of angry music, cross legged on her bed, drawing out her feelings onto one of the remaining pages of her sketchbook. The earlier pages littered the floor around her waste paper basket, scrunched into balls of frustration, having been torn out by her when they didn't properly capture how she was feeling. She was engrossed now though, in a new image, Ellie's face forming clearly on the page. She fought away the familiarity of some of the features in Ellie's face and told herself that they weren't alike. She shifted her hand on the page, moving to the subject of the picture; the cocaine vile she was sketching into Ellie's grasp, held over her heart.
She was so involved in her work that she didn't notice anyone stepping into the room. She was only alerted to the intrusion once the music cut. Her eyes snapped up and a cold shiver ran the length of her spine. The scowl Lucas was throwing her from across the room didn't make her feel any warmer.
"Couldn't you knock?" She snapped at him, her heart still hammering with the shock.
He scoffed back at her, "Over that noise?"
She sighed and turned her sketch face down on the bed so that he couldn't pry over it. "What do you want, Lucas?"
"Yesterday, at the beach party," Lucas began, lent in the doorway to her closet, somehow having ignored the names that Brooke had written on there in brilliant white. His expression hurt her to look at, she couldn't remember being on the receiving end of that kind of scowl before. He looked mostly disappointed and she hated that.
"What about it?" She asked in a quiet but firm voice.
He crossed his arms over his chest, "You were kind of mean to Haley, don't you think?"
She exhaled a large breath out of her nose, "No, I don't." She rolled her eyes, "All these people keep leaving, what about the people who are left behind?"
Lucas shook his head, "You're concerned about Nathan? As it your ex-boyfriend."
"As in my friend." Peyton corrected sharply.
"I thought Haley was your friend." Lucas said and threw her that heavy disappointed look again, "I thought I was your friend."
Peyton shrugged, "I don't like what she did."
Lucas sighed heavily, that disappointment written right across his face, "And I don't like what you're doing much, but I'll still be your friend."
She swallowed thickly then. She hated the bitterness that was inside of her, the bitterness that was leaking out of her whenever she was in the wrong company. She hated that he was there to witness it and to cause that look in his eyes.
Peyton forces the memory away and blinks up at her husband, speaking though a mouthful of toothpaste, "What is it?"
He inclines his head, "I thought you could tell me."
As she feels the slight widening in her eyes that usually give her away instantly, she leans over the sink and spits. She takes a long moment to rinse and wipe away the drop of white foam at the corner of her mouth. "Only you would ambush me whilst I'm brushing my teeth."
"Who said it was an ambush?" He asks softly and she feels terrible. He's always been better at this kind of thing than she has.
She looks up at him, her eyes apologetic, "I hate when you give me that face."
Lucas scrubs a hand over his face as though trying to wipe the expression away as Peyton pulls off the bathroom light and wanders through to the bedroom. She begins pulling back the covers to the bed, fussing over smoothing the sheets, distracting herself.
Lucas remains stood in the doorway to their bedroom but turned around now, so that he's still facing her, "So, are you going to tell me what's going on?"
She sighs and drops down into a seated position on the bed she's just meticulously straightened. She averts her eyes from her husband, staring instead at the sewn pattern on the sheets, "I didn't go to the cemetery today."
"I know." Lucas says, his piercing stare narrowed towards her.
"So you've probably already guessed where I was." Peyton deduces, lifting her head.
Lucas unfolds his arms and strokes one hand along his stubbled set jaw line, "We agreed that we'd do this together."
"I know." Peyton whispers.
"Then why didn't you tell me?" He presses, "Why didn't you tell me that you were going to see her?"
Peyton bites down on her lip, she feels terrible for what she did, but she doesn't regret it. "Because you would have told me not go."
Lucas inclines his head, questionably, "What makes you say that?"
With a sigh Peyton pushes a hand through her hair, "I know you, Luke. You won't like what I've done….I told her to stay."
She watches the flame ignite behind his usually calm eyes; first with anger and then with betrayal. "Why on Earth would you want her to stay?"
"For Elliot." Peyton answers softly, as if there was any other reason. "I know he's curious, because he's only human. He'll want to know things that only Lindsey has the answers to. He may want to know all about her, he may want to know about what happened when he was born, he may want to know what cereal she prefers. I don't want to deny him that. I don't want him to go looking for her only to find that she's deserted him again."
Lucas leans in towards her, his brow furrowed even deeper, "Isn't that exactly what we want? To show him that she's not there for him, like she's never been there for him. For her to disappear once and for all?"
"No!" Peyton gasps, "I don't want her to break his heart all over again."
"What if she disappears anyway, later on?" Lucas questions. "Do you trust her not to? She's never been a parent, Peyton. What about when Elliot's asking her about her favourite damn cereal and she says 'I prefer waffles' and he says, 'Really? Me too!' and then he suggests they go out for breakfast. They go and it all gets too much for her because he's talking about…whatever - anything that puts the slightly amount of pressure on her - and she excuses herself to the bathroom and he never sees her again. What about then? What about when she gets scared again? What about when she runs?"
"What if she doesn't run?" Peyton poses adamantly.
Lucas almost laughs, "Okay. Then she becomes a part of his life. They start doing things together, they get joint interests, and he pulls away from us, little by little. How can you want that for him? For him to have that kind of relationship with her when she never wanted him!"
"Will you keep your voice down!" Peyton hisses. Both of their kids are only down the hall and she doesn't want them to hear a single word of the argument happening in the bedroom. "I want this to work out for Elliot because I love him! Do you think this doesn't hurt me? I am his Mom, Luke, and he will always be my little boy, but I might not always be who he thinks of as Mom. So don't you dare say to me that I'm not thinking this through properly. It's all I've thought about since the moment I adopted him."
Lucas scowls back at his wife, trying to ignore the break in her voice, "You're making out that by wanting to send her away, I don't love him. That's not fair."
"That's not what I mean." Peyton argues.
"You think I'm wrong for wanting her to leave." Lucas continues, "But I'm trying to do the best for him too."
"I never said you weren't." She answers adamantly.
Lucas exhales largely, "We've always said this won't work if we don't work together."
"That's still true." Peyton assures him.
"Then why are you hiding this from me? Would you have even told me about this if I hadn't asked?" Lucas asks.
"Hey, were you ever going to tell me that Lindsey was here three years ago?" She shoots back, her stare fixed, "I was going to tell you about today as soon as the kids were out of earshot. When were you going to tell me about meeting her three damn years ago?"
Finally Lucas' hard stance falls, his shoulders drop and he feels the same guilt washing over him that Peyton had previously worn.
"How could you not tell me she was in Tree Hill? Here, Lucas, where we live!" Peyton continues, the sound of tears evident through her voice, "I had absolutely no idea!"
"I didn't tell you," Lucas begins, "I should have told you but I got her to leave and afterwards it seemed like it would only hurt you to know."
Peyton's eyes overflow with tears, "I could have handled it, I would have handled it. I thought we were equal in this, didn't I deserve to know?"
"Hey," Lucas strokes a tear away from the corner of her eye, "I'm sorry. Of course you should have known. I should have told you everything, but I couldn't,"
"Why not?" Peyton questions almost before he finishes speaking. "Why the hell not?"
"Because she came back the summer Sawyer was in hospital! You were so worried for Sawy and there wasn't one thing we could do to help her. I didn't want to lay Lindsey on you as well, you had enough going on. We could have lost Sawyer, I didn't want you thinking for a second we could have lost Elliot as well."
Peyton's silenced then. She'd been a mess at that time, she can't deny it.
"I'm sorry. I still should have told you." Lucas says and she believes him.
"What happened?" Peyton asks, her voice quivering slightly still.
Lucas jumped at the sound of his cell phone buzzing in his pocket, there was nowhere to pull over safely but he had to take the call. He pushed his hand into his pocket whilst keeping the other firmly on the wheel. Without looking at the phone he hit the answer button and switched it to speaker.
"Yeah?" He expected it to be Peyton, calling with news.
"Lucas? Lucas, it's Lindsey." He'd recognised her voice from the first syllable and it had taken everything in him not to swerve the wheel.
He wanted to hang up on her but more than that he wanted to know what the hell she was doing calling after fractured contact in the last few years, "What is it?"
There was a pause, as though she had all the time in the world, which caused his blood pressure to creep up. He was stressed enough as it is, he didn't need the added complication of Lindsey. And Peyton, she definitely didn't need even the whisper of Lindsey's name.
Finally Lindsey answered, "It's Elliot, of course. I want to see him."
Ordinarily he would have laughed, just at the sheer audacity but he was so far from laughter at that moment that he just groaned. "Well, you can't."
"Lucas, I haven't seen him in thirteen years! I understand that you're angry but-,"
"No, you don't understand that I'm angry! God dammit, why now?" He bit back.
"Because-,"
"I don't have time for this, Lindsey. You can't see him, end of." Lucas cut her off.
He could almost hear Lindsey's frustration down the phone. "At least agree to meet with me."
Lucas froze then, "What? Where are you?"
"In Tree Hill." Lindsey answered. "It looks exactly how I remember it. Are you and Peyton still at your Mom's old house?"
"No." Lucas sighed and took the turning towards his house, "Listen, I'll meet you but you have to promise me that you won't try and contact Peyton."
"Why not?" Lindsey asked.
Lucas rolled his eyes, "Just don't, okay?"
"When was that, exactly?" Peyton interjects.
"Right after Sawyer…you know, I was running home to grab some stuff for you because you wouldn't leave the hospital." Lucas takes Peyton's hand in his own, "I'm sorry that I did that but I was just trying to protect you. We were going through such a rough time."
A smile whispers to Peyton's lips, "You're always saving me, Lucas Scott."
"I try." Lucas says.
"When did you meet her?" Peyton pushes. "I swear we never had a free second, we were always at the hospital or with Elliot."
Lucas shrugs, "I made it happen."
Lucas stepped into TRIC and checked his watch, it was unlike Lindsey to be late, from what he could remember. He was already sweating, the guilt pooling in his stomach as he waited, tapping his fingertips on the bar. Lindsey had the worst timing in the world.
"Lucas?" Her voice called out, wavering slightly.
He turned around to face her. She was still stood in the doorway as though afraid to step inside. She looked about as he remembered her, just as polished and preened but nervous and self-conscious around the edges.
"Lindsey." He nodded and reached behind the bar for a glass and a bottle of whiskey.
She stepped forward, her heels made an uneven rhythm on the hardwood flooring. He noticed that the grip she had on her handbag was causing her knuckles to turn a ghostly white colour. Then he shook away the observation and sank a large gulp of his drink.
"Thank you for seeing me." Lindsey pushed a forced smile to her lips, "I appreciate it."
Lucas only grunted in response. He wasn't meeting her out of choice.
"Um, how is your daughter?" She asked out of nowhere.
He narrowed his eyes back at her, "How do you know about that?"
Lindsey's cheeks flame, "I ran into Haley, completely by accident. She told me that Sawyer's in the hospital, is she okay?"
"She's fine." Lucas answered sharply even though it was a complete lie. His baby girl was in the hospital after nearly drowning in Nathan and Haley's pool. They still had no idea what had really happened. Logan, who had been with her along the pool side told them that she'd fainted and gone down like a stone, so quick and heavy into the water. Peyton though was convinced the reason for her passing out was Lucas' HCM reappearing in one of the kids, which had always been his worst fear. Sawyer still wasn't awake and they were about as far from okay as they possibly could be.
"Oh, really, that's great. I mean that Lucas." Lindsey nodded and he was sure that she was sincere, "So, about Elliot,"
"You want to see him." Lucas deduced.
Lindsey attempted a weak smile, tears clouding her eyes, "Yes. Yes, I do."
Lucas turned his head side to side slowly, "That isn't happening."
"He's my son, Lucas! I, I can't explain it but I need to see him. When I gave him up, I was unwell and I think it was the best decision for Elliot, but things are different now-,"
"They sure are." Lucas agreed but there was an edge to his voice, "He's part of a family now and he has no idea that you even exist."
Lindsey looked instantly wounded. "You haven't told him about me?"
"No." Lucas sighed largely, "We're planning to, we are. We will. We just haven't found the right moment."
"But you will?" Lindsey pushed.
Lucas bobbed his head slowly in agreement, "We will. We've always planned to, but not yet, he's not ready."
Lindsey released a slow breath, "When do you think you'll do it?"
"Lindsey, you can't be here, not now." Lucas heaved a deep sigh, "Remember how this all began, in that cafe in Wilmington? Where you gave Elliot to me without any explanation or warning? You remember that I took him, no questions, I just took him because you asked and because you needed me too, because Elliot needed me."
"Of course I remember, Lucas."
"Then please could you return that favour?" Lucas asked, his voice even a little pleading, "Could you just do this one thing; no questions asked?"
Lindsey's eyes poured back at him, "What? What thing?"
"Leave." Lucas said evenly. "When I said Sawyer was fine, I lied, okay? I am asking you, please, leave. Elliot's not in a good place right now, he needs stability. Come back in a few years when he's older, when he's ready. Once we've told him about you and he's had time to get used to the idea. Not for me, for him."
The flood of tears came quicker than Lucas expected. He'd crushed her dream, he could see it in her eyes. He couldn't feel guilty though. He was protecting his family. Elliot wasn't ready for the revelation of Lindsey. Honestly, Lucas wasn't ready either. He and Peyton had worked so hard at giving Elliot and Sawyer everything that they never had as kids; a real solid family unit. He didn't want to break that apart now. He couldn't even think of it, especially not now, with Sawyer how she was.
"Do we have a deal?" Lucas pushed, treating the whole situation like business, suddenly.
Lindsey didn't speak, he assumed she couldn't. She just nodded tightly from behind her tears.
Lucas couldn't say that he liked Lindsey. He'd long since lost any kind of respect for her. But in that moment, he fully appreciated that at least she was honourable. He had her word, and he trusted it.
"I'm sorry." Peyton says as he finishes his recollection. "I'm sorry for not telling you where I went today, do you know how guilty I've felt all day? I was just waiting for a moment alone with you for long enough to explain. I'm sorry, no secrets, no lies. No more."
Lucas leans over and kisses her forehead, "I'm sorry, for not telling you about meeting Lindsey. No secrets, no lies, you got it."
"So, we're okay?" Peyton asks in a small voice.
"Hey, look at me, Peyt," Lucas guided her glance towards him with his thumb under her chin, "Come hell or high water, I am not letting this come between us. We may not always agree but that doesn't change how I feel about you."
Peyton leans in towards her husband and he opens his arms to her in a motion that's as natural to him as drawing a breath. Peyton slips her arms around his torso and hugs him tightly, "I love you, Luke."
Lucas brushes his fingertips over her wedding band, "It goes without saying that I love you."
...
Thank you so much again for reading! Next chapter I'm going to pick up the pace just a little. I much prefer writing a bit of action and things happening rather than the discussion chapters (as you may have noticed) so that's what's coming up next!
Oh and there will be a revisit to the story arc about Sawyer later, if you're curious.
Lexie :)