CHAPTER EIGHT

Creepin' in

"What do you think they're saying?"

Brooke turned to Haley, who had asked the same question twice already. She shared an amused look with Peyton, then stared back at the front.

The three girls were crouching on the ground, hiding behind the low wall that surrounded their school. A few feet ahead of them, Lucas and Nathan were sitting at a table and seemed deep in conversation. They were close enough for the girls to properly see their faces, but too far to make out what they were saying.

They had been spying on them for a good ten minutes now, and Haley's nervousness hadn't notched down since. Haley hadn't even wanted to do so at first, but when Brooke had told her that their friends wouldn't spot them, and that maybe it would make her feel better to see that they weren't about to go for each other's throat, she had changed her mind.

Since Lucas had been grounded for two weeks after the Ravens' brawl he had initiated, he hadn't been able to get out of his house for the past two days. Brooke had suggested that maybe he could talk to Nathan over the phone, just like he had done with Haley during the weekend. However, Lucas had replied that he wouldn't feel comfortable doing that and that he would rather talk to him face to face. Brooke hadn't argued, knowing that Nathan probably thought the same. Maybe the Y chromosome made it impossible for boys to have a heart-to-heart over the phone.

This morning, when Brooke had arrived at school, she had immediately sensed the awkwardness hanging over them. Nathan had been sitting two seats to his brother's right and was stubbornly staring at his phone as if his life depended on it. Lucas, on the other end, looked like he wanted to say something to him but didn't even know where to begin with and didn't want to do so with their classmates around them. When Brooke had noticed once again the mirrored purple bruises on their faces, she had stifled a laugh and made her way to the seat between them. After a quick peck on her boyfriend's lips, she had sat down and fought the urge not to crack a joke about the ridiculousness of the situation. Seriously, Lucas of all people had gotten into a fight with his brother for dating and knocking up his best friend. If somebody had told her a year ago that this would happen, she would have never believed it. Then again, she was travelling in the future, so really, anything was possible now.

Peyton's arrival had helped to defuse the situation. She had taken the seat in front of Nathan and sent a quizzical look to Brooke, as she was wondering why those two still weren't speaking to each other.

"Hey, Sawyer," Brooke had asked with a false air of innocence, "if you wanted to have… Say, a private and important conversation, here at school, where would you go?"

The moment she had asked that, she could have sworn she had seen the two brothers' ears pricking up.

Peyton had answered with a knowing smile. "I'd probably wait till lunch and go at one of the tables outside. No one hangs out there since it's freezing. But that's just me."

"Sounds like a good idea."

And now, three hours later, they were hiding outside, in the said freezing cold, just to get a glimpse of what was happening.

"Mouth told me they're having a bet," Haley whispered to them.

Brooke and Peyton both turned to her at the same time. "A bet?" Peyton asked, lowering her voice.

"Five bucks that Nathan will say something that's going to push Lucas to hit him again. Mouth's betting against that."

"That does sound like Nathan," Peyton said with a chuckle. She fell silent after seeing Brooke's stern look. She cleared her throat and said, "But, erm, that's definitely not gonna happen."

"I don't think so either," Haley answered, though Brooke could easily hear the anxiety in her voice. "I just wish I could hear them right now."

"I'm sure we can guess what they're saying." Peyton's eyes landed on the boys. Nathan was the one talking right now: his head was hanging low and he was scratching his neck. She cleared her throat and made her voice deeper, as if she wanted to imitate Nathan's. However, the result sounded much more like Sylvester Stallone. "Look, I know I should have told you sooner, but what can I say… I should have listened to my great friend Peyton."

Brooke and Haley failed to muffle their laughter; they all ducked at the same time, just as Nathan's head shot up and turned to them.

"Do you think they saw us?" Brooke asked in a whisper.

She turned to Peyton, who frowned slightly. "I don't think so," her friend mused before slowly lifting her head just above the wall. "No, they didn't. Nate's still talking."

Haley sighed in relief and closed her eyes, resting her head against the wall. Brooke stretched out her legs and gave her a nudge. "See?" she told her with a smile. "I told you it would go well."

"Now, Lucas is saying something," Peyton added with a squint. "He's standing up now. Nathan too… And… There you go, they're hugging!"

"Really?" Haley asked excitedly. She swiftly turned around and looked up from the wall. Her voice quavered as she said, "Oh, they are hugging."

Brooke chuckled. "Haley, are you crying?"

Haley sat down, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. "It's just those stupid pregnancy hormones."

Peyton sat back and looked over at Haley. "I didn't think you'd be this stressed out."

Haley tried to shrug it off. "I'm not," she said with a weak smile.

"Bullshit," Brooke scoffed. "You barely got any sleep last night."

"How do you know that?" Haley asked, surprised.

"Because you kept turning around in the bed."

"Well… I guess I was a little stressed out," she admitted with a sigh, gazing down at her lap. Her left hand reached for her stomach. "I just want everything to be perfect."

Brooke put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a side hug. "It will be." She swiftly turned her head to Peyton when she heard her snickering. "What?" she asked, her voice hardening.

"Come on, not everything can be perfect." Brooke glared at her best friend, but that wasn't enough to shut her up. "You seriously believe that crap?"

"No, but if that can get me some sleep tonight, I'll say it again," she said, making Haley chuckle.

"Still, perfect is a bit of a─"

"Alright," she cut her off, rolling her eyes in exasperation, "then everything won't be perfect, it'll just be fine! Is that okay with you Hales?" Haley nodded to her with a crooked smile. "How about you, Mrs. Cynical?"

Peyton's lips twitched: she was holding back a grin. "Sounds more realistic."

"What's more realistic?" a male voice asked from above them.

They all startled and looked up at the same time; Nathan was bending over the low wall and staring at them, his arms crossed. He slowly shook his head: he seemed both amused and annoyed at them.

"How long have you been here?" Peyton asked him as she stood up.

Brooke shared a look with Lucas, who was standing right behind his brother and was obviously holding back his laughter. She got on her feet and helped Haley up. "I could ask you the same," Nathan told them as he climbed over the wall.

"We didn't hear anything," Haley said with a guilty face.

Nathan squinted at her then turned to his childhood friends and pointed an accusing finger at them. "I blame you for corrupting her."

Peyton rolled her eyes. "I'm pretty sure you took care of that first," she said, making them laugh. "Can we just go inside now? We still have twenty minutes to get lunch."

Brooke watched as Nathan held Haley's hand and kept bickering with Peyton while following her to the school door. She was about to walk with them when something wrapped around her wrist. She turned back to see that Lucas was now straddling the wall. He gently pulled on her arm and made her sit next to him.

"It was your idea, wasn't it?" he asked her in an amused tone.

"Well, yeah," she admitted, gazing down at their intertwined fingers. His hand was cold, but she didn't mind that at all. "But only because I wanted Haley to feel better," she added, looking up at him. "She was worried about you." Lucas didn't say anything back, but she could tell by his face that he wasn't buying it. "Fine, I was just being nosy." He chuckled and wrapped his free arm around her waist, bringing her closer to him. "So, what did you say to him?"

"You really didn't hear any of that?" he asked, tilting his head.

"Not a single word."

"Nothing you don't know already," he said with a dismissive shrug. "I apologized for the way I acted, and he did too, and then we just talked about Haley and how he'd be a father soon. We talked about Dan too."

Brooke's eyes landed on his bruise; she brushed it with her thumb, and when he didn't wince, she knew it wasn't hurting him anymore. "You don't like thinking about him," she mused.

"It's not as bad as it used to be. At least now I barely run into him anymore," he said with another shrug, avoiding her gaze.

She gave him a soft kiss, making him look at her again. "We should get something to eat."

"I wouldn't mind staying here a little longer," he murmured, burying his head in her neck. She closed her eyes briefly, feeling his warm breath on her skin. "I'm still grounded for twelve more days."

"I could sneak in your room again."

He lifted his head and gave her a cheeky grin. "I'd better leave my door open, then." He let go of her hand and cupped her face, meeting her lips with his.

After a few seconds, she tugged on his scarf and deepened their kiss. She smiled when she heard him groan and felt his hands tightening around her waist.

They both jumped up when they heard a whistle blast near them. Brooke felt a sharp pain on her lower lip and winced; Lucas had bit her. He barely got time to apologize to her before they turned to their right to see that Whitey was stomping towards them, his whistle still in his mouth.

"Shit," Lucas muttered under his breath.

"Do you think we should run?" she asked with a nervous laughter that died as soon as Whitey stopped in front of them.

The old man's eyes kept going from Brooke to Lucas. "What the hell are you doing out here?"

Lucas gulped. "Nothing Coach, we were just─"

"After all the trouble you caused just three days ago, don't you think you could lay low for a minute?" ─he blinked and turned to Brooke─ "And what happened to you?"

Brooke was rubbing her lip, trying to soothe the pain. "Nothing," she said, dropping her hand to her side.

"Just get inside, now. Lucas, don't forget about your detention." What he called detention was in fact daily training sessions; Whitey had told the Ravens that it would go on until they would start behaving properly on the court. "And I don't need you," ─ he looked back at Brooke─ "to give him bad ideas like skipping school, he's been acting like an idiot enough on his own."

"Technically, we're just skipping lunch, not─" She stopped talking when Lucas nudged her. He was probably right: now was not the time to quibble. "I mean, um, sure, I won't do that."

They walked away as quickly as they could from Whitey and rushed into the school.

"Why do people keep thinking that I'm the one corrupting others?" she asked aloud, annoyed by Whitey's last comment.

"Because they know you," Lucas answered with a smirk.

She gasped and turned to him with a shocked face that made him laugh. She furrowed her brow and punched his chest. "Jerk," she breathed out before marching off.

That didn't seem to stop his hilarity at all, it was quite the opposite actually: she could hear him laughing behind her. She stopped in her tracks and spun around to face him, a mischievous crooked grin spreading on her lips. "You know what, maybe Whitey's right. I should stop giving you bad ideas."

His laughter faded quickly when he saw her face. "What do you mean?" he asked warily.

"I don't think I'm gonna sneak in your room after all." She smirked at his sudden discomfiture and rushed to the cafeteria.

She could hear his footsteps speeding up behind her. "Wha─ Brooke, wait! I was just kidding!" he exclaimed, making her giggle.

He kept apologizing until they reached the cafeteria and hurried to fill their trays: they only had ten minutes left on their break. They made their way to their friends' table and Brooke noticed that Mouth and Haley were sitting at the far end; Haley waved at her, motioning to the empty seat in front of her.

"Where have you been?" Mouth asked her when she sat next to him. He glanced at Lucas, who was sitting down at the other end of the table. "Wait, do we want to know what you were doing?"

"Don't worry, we kept it PG-13," she answered with a grin. "What were you talking about?"

"The board," Haley said in a whisper.

Brooke frowned, puzzled. "The board?"

"You know, your jumping timeline."

Brooke's eyes widened with fear. "Are you insane?!" she asked, pointing her thumb at the two boys sitting next to them.

"It's okay," Mouth whispered, "they're not listening at all."

Brooke looked at Fergie, who was sitting next to her, and Junk, sitting next to Haley. They both had their backs slightly turned to them and were busy talking to the rest of the table. They did look like they were not paying any attention to them at all. Still, Brooke did not feel comfortable talking about this with so many people around them. She turned to Haley and whispered, "Travels, not jumps. And we can't discuss this here."

"Actually, that's what we were saying," Mouth said. "We were thinking we could meet up this Sunday at my house, are you free?"

"Yeah."

Haley gave her a broad, satisfied smile. Ever since she had found out about Brooke's travels, she had not asked anything about them. Granted, it had only been 48 hours, but still, Brooke had been puzzled by Haley's lack of interest in the matter. She now realized that if her friend had not been pregnant and busy planning her whole future with Nathan, she would have probably badgered her with a hundred questions.

Brooke grabbed her fork and dug in. "Are we still emptying your room tomorrow?" she asked, taking a mouthful of pasta.

Last night, right before going to sleep, Haley had told her that Nathan had invited her to move in with him. Now that they knew that they were about to have a child together, it was absurd not to share the same roof.

Haley shook her head. "No, Karen just asked me if I could take an extra shift. Is Wednesday good for you?"

"Sure."

Haley's house turned out to be smaller than what she had pictured, knowing that she came from a family of seven children. But as Haley explained while she was leading her upstairs to her bedroom, it had never felt cramped growing up here since she had a significant age gap with her oldest siblings. Two of them had already left for college before she had even started grade school.

Family pictures were spread across the walls; Brooke paused on the stairs, noticing one with Haley and Taylor. They really did look like twins on this one.

"Did you talk to your parents?" she asked, following Haley to the landing.

Haley turned to her. "I just hung up with them."

"What did they say?"

"That they're happy to see their youngest leaving the nest," Haley said, rolling her eyes.

Brooke wondered how such carefree parents could be the root of the girl standing in front of her, and then she remembered what Lucas had written about her family. Their nonchalance was precisely why Haley was the way she was, and it probably also had a lot to do with her decision to have Jamie.

Haley led her down the corridor and opened the door on her right; it was a small but cozy room. The walls were painted in shades of purple; there were two bookcases on one side, and on the other a wardrobe with its doors wide open. The bed was at the center of the room and Nathan was sitting cross-legged on top of it, fighting with a roll of tape that kept sticking to his fingers.

"Great, I could really use a hand with this," he told them, lifting the roll in the air.

"What are you doing here?" Brooke asked, raising her eyebrows. "I thought Peyton was helping us today."

Haley went to the bed and took the tape out of Nathan's hands. "The Post asked her to come for a last-minute reunion."

"But what about your training-slash-detention?" Brooke asked, still confused by his presence. "Whitey's gonna kill you if you don't show up."

Nathan's lips stretched into a grin. "No, he's not. I told him why I needed to skip practice and he gave me the green light."

"Are we talking about the same bald grumpy coach?"

He chuckled. "We talked a lot yesterday, right after training. He wanted to know if I was okay. He could see that Luke and I worked things out but still… Anyway, I told him about Haley and the baby. So, when I asked him if I could skip detention to help you out, he said I was free."

"Wow… He's really softening up, huh."

"Well, he did say I'd have to clean the gym lockers by the end of the week… But hey at least he agreed."

After an hour spent sorting out clothes, Brooke was sitting on the bed, busy packing the ones Haley wanted to donate. Nathan was down on the floor on the other side of the room, putting away the books that Haley was handing to him.

"Why are you taking this?" she heard him ask after a while.

Haley was kneeling next to her bookcase, examining the bottom shelf. She gave a quick glance over her shoulder to Nathan, then went back to checking her books. "What do you mean, why?"

Brooke looked up from the box that she had been filling with clothes and gave him a quizzical look. As a response, he threw her the book he had been holding. She caught it and turned it around, reading its title: Goodnight moon. "It's a children's book," Nathan said, raising an eyebrow.

"I know, my parents used to read it to me," Haley retorted, handing him another one.

He grabbed it and put it in the box nearest to him. "And you still read it?"

She chuckled softly. "No. But I thought we could read it to our son."

Brooke dropped the clothes she had been holding. Had she just used the word 'son'?

Nathan gave Haley a warm smile. "That's a great idea." He blinked twice, then said, "Wait, you said son? You don't know that, we could have a girl."

Haley's mouth fell open. She looked like her brain had just short-circuited and could not think of words anymore.

Brooke knew she had to divert Nathan's attention and the first idea that came to her mind was to throw the book back to him, aiming for his head.

"Ow!" he cried, wincing in pain just as the corner of the book landed on his forehead. He scowled at her. "What the hell, Brooke!"

"Sorry," she said with an apologetic face. "You know I can't aim." He shook his head and put the book with the rest of Haley's stuff. Brooke turned to Haley, who looked like she had gained her composure back. "So, erm, you still have all your childhood books? I don't think I have any of those left."

"Um, yeah," she said with a quick, grateful glance to her. "They were actually my brothers and sisters' before they were mine."

"I don't have any either," Nathan grumbled, massaging his temple. "My mom gave them away years ago."

Brooke cut out several pieces of tape. "I don't even remember having any."

Haley was taken aback by her that. "Really?"

"I don't know…" Brooke murmured, scratching her chin as she was searching her memories. She shrugged and taped the box she had finished filling. "I don't think so."

"With the book collection your mother has?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "No way, she definitely read you some bedtime stories."

Haley told her that she would ask Victoria, but Brooke shrugged it off; what was the point of remembering all this now?

Fortunately, Nathan seemed to forget about Haley's weird choice of words, and after another hour, they were done packing all of her clothes, books, jewelry, CDs and everything else she wanted to take with her.

The fifteen cardboard boxes stayed in that room for three more days, until they all met again for Haley's moving day.

Peyton parked her car along the pavement since the driveway was already occupied by the moving truck. Well, it was not exactly an official moving truck, it was Skills' father's plumbing truck, but it would do for the afternoon.

They got out of the car just as Haley was coming out of her house, carrying two stacked boxes; Skills was running after her, asking her to stop right there, and when she did, he took the boxes from her hands and motioned for her to go back in the house. Peyton went straight to the house, waving at Skills as she passed by him, but Brooke figured he could use some help.

"What happened?" Brooke asked him after walking up to him.

"Thanks," he said when she took a box from him. He put the one he was still carrying in the back of his truck and turned to her. "I told her to stop carrying stuff."

"Why?"

He turned to her and gave her an incredulous look. "Because she's pregnant, that's why!"

Haley had told her friends about her pregnancy at the beginning of the week; it had actually been quite a funny scene to witness. She had first told them that she had been dating Nathan, to which there had not been much response because, apparently, they all had figured it out, just like Lucas had before them. She had almost looked vexed by their absence of reaction, and when she then had proceeded to tell them that she would be moving in with him and that she was pregnant, their utterly stunned faces had brought a satisfied smile to her lips.

"I'm pretty sure she can do that kind of stuff, she's just at the beginning of her preg─"

"Better safe than sorry," he said, taking the box she was still holding and putting it with the other. "Where's Luke?"

"Still grounded."

"I thought he was gonna ask Karen to lift it off just for today?"

"He did," Brooke answered, recalling their earlier phone call, "but she said no, and instead she gave him a list of chores to do."

Who knew Karen would be harsher than Whitey?

"Sounds like Karen," Skills said with a laugh.

After they were done loading the truck, they drove to Nathan's and moved all the boxes inside his house. Deb was there, and although she greeted them with a smile, she looked like something was bothering her. She had the same shifty eyes as when Brooke had seen her half-naked in her hallway. She did not offer to help them at all and went back to reading her magazine in the kitchen while they were all working.

At the end of the afternoon, they were finally done. Boxes had been unpacked, clothes had been put away, and CDs had been arranged just the way Haley wanted them to be. Brooke came back from upstairs, ready to plump down on the couch, and saw with disappointment that it was already occupied by Skills, Fergie and Junk. Haley was sitting cross-legged on the armchair and tuning her guitar. Mouth was dozing off on a pile of cushions, with his eyes half-open, his legs stretched-out and his head resting against the TV bench.

"Where's Peyton?" Brooke asked.

Junk looked up at her, sporting the same tired look that they all had. "Kitchen. She went to get some drinks."

"I thought Nate went for that."

"Yeah and he never came back, so she went too and…"

"She's not coming back either," Haley murmured absent-mindedly, her eyes focused on her guitar.

Brooke turned on her heels and walked to the kitchen. Her best friend was sitting down on the floor, her ear pressed against the door, her face screwed up in concentration. She glanced at Brooke and motioned her to come closer silently.

"What are you doing?" Brooke whispered, though she already knew the answer.

"I was gonna go in, but then I heard some yelling," her friend whispered back.

"Yelling? Who's in there?"

"Nate and Deb."

Brooke sat down and pressed her ear against the door. She could not hear any yelling, only Nathan talking. "Who was yelling?"

"Both. Deb said they were being irresponsible, and Nate said that it was too late anyway to say that, and that she was one to talk."

She gasped. "He said that?"

"Yeah," Peyton said with a frown. "Did you know Deb was against Haley moving in?"

"No, Haley didn't mention it… I don't think she even knows about it."

"Well, if she doesn't know yet, she's about to find out."

"Maybe she just needs some time," Brooke suggested with a shrug. "How would you react if your son told you his girlfriend was preg─" She fell silent when they heard Nathan raising his voice. He was saying that he didn't care if Deb couldn't see Haley as family, she was his family now, and if his mother couldn't handle that, he'd just find another place to live in.

They both hurried to their feet when they heard his loud footsteps approaching the door. Nathan froze when he saw them standing in front of him, both sharing the same sheepish look.

"Can you two stop doing that?" he asked them with a glare, closing the door behind him.

"We're just worried about you Nate," Brooke said with a shrug.

He turned to them and looked like he was about to yell at them too, but when he saw their faces, his shoulders relaxed and his voice softened. "You don't have to. I can handle this on my own."

"Yeah, we heard," Peyton said, ruffling his hair with a grin.

Brooke hugged him from the side. "We're proud of you, you know."

"Who knew the boy who couldn't even beat me at arm wrestling would grow up this much?" Peyton added with a smirk.

"That was ages ago!" he cried, rolling his eyes.

Brooke giggled and followed her friends as they made their way to the living room, still bickering.

Nathan walked around the couch and went to sit on the floor, next to Haley who was now playing a tune. "Did you order the pizza?" he asked Skills.

"I'm doing it right now," Skills answered, staring at his phone. Brooke went behind the couch and bent over it to see that he was indeed putting an order. "How many? Five? Six?"

"Don't count me in," Brooke said, making him stretch out his neck to look up at her.

"Why?"

Peyton sat next to Mouth and was quick to answer: "She's meeting up with Lucas."

A mix of giggles, snickering and whistles filled up the room. "Karen didn't let him come here but you think she'll be okay with you going there?" Nathan asked, raising an eyebrow.

Brooke shrugged it off. "Who says she's gotta know?"

After a few minutes of debate on what pizza to get, and when she received Lucas' text telling her that the coast was clear, she bid them goodbye and was about to leave the house when Haley called her name. She let go of the doorknob and turned around to see that her friend was walking up to her.

"How are you getting there? Didn't you come with Peyton?"

"Yeah, but I'll just get Nate's bike." It would not be the first time she borrowed it, and he barely even used it anyway.

Haley looked through the door glass and frowned. "It's really dark, I'll drop you off."

Brooke chuckled. "Don't worry, I'll be fine."

"But it's cold and─"

"I'm pretty sure I can make my way through this town in any weather," Brooke said with a grin. "And look," ─she raised her palms up to her friend's face─ "I'm wearing gloves. And a scarf."

Haley seemed to hesitate for a second but eventually nodded. "Just text me when you get there. And thank you again," she said, pulling her into a hug that startled her.

She raised her eyebrows. "For what?"

Haley took a step back. "For letting me stay at your place. I already thanked your mom this morning, but if you hadn't been there... You have no idea how much you've helped me, so… Thank you."

Despite the embarrassment she was feeling right now, Brooke realized that it also did feel good to hear those two simple words. "You're welcome," she said with a shy smile. "I'll see you tomorrow."

It took her about fifteen minutes to reach Lucas' house. It would have usually taken her longer, but Haley's worry seemed to have grown on her, because she had pedaled as fast as she could. She was still a little breathless when Lucas opened his bedroom door.

"Hi," he murmured with a grin. "Come in."

She heard him shut the door behind her. She took off her shoes and started removing her coat. "Where are your parents?"

"They went out for dinner," he said as he untied her scarf and threw it on his desk. "Some place downtown."

"For how long?" Brooke asked as she handed him her coat and gloves.

His gleaming eyes landed back on her. "At least two hours." He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her so that their noses were almost touching. "What do you want to do?"

"Like you even have to ask," she murmured, making him chuckle.

Brooke had been with… Well, she hadn't really kept count, but she had definitely been with a few boys before she had started dating Lucas. However, none of her former lovers had ever made her feel the way he did.

She did not know what it was; maybe the way he looked at her, or how he kissed and touched her; maybe it had to do with the fact that he liked taking his time, making sure that she was comfortable before exploring her body. It was probably a mix of all these things, in addition to other elements that simply could not be rationalized. In the end, all that mattered was that for the first time ever ─well, technically, it was the second time─ she could lose herself completely in someone's arms and still feel safe.

Brooke looked around her. She was in a house packed with people she didn't know, and who all had their backs turned to her. She walked through the crowd, looking left and right to spot a familiar face. Her eyes landed on Lucas; she could only see the top of his head. She came closer, apologizing to the random people she kept bumping into.

"Why are you not letting me through?" she asked aloud, frowning when no one answered her.

She sighed and stared at the front. She could still make out Lucas' head, bobbing as if he was listening to something. Or someone. Yes, it was someone who was far, far away.

A voice rang in her ears: "Promise me."

She spun around, looking for the person who had just said that, but there were only backs turned to her.

Lucas' head went up and down, giving a clear nod.

Suddenly he was gone. Vanished from the crowd. She looked up at the ceiling and blinked; she knew these ceiling lights.

"Promise me," the voice repeated.

Her eyes snapped open. She blinked and squirmed, wondering for a second where she was, until it all came back to her. She stretched her neck to see that Lucas was gazing down at her with a fond smile.

"Hey Pretty girl."

She lifted her head from his chest, her arms still resting there. "How long did I sleep?" she asked in a groggy voice.

With a glance, she saw that he was holding up a book in his left hand; his right hand was busy caressing her back. He looked thoughtfully at the book he had been reading. "About thirty minutes, I think."

"Did you just count that from the number of pages you read?"

"Yeah," he admitted with a chuckle.

She closed her eyes and relaxed her body, letting her head rest on his chest. "I could stay like this for hours," she murmured with a moan. Her head was slowly moving up and down with his breathing. She knew she could easily fall asleep again, and…

Wait, what was dream she had just had?

She opened her eyes and furrowed her brow, trying to remember what had happened. She had been in a house, surrounded by a huge crowd, and she remembered seeing Lucas from afar… But it was all starting to get fuzzy.

Her body jerked up, startling Lucas, and she stretched out her arm, reaching for the drawer on his nightstand. In good writer fashion, Lucas always had a pen and some paper sitting there. She lied back on him and used his chest as a desk to write down anything she could remember. She seldom wrote her dreams down, but for some reason, she thought this dream was… different.

He shifted a little, trying to see what she was up to, and made her pen deviate from the paper. "Don't move," she mumbled, getting back to her writing.

House. Crowd. Lucas. Promise me. Ceiling lights.

"What are you doing?"

"Writing down the dream I just had, and… I'm done," she said, putting the pen down on the bed. She kissed his chest and looked up at him. "Thanks."

"What did you dream about?"

She sat up and, after a shiver ran through her body, pulled up the sheets to cover herself. "You."

His face lit up. He folded his arms behind his head and stared at her with a smug face. "Oh, I see."

"Not that kind of dream," she said, rolling her eyes. His grin faded quickly but reappeared in a flash when she added: "That was two nights ago."

He pumped his fist in the air. "I knew it!"

She giggled and playfully punched his chest. "Shut up."

"So, what was I doing in your dream?"

"I don't know," she said with a frown, trying to picture it again. "You were just… There. Talking to someone, I think. And someone was asking me to promise something."

"Promise what?"

She shrugged. "I don't know." She shook her head and folded the piece of paper in two before leaning over the side of the bed. She reached out a hand to grab her pants and slid the paper in her back pocket. "It's probably nothing."

"But?" he asked after she stayed silent for a moment.

"But… I have this weird feeling. Kind of like─" She stopped talking abruptly, startling him.

Kind of like the dreams with the rabbit. She had felt the same with those: it had been as if her brain had been trying to send her a message that she simply could not decrypt.

"Brooke?" She blinked and stared at Lucas, who was now sitting up, waving a hand in front of her eyes. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she managed to say after a few seconds, "just hungry, that's all."

He told her she should have said so earlier, hopped off the bed and hurriedly put his pants back on. Before leaving for the kitchen, he said she should check his desk, that there was something on there for her.

She got up and immediately felt shivers running down her naked body. She looked around and found Lucas' grey hoodie lying on the chair.

There were many things on his desk, but Brooke quickly guessed what he had talked about: his latest chapter was ready. She grabbed it and plopped down on the bed, her back resting against the pillows. She flipped through the pages: compared to the previous chapters, this one seemed much longer.

She only had time to read the first three paragraphs; just enough to understand that this one would be about his parents.

Lucas came back with a food tray; his eyes glinted when they landed on her new outfit, but whatever thought that had crossed his mind seemed to have been put aside when he placed the tray down on the bed. She folded back her legs so that he could sit across from her and gazed down at two plates of mouthwatering lasagna.

"Did you prepare this?" she asked, bemused.

He handed her a plate. "No, it's just leftovers from yesterday." He took a bite then asked, "How did the moving go? Haley told me that─"

"Haley!" she yelled, startling him. She jumped up and picked up her pants from the floor.

Lucas seemed puzzled by her frantic movements. "What are you doing?"

"She told me to text her when I get here and… Ah, see, she called me twice already," she said as she was staring at her phone. "Shit." She sent her a quick, apologetic text, then threw her phone on the bed and went back to sit on it. "Anyway," she said, grabbing her plate, "almost everything went smoothly."

"Almost?"

"It's Deb," she said between two mouthfuls. "She's not really fond of the whole situation."

"Yeah, Nate mentioned it." He paused and after she sent him a quizzical look, added, "When we talked, on Monday."

She took another bite. "Well, anyway, apart from that, it all went great. Fergie broke a frame." Her phone lit up: Haley had probably texted her back. Brooke recalled the last thing her friend had told her before she had left the house. "Lucas," she said tentatively. He gazed up at her, slightly furrowing his brow when he noticed her sudden fluster. "Thank you."

He raised his eyebrows. "For what?"

"Well…" Why did she feel so shy all of a sudden? "I know you don't like opening up to just anybody, and I know how personal these chapters are, so… Thank you. I really enjoy reading them."

Lucas was staring at her with an expression she had trouble reading. Why was he frowning? "You're not."

"I'm not… Not what?"

"Just anybody," he answered, repeating her words. "You're not just anybody."

A warm feeling spread across her chest. "Oh." She gazed down at her plate. "Okay." When she looked up at him and saw his crooked grin, she knew her cheeks had turned pink. "So, erm, do you think I can stay here tonight? I know your parents will be─"

He interrupted her with a chuckle. "You really think I was gonna let you go home by yourself, this late, on a bike?"

"But what about your mom? If she sees me here─"

"She won't," he told her with a nonchalant shrug. "I'll just lock my door, and you can leave early tomorrow morning."

Lucas had been right, they did not get found out by Karen that night: after finishing their meals, they cuddled up on the bed and soon enough, she fell asleep again, tired out from her long afternoon.

When she woke up, she was lying on her left side. She could feel Lucas' body pressing against hers, his arm loosely hanging over her hip. She tried to move quietly, but he immediately pulled her back to him, sliding his arms under the hoodie and caressing the skin on her stomach.

"Luke," she whispered. He answered with a groan and nuzzled against her neck. "Come on, I have to go."

"You smell great," he murmured in a half-asleep voice.

She giggled and tried to remove his hands, but he would not let her. Instead, one kept sliding on her skin until it found her breast, and the other went south, stopping at an extremely sensitive spot. She closed her eyes and let a soft moan escape her lips. For a brief moment, he made her forget that she wanted to leave before his parents could see her.

There was a loud knock on the door, then the sound of the door being pushed, but thankfully staying in its frame. "Luke, wake up, breakfast's ready," Keith's voice called from the other side of the door.

Lucas stiffened next to her. "Shit," he whispered urgently, and she knew from the sudden switch of tone in his voice that he was now wide awake.

Brooke jumped on her feet and hurriedly picked up her clothes, put her pants on and grabbed her backpack. She turned around to see that Lucas was now standing next to her, scratching his head and stifling a yawn. She put her hands on his chest and stood on her toes to kiss his cheek.

"Wait," he said, grabbing her wrist before she could reach the door. He took her scarf from his desk and tied it around her neck. He leaned forward to kiss her forehead. "Now you can go."

Her mother was up when she reached home. She tried to sneak into her room unnoticed, but she had forgotten about Victoria's acute hearing.

"Brooke?" she heard her call from afar.

She sighed and slowly made her way to the kitchen; her mother was sitting at the table, sipping her coffee and reading the newspaper. Without looking up from the paper, she motioned her to sit and get some pancakes.

Brooke dropped her bag on the floor, took off her coat and sat across from her mother.

"How did the moving go?" her mother asked after a minute.

"Haley's all settled in."

"Great," Victoria said with relief. She looked up from the newspaper and did a double take at her daughter.

"What?" Brooke asked warily.

Her mother's eyes narrowed at her. "Didn't you say you'd sleep at Nathan's?"

"Yeah, so?" she asked, taking another bite of pancake.

Victoria pointed at her with her fork. "Then why are you wearing Lucas' hoodie?"

Brooke almost choked; how could she have forgotten about such a huge detail? She struggled to swallow her bite then gave her mother an apologetic look. "Erm, yeah, we had a change of plans."

"Didn't you say Lucas was grounded for another week?"

"He is, yeah," she mumbled, staring down at her plate.

"Does Karen know you were there?" Brooke kept eyeing her plate, wishing that she could turn invisible. "Brooke?"

She finally dared to face her mother's accusing stare. "No, she doesn't. But please, don't tell her, I…"

"I won't," Victoria said with a sigh, "but you can't do that again, not as long as he's grounded, understood?"

Brooke gaped at her mother. "Um, sure, understood. But…" She hesitated, wondering if she wasn't about to dig her own grave. "Shouldn't you be mad at me?"

"Are you gonna do it again?"

"No, I just said I won't and─"

"And did you use protection?"

"Protection?" Brooke's face went crimson. "Yeah, we did," she mumbled, averting her eyes.

"Good, then I have nothing to be mad about," her mother said matter-of-factly, taking another sip of coffee. Just when Brooke thought the subject would be over, Victoria decided otherwise. "Just make sure to use protection every time."

"Will do," she muttered, playing with her food.

"And it's not just to avoid a pregnancy, you know. There's been a surge in STD cases, especially syphilis, amongst all ages, even middle-aged people."

Brooke snorted and looked at her mother. "Don't worry Mom, I'm not getting syphilis." She paused and stared at her for a moment. "How do you know all that?"

"Know what?"

"About the number of cases of syphilis in middle-aged people?"

"My doctor told me," Victoria said with a shrug.

She blinked. "Why?"

Her mother eyed her warily. "Why what?"

"Why would he tell you about STDs and syphilis?" Victoria, now clearly uncomfortable, stood up, cleared her throat and kept her hands busy with cleaning up the table. "Are you… Are you having sex?"

Victoria froze, and after five seconds of awkward silence, turned to her daughter. "Stop spouting nonsense and finish your breakfast," she ordered with a steady voice. "I have some cleaning to do," she mumbled before dashing off.

Of course, when her father called her later that morning, and when she told him about her week, Brooke didn't mention her mother's suspiciously accurate knowledge on syphilis.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise to Brooke; after all her mother was still young, and she had been separated from her father for almost three months now… It was obvious that her mother would make, um, new connections. But still, she would have felt more comfortable not knowing about this. When it came to her parent's sex life, ignorance really was bliss.

Later that day, she left for Mouth's house. Her last travel had been on January 11th, more than a month ago. Was that it? Would she stop travelling now?

She shook her head, watching the road as she was driving her car. No, somehow, she had a feeling that there would be more to come.

Haley's bike was lying on the front lawn when she got there. Brooke walked around it and went to the door.

"Hi Mrs. M." she said with a broad smile.

Mouth's mother welcomed her, as usual now, with a bear hug. Brooke chuckled and hugged her back; today, she smelled of chocolate and nuts.

"Come in, come in," she said, ushering her in the house. "It's so cold outside! Haley just arrived, they're upstairs."

"In the attic, yeah I know."

"I've already given them a plate of brownies, and milk, but if you need anything at all─"

"I swear I'll ask you," Brooke said with a chuckle.

She ran up the stairs and quickly made her way into the attic. Mouth was sitting on a cushion, his elbows resting on an old and dusty cardboard; the plate of brownies and three glasses of milk were indeed sitting there, as promised by his mother. Haley didn't seem interested in those: she was standing still, arms crossed, and kept staring at the whiteboard.

"Hey guys!" she said, hunching her shoulders to avoid getting knocked out by one of the wooden beams. She sat next to Mouth, who greeted her with a smile, and grabbed a piece of brownie. She motioned to Haley with her head. "What's up with her?"

"She's been studying it for ten minutes now," Mouth answered.

"How long is that gonna take?"

Haley threw them a quick glance over her shoulder, then went back to studying the board. "I'm still reading your first travel."

Brooke raised her eyebrows and turned to Mouth. "This is gonna take a while." She looked around them, scanning the room, until her eyes stopped on an old box lying on the floor, a few feet from Mouth, and labeled 'Games'.

It was full of old board games; they both shared a look as they opened it and silently agreed that this would be a nice way to kill time until Haley was done reading everything on the board.

They were still in the middle of a Game of life round when Haley finally let out a sigh and came to sit with them.

"Done?" Brooke asked.

"Yeah. I mean, I should go over it again, but─"

"Please, don't," she said in a begging voice, "I keep losing at this stupid game."

She chuckled. "I'll do that another time, then. But I can't believe all this has been happening since September and you didn't tell anyone─"

"Hey!" Mouth cried in dismay.

"Anyone but Mouth," Haley corrected, rolling her eyes.

Brooke gazed at the board. "Well… We figured it was better to keep this to ourselves. It's kind of, um…"

Mouth finished her sentence: "Unbelievable."

"Still, it's fascinating," Haley mused, biting on the last piece of brownie.

"What is?" Brooke asked.

She had expected Haley to talk about the fact that she could travel in time, or that she wasn't even physically going anywhere, or about everything she had just found out about her future son, or the fact that she would one day be a teacher in Tree Hill, or that Lucas would soon have a little sister… Later that day, they would talk about all these things for hours, but right now, the first thing that had caught Haley's attention was something else entirely.

"That rabbit," Haley murmured, still chewing.

Brooke shared a perplexed look with Mouth, then turned to Haley. "The rabbit? That's what's fascinating you?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, yeah. You dreamt about it for two whole months before you started travelling."

"So?"

"So, dreams are usually made from memories, recent ones, like people you've talked to the day before, things you've seen, stuff you've heard..."

"Why does that make that rabbit fascinating?"

"Because it's almost like your brain was trying to warn you all summer that something was going to happen─"

"You mean, my travels?"

"Yeah," she said with a nod. "And it is fascinating that your brain chose a rabbit to warn you."

Brooke shared another confused look with Mouth, who asked, "Erm, why exactly?"

"Alice in Wonderland, that's why," Haley said with a chuckle. She fell silent when she noticed that Brooke really had no idea what she was talking about. "Didn't your mom tell you?"

"Tell me what?" Brooke asked with a frown.

"You know how the other day you said that you couldn't remember your parents reading you bedtime stories?" Brooke gave her a sharp nod. "Well, I asked your mom and she said she would read you one every night. And you always asked for the same one, which was…"

"Alice in Wonderland," Brooke murmured. "But I don't remember any of that."

"Because that was a long time ago. She said you stopped asking for it when you were about six."

"So…" Mouth murmured, scratching his head in a thoughtful manner. "You're saying that her brain used the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland to warn her about her travels?"

Haley gave him a hesitant look. "I don't know, maybe I'm thinking too hard about this, but isn't that exactly how the book starts? Alice sees the rabbit and she goes down the rabbit hole."

"Wait, that's what happened to me," Brooke said, her eyes now wide open. "Well, not exactly, but the last time I had that dream, in September, I caught its tail right when it was jumping down the hole."

"That actually makes sense," Mouth mused.

"Right?" Haley asked with thrill. "But what's even more fascinating is that you kept seeing actual physical representations of that rabbit, and not just what your brain wanted you to see. The rabbit's foot in Lucas' car, the lamp in his room, Chester."

"So, you also think it's all connected?"

Haley stayed silent for a moment and eventually shrugged. "Maybe it's not. Maybe you just focused on that rabbit too much, so you started seeing it everywhere?"

"Oh, right," Mouth said, snapping his fingers, "I read something about this." He took out his phone and after a quick search, gave them a triumphant smile. "The Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon."

Brooke groaned, massaging her temples. "Guys, you're giving me a headache."

"It's simple, really," Haley said with a chuckle. "It's like when you look for a number and suddenly you spot it everywhere around you. But it's always been there all along, it's just that before, you didn't really pay attention to it."

Brooke narrowed her eyes. "Would that work for a handbag? Because I saw this gorgeous red purse in a magazine the other day, and ever since, I keep seeing it in stores or in people's hands."

Haley gave her a grin. "Yes, that's exactly it!"

"Okay, I get it now… So, you're saying that maybe it's just my brain focusing on the rabbit."

"Or maybe not," Mouth said with a shrug. "It could really all be connected."

"Which one is it, then?" Brooke asked with a sigh. "I… I know it's not scientific at all, but I have this feeling, that it really is all connected. That it's too big to just be a coincidence."

"Well, clearly," Haley said, motioning to the board behind her, "not everything can be explained by science."

"Alice in Wonderland, huh," Brooke mused, trying to remember ever reading the story. "So, it's a good thing, right? I mean, that my brain picked it as a symbol. The rabbit is one of the nice guys in the story, right?"

"I don't recall him being nice… Or bad either!" Haley hurriedly said when she saw Brooke's alerted look. "You know what, I don't even remember the whole story."

"And I've only watched the Disney movie," Mouth admitted with a shrug.

Brooke frowned, staring at the board. She needed to get a hand on that book.

She managed to do so the next day, at the school library. She went there early, before homeroom, and found a dusty old-looking copy sitting on one of the shelves.

It took her a few days to get through its 198 pages; reading this book happened to be a queer experience, as she knew, like most people, the main points of the story ─Alice falling down the hole, her growing and shrinking, the caterpillar, the cat, the tea party, the Queen─ but she didn't remember any of its details.

The White Rabbit was Alice's first contact with Wonderland, and they would keep running into each other until she woke up. However, they didn't really interact with each other; Alice was mainly just following him and by doing so, going from one strange place to another. This book was really a series of uncanny encounters, filled with absurd characters and dialogues that most of the time made no sense at all.

At first, the Rabbit was quite rude to Alice, but as she went through the book, Brooke realized that it was only because he was frightened by the Queen's temper. He was obsessed with time: if he were late, something terrible would happen to him.

"Are you sure you don't want anything to eat?"

Brooke looked up from her book. Lucas was standing behind the counter, filling two cups of coffee and putting them on a tray. She shifted on her stool and shook her head. "I'm not hungry."

While he was busy serving a table, she went back to her reading. It had been three days since she had borrowed the book, and she only had a few pages left to read. When she finally reached its end, she closed the book and put it back on the counter. She kept her eyes fixated on it while she was thinking about the Rabbit: Haley had been right, he was neither a good, nor a bad character. He was, like most characters in that book, quirky, but neutral. However, he was the only one Alice kept seeing from the beginning to the end of her journey, almost like he was… guiding her.

Something else had grabbed her attention: time. It was on almost every character's lips, and it was even described as a person by the Hatter, according to whom, Time could not be controlled.

"Did you find what you were looking for?"

She raised her head to see that Lucas was back on his seat across from her. He looked tired, and he had reason to be: Whitey had decided to extend their detention for another week. If they behaved properly on this week's game, then and only then would he lift it.

Lucas could have gone straight home after training, but he had decided, like he had since the beginning of the week, to take extra-shifts at the Café; that way, they would be able to spend a little more time together, since she had told him that she could not sneak in his room anymore.

He had been intrigued by her choice of reading, and she had told him evasively that she was trying to remember something from this story.

"I think so. Are you okay?" she asked as she watched him stifle a yawn.

He rested his head on his hand, his elbow pressed against the counter. "Yeah," he said, his voice stating the opposite. "We just have to hold on until Friday, and then we'll be free."

"But what if you lose? Do you think Whitey will keep torturing you every night?"

"Definitely, yeah. But we're not gonna lose."

"You don't know that."

"Trust me, you haven't seen Nathan during training. He's been working twice as hard as usual."

Brooke recalled her friend telling him something about that. "He said scouts would be coming again this week, is that right?"

"That's what we heard, yeah," he said with a nod. "They still have a couple of weeks before they give their decision."

The doorbell chimed. Brooke glanced over her shoulder and saw a delivery man standing on the threshold, holding a package in his hands. Lucas swiftly went to greet him, signed a receipt, and came back to the counter.

"What's in there?" Brooke asked him, glancing at the brown colored box.

"Baking sheets, I think."

He was about to go to the kitchen to hand it to his mother but was interrupted by a client calling for him. Brooke took the package from his hands and told him she would go. She had almost reached the kitchen door when she felt something pressing and shaking her knee. She looked down, confused, to see that nothing was there, yet she swore she could feel─

She gasped when she felt a tingle spreading fast on her hands and feet. Her eyes travelled from one end of the corridor to the other. She could not go to Karen now, but she didn't want Lucas to see her passing out either.

The storage room, she thought, rushing to open its door. She put the package on the floor and sat next to it, covering her ears when the buzzing noise became deafening. It took a minute or so for the drowsiness to engulf her.

She opened her eyes; she was sitting on the floor of a completely different room. She looked to her right and saw that Jamie was kneeling next to her, looking much older than the last time she had seen him. His hair was long enough to fall over his eyes now, and he was wearing a white t-shirt and blue shorts. He gave her a bright smile and said, "You finished it! Can I see it?"

"Finished… what?" Brooke asked, blinking in confusion. Where was she anyway? She looked around and saw that they were in a room that seemed somewhat familiar. The shape and the size of the room, the wooden floor… She stood up and saw with a side glance that Jamie imitated her. "I know this place."

"Um, yeah," Jamie said, raising an eyebrow. A surprised expression flashed briefly on his face. "Wait, are you having another episode?"

Smart boy. "Yes."

He sent her a worried glance. "Are… Are you okay?"

She chuckled and turned to the nearest wall. "I'm great." There were five huge corkboards filled with random different elements: abstracts from magazines, photographs, addresses that had been scribbled down, tissue samples… Brooke realized that it was in fact an organized mess, and that each board had its own theme: flowers, table arrangements, venues─

She got dragged away from her thoughts when Jamie yanked on her arm, making her turn to him. His brow was furrowed, giving his face an anxious expression that looked unnatural for a boy his age. "Are you sure you're okay?"

She raised her eyebrows, wondering where the panic in his voice was coming from. She kneeled to be on his eye-level and smiled at him. "I'm really okay."

He seemed to study her face for a moment and eventually sighed in relief. "Good," he said, hugging her.

"Okay," Brooke said with a chuckle, "what's up with you?"

He took a few steps back. "It's just that, you know, last time you had an episode you…" His voice trailed off and he frowned slightly, as if he was remembering something. "Uh, never mind."

"Wow, wait a minute," she said, crossing her arms. "What happened last time?"

"Nothing," he mumbled, looking at the floor. "Nothing at all." His head shot up, startling her. "So, you really don't know where we are?" he asked in amazement.

He was obviously dodging her question, but… He was just a kid, and for a moment there, he had looked so shaken up, that Brooke didn't think twice before dropping the subject. She got to her feet and scanned the room. "I don't."

"We're in your mother's house!"

"You mean in Tree Hill?" That was why she knew this room: it was her father's former study! The walls were painted in a different color and the decoration was completely new to her, but she could see it now. "Where's my mom?" she asked, wondering if she would get to see her.

"She left with her boyfriend for the weekend."

"Her boyfriend?" she repeated. "She has a boyfriend? Who is he?"

Jamie avoided her gaze and stared at the floor sheepishly. "I don't know," he said with a vague shrug.

He gave her a puzzled look when she laughed. "You're a terrible liar, just like your dad. Come on, who's that guy?"

Jamie couldn't help but grin, apparently very proud to be compared to his father. "I'm not supposed to know, you always talk about it with Mom when you think I'm not listening."

"And of course, you are listening," Brooke said with a chuckle.

"His name is Henry and she's been seeing for a month, and you said that it was a new world record. Before that, she was seeing, um… Pedro, I think, wait no, there was Lloyd right before."

"Wow. So many, huh."

"Yes. You're having a bet with Mom, she said Henry would last two months, but you said that he wouldn't, because he, um… He couldn't fulfil her?" he said unsure of the last words. "What does that even mean?"

Her eyes widened. "Nothing," she said, shaking her head. Was there a hole somewhere where she could hide? "Nothing at all. And anyway, you shouldn't know all this!"

"Who do you think taught me how to spy?" he asked in an offended tone.

She glanced at him and when she saw his mischievous grin, let out a quiet laugh. "Fine, I won't tell your mom. So, um" ─she glanced back at the corkboards─ "what party is she planning?"

"Not a party, a wedding."

She spun around to face him. "A wedding?" She fell silent when she understood what his words meant. "No way," she murmured, feeling dizzy all of a sudden. "It's for my…"

"Wedding, yup," Jamie said with a thrilled voice. "So, can I see it now?"

Her wedding? But… She could not get married; she was in freaking high school! "See what?" she asked absent-mindedly, still trying to process what was happening around her.

Jamie tugged on her shirt and pointed to the opposite corner of the room. Her heart stopped; there, right in front of her, was a mannequin wearing a dress, hidden from head to toe by a white sheet.

"Oh, God," she mumbled, taking a step back and bumping into the wall behind her.

Jamie looked puzzled by her reaction, and rightfully so. Why would she look so terrified by her own wedding dress? "So, can I? I swear I won't tell Uncle Luke anything," he said with pleading eyes.

She gazed down at him. "Um, I don't know, Jamie…"

"But you said I could see it once you're done with it! And Mom said so too!"

She blinked. "Done with it?" she repeated slowly. She raised her eyes and stared at the hidden mannequin. "I did this?" Her own wedding dress?

"Duh," Jamie said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Her initial shock quickly faded away and was replaced by a growing interest in what was hidden below the sheet. "Let's see it, then."

Jamie bounced up and down, then ran to the mannequin. Brooke chuckled and followed him, stopping in front of the white sheet. She crossed her arms and hesitated for a second, wondering if she should see this or not… Maybe she shouldn't after all, her future-self had probably been working her ass off on this, she couldn't just─

Her jaw dropped when Jamie pulled on the sheet, revealing the dress it had been hiding. He took a few steps back and stared at it with wide open eyes.

"Wow," they both murmured at the same time.

She did not know how to describe it; it was minimalistic, simple even, but at the same time complex and sophisticated. She brushed the fabric with her fingers; she was not sure, but it looked like crepe back satin. Yes, it definitely felt like silk. It started with an ivory-colored fitted bodice, with a heart-shaped neckline, then continued in an A-line shape that seemed to naturally glide down to the floor and ended with a sweep train. Her eyes travelled up the dress to the two thin straps running on the shoulders and down to the back. Jamie followed her as she walked around the mannequin. The back of the dress was just as elegant: the bodice was made with lace and took a V-shape, revealing the back of the mannequin. Then, from the waistline and to the end of the dress, was embroidered a single line of perfectly aligned ivory pearls.

It was simply stunning.

"You're sure I did that on my own?" she managed to murmur after a few minutes.

"Positive," Jamie said with a proud smile. "Mom said it was your best work ever."

She ran her hand on the straps, only noticing now the tiny beads embroidered on them. She stiffened, finally paying attention to her naked left hand. "Shouldn't I be wearing an engagement ring?"

"It's around your neck."

"My neck?" She patted her neck, and sure enough, felt a chain through her shirt, with a ring hanging at its end. "Why is it on my neck?"

Jamie shrugged. "I don't know. You've been wearing it like that since… last Christmas, I think."

Brooke's hand was still on her shirt, trying to feel the shape of the ring. She frowned and let her hand drop to her side; she had already seen her wedding dress, and it was shocking enough. She honestly was not sure she could handle seeing her engagement ring, too. "What day is it?"

"Saturday."

"No, I mean the whole date."

Jamie raised his eyebrows at her. "You forgot that too? Are you sure you're okay? Do you want me to call Mom or─"

She cut him off with a chuckle. "I'm fine, I swear it's all part of the episode. I'll be back to normal in a bit. So, what day?"

"May 4th, 2027."

"So, you're… What, six years old now?"

"And a half."

She had expected to go back to her own time quickly, but she didn't. She spent the entire afternoon with Jamie. They went to the pier for a walk and sat down on a bench, eating ice creams.

Jamie was thrilled to be guiding her. He spent two hours describing his life. He didn't give her any relevant information about the future, but Brooke didn't mind that at all. He told her about his school frog that had escaped the week before, the bully who used to tease him, the lunch he had shared with his friend who had accidentally dropped his own on the ground. He was happy that she and Lucas were back to Tree Hill for a few weeks, because even though they were busing planning their wedding ─Brooke had almost choked on her ice cream when hearing that word─ he got to spend time with them.

At the end of the afternoon, Brooke was starting to wonder, with much worry, if she was not now stuck in the future. Usually, her travels lasted thirty minutes, tops, but she had been following Jamie for more than three hours now. What if she could not go back to her time?

Jamie hopped off the bench and pulled on her hand. "It's time."

"Time for what?"

He lifted his arm and pointed at his wristwatch. "We're meeting Dad at the Café."

Karen's Café was still there, on the same block, but it looked different. The walls, the lighting, the tables… Everything had changed. Or rather, was going to change. It should not have come as a surprise, after all, seven years could bring a lot of changes. Although, despite looking brand new, the Café still felt the same: like home.

Nathan was nowhere to be seen. There were clients all around the place and Brooke quickly recognized among them a brown-haired little girl sitting at the table closest to the counter. Jamie ran up to Lily and sat next to her. While they were chatting, Brooke turned to see that Karen was walking out of the kitchen and stopping by the counter.

She looked slightly older; her hair had a little graying, and it was shorter than Brooke remembered. She noticed Brooke staring at her and gave her a bright smile.

"How was your afternoon?" Karen asked as she poured a cup of coffee.

Brooke walked up to her and sat on a stool. "It was… interesting."

Karen chuckled at that and threw a quick glance at Jamie and, well, her daughter. "I bet it was." Her face brightened up as she seemed to remember something. "Did you finish it?"

Brooke was about to ask her what she was talking about, but took a wild guess and said, "Yeah, it's done."

"I'm impressed. I mean, I know you worked hours and hours to sew it, but Lucas said that it only took you an hour to sketch."

"Really?" she asked, averting her eyes. Karen handed her a cup of coffee, that she gladly accepted. She cleared her throat. "I guess, um, it was already in my mind."

"Well, I'm sure it looks great. Are you still planning on starting a wedding collection?"

"Sure, if that's what I said I'd do," Brooke said with a shrug. She frowned, noticing a ring on Karen's left hand. A wedding band.

Karen tilted her head. "Is everything alright?"

Brooke stopped breathing for a second. "Yeah, why?"

Her apparently soon-to-be mother-in-law gave her a bemused look. "Something's different about you."

She tried not to show her panic and looked around them. "Is Lucas here?"

"He's in the storage room."

Brooke used it as an excuse to escape Karen's inquisitive look. Somehow, she had the absurd feeling that if she kept talking to her, she would be found out.

The door was ajar, and she was about to enter when she heard two voices speak up. Lucas wasn't there alone: he was with Nathan.

"Are you sure it's around here?" she heard Nathan ask his brother.

"Yeah, yeah, just look on that shelf. It has a blue handle."

She heard a rustling sound, as if they were moving things around. "I ran into Keith on my way here," Nathan said in a thoughtful voice. "He looked, um…"

"I know." The rustling stopped.

"I don't get it. I mean, I do get it, because I also feel down around this time of the year─"

"We all do," Lucas murmured so low, that Brooke had to press her ear against the door to hear him.

"But he looked like he still felt… guilty."

Someone let out a sigh, probably Lucas. "I know. He still does, from time to time… Like whenever we talk about─"

Brooke never got to hear the end of their discussion; Lily and Jamie made sure of that. She had been so focused on what her friends had been saying that she didn't hear them sneaking in behind her and shoving the door wide open.

Nathan and Lucas jumped up when they saw the kids barging in. Jamie and Lily ran head first into Nathan's legs, making him stumble; he managed not to fall by hanging onto the nearest shelf and as his eyes landed on it, said, "There it is!"

Lucas followed his gaze and grinned. "Good job," he said as he grabbed a blue handle drill.

"Come on kids, let's get out of here before Luke hurts one of us," Nathan said, struggling to walk out of the room with Lily and James still attached to his legs. They laughed and disappeared soon enough, leaving Brooke alone with Lucas.

He looked pretty much the same as when she had seen him during Christmas, in 2026. He caught her staring at him and stopped examining the drill.

"What?" he asked, walking toward her. "Did you finish the dress?"

"Um, yeah."

His face lit up. "Can I see it?"

"Wha─ No!" she yelled, frowning at him. "Are you nuts?"

He chuckled; he had clearly expected her reaction. He put the drill down on the nearest shelf and put an arm around her. "I tried to bribe Haley, but she won't say anything." He moved her hair back and kissed her neck. "Come on Pretty girl, I swear I'll act surprised when you walk down the aisle."

Down the aisle; those three innocent words resonated in her head until she swore she could hear smoke coming out of her ears.

Lucas took a step back. "What's wrong? Why are you─ Wait, did you just…"

The door opened once again, startling them. Karen frowned at her son and asked, "Did you get it?"

"Erm, yeah," he said, grabbing the drill.

"Well then what are you still doing here? Keith is already waiting for you."

He threw Brooke a sidelong glance. "I'll, erm… Fine, I'll go." He stroked her cheek and said in a comforting voice, "I'll be right back, okay? Just don't move and wait for me here."

Karen watched as her son left in a hurry, confused by his reaction. "What was that about? Are you sure everything's okay?"

"Um, yeah, I just…" She looked down at her left shoulder, feeling something pushing it. She sighed in relief when she saw there was nothing there and when the usual tingle appeared in her fingers. Good, she wasn't stuck here. But where could she go now? Karen was blocking the door and looked too worried about her to let her walk out.

And now the buzzing sound was ringing in her ears. She sighed and leaned against the wall behind her. She frowned, feeling dizzy when it got significantly louder.

"Brooke!" Karen cried.

It was a strange sensation: she could see and feel Karen's hand on her right shoulder, but she could also feel someone else's invisible hand on her left. "I'm okay," she mumbled. "Just need to sit down." She slid down the wall; Karen knelt next to her. "I'm─"

She suddenly felt sluggish and shut her eyes tight.

When she opened them, she was still in the same storage room, and Karen was still kneeling next to her, shaking her shoulder and asking her what was wrong. It was all the same, except that Karen had switched sides and didn't have gray hair anymore.

"Brooke?" she called out anxiously.

"I'm… I'm fine," Brooke murmured, motioning to get up.

Karen stopped her by firmly gripping her arm. "Don't move. You just fainted."

"I know, but I'm fine, really." She ignored Karen's disapproving stare and got on her feet. "See? I'm fine."

Karen sighed and stood up. "I'll ask Lucas to get you something to─"

"No!" she cried, startling Karen. "I mean, erm, please don't tell him." Karen frowned slightly. "It's just that… I do that sometimes, I pass out, but it's just my, er, blood pressure. I've got low blood pressure, that's all. And Lucas has already seen me fainting a couple of times, he'll just get worried for nothing if we tell him." Karen still didn't look completely convinced by her explanation. "I swear, I'm fine."

"Alright," she eventually said with a sigh. "But come with me first."

She led her to the kitchen and ordered her to take a seat. Brooke sat down on one of the stools and waited until Karen brought her a glass of water and a piece of chocolate cake. She drank the water and was about to tell her that she wasn't hungry at all, but when she crossed Karen's stern look, she knew there was no room for negotiation.

Karen sat next to her and watched her as she took a bite of cake. Her shoulders relaxed when she saw that Brooke was eating and regaining some color. "Do your parents know about this?"

"Yeah," she said, her mouth still full. "They took me to the doctor and he said I was fine." So far, she hadn't had to lie, which was good, because Karen, be it in 2020 or in 2027, always made her feel like she had a lie detector hiding below her shirt.

"How are they doing?"

And now, lucky for her, she was changing the subject. "They're doing great. My dad is really enjoying L.A."

"And your mother?"

"She's… Back to normal, I guess," Brooke mused, taking another bite.

"It was really kind of you two to take Haley in while she was, um… figuring things out. And Lucas said your mother is always nice to him."

"She is, yeah," she said with a smile.

"Nice enough that she doesn't mind you crashing at our house?"

Brooke's hand froze in the air, just as she was about to eat another piece of cake. For a moment, she didn't dare look Karen in the eye, but then she realized that she hadn't heard any anger in her voice.

Karen didn't look crossed… She did look slightly annoyed, but also somewhat amused. "How do you know?" Brooke asked. Victoria couldn't have told her, she had promised her she wouldn't, so how─

"The lasagna. It was all gone on Sunday morning and there were enough leftovers for two people. Lucas said that he had been particularly hungry, but I had a hunch he wasn't telling me the whole truth."

Brooke gave her an apologetic face. "I'm sorry, we shouldn't have gone behind your back."

"I get that you want to spend time together, but don't forget that he's grounded, okay?"

"I won't."

"And you could come by for dinner next week, if you're free?"

"So… You're not angry with us?"

"No." Karen paused and added, "I'll just give Lucas another list of chores, but I'm not angry."

Something told her that this list would be twice as long as the previous one. "So, dinner next week, then? I just have to tell my mom." She glanced at Karen, wondering if she was already pregnant. Lily looked younger than Jamie, but not from several years, more like several months.

And then she remembered the wedding band she had just seen in the future. When was that going to happen?

In his latest chapter, Lucas had described how it had felt like growing up with a mother and an uncle that acted like a non-official substitute father. He had spent years wishing they would get together, until he had realized, years later, around adolescence, that he could not push his own wishes onto them. As much as he wanted them to be a real family, he could not force them to love each other romantically. And then he had understood that despite that, they still were a family. A very unusual one, granted, but a family nonetheless.

And then a year and a half ago, they had finally gotten together, making it official. Well, almost official, Brooke thought as she stared at Karen's naked ring finger.

"What's on your mind?" Karen asked with curiosity.

Before she could properly think about what she was saying, she blurted out, "Weddings."

Karen raised her eyebrows. "Weddings?"

"Erm, yeah, I mean, marriage. In general, you know," Brooke added, flustered. "My parent's marriage."

"Oh," she said with a thoughtful nod. "How long did they stay married?"

"22 years."

Karen let out a sigh. "That must have been a hard decision to make."

"It was. But it was probably for the best. It definitely was."

"What do you mean?"

"It's my mom, she's…" Brooke's lips stretched into a smile. "Relaxed. She's almost always in a good mood, she's talkative again… We went to spa the other day, and I couldn't remember the last time we did that. She must have been really miserable those past years, because now she's almost like a whole new person."

Karen's lips curved up. "It's never too late to be happy."

The back door opened and they both turned to see Keith entering the kitchen. He was holding a pallet full of fruits and froze when he saw them sitting at the counter top.

"Well, well, well… If it isn't our own little Anne Frank," he said with a chuckle, putting the pallet on the nearest table. "What are you doing back here?"

"Hi Keith," Brooke answered in an embarrassed tone. "We were just talking."

"About what?" he asked as he was emptying the pallet, his back turned to them.

"Failed marriages. My parents', to be more precise."

"Oh," he said, turning to her with an apologetic face. "Sorry, I shouldn't have asked."

"It's fine," she said with a shrug. "I just don't understand how…" She looked down at her hands, remembering the last years she had spent with her parents. "Marriage is about being with the person you love, right? And supporting them? Well, I think my parents stopped doing that a long time ago. So… I don't know, I just don't understand how people can stay together when they're this miserable. It's just sad. And then you've got Peyton's parents, and it gets even sadder."

"What do you mean? Didn't her mother die?" Karen asked her.

Brooke looked up at her, realizing that she had been rambling on. "Yeah, when we were seven. But her parents never got married."

"They didn't?" Keith asked, walking over to them.

"No. They were supposed to, but… Peyton's dad, he's always on the sea, so they kept postponing it over and over again. And then she had her car accident," she said in a quiet voice, remembering the depressing days that had followed. "I just don't get how some people spend so much time together when it makes them so unhappy, and some spend so much time apart while they really love each other." She shook her head, suddenly asking herself why she was telling them all this. "Anyway, thanks for the cake," she told Karen with a grin.

Karen answered her with a smile, while Keith stayed silent, staring pensively at the table. Brooke went back to the main room and saw that Lucas was busy with some clients. She went back to her seat and took out her homework.

She had been working on it for fifteen minutes when Lucas stopped behind her, bending over her shoulder to look at her work.

"Is that a new dress?" he asked, pointing at the small sketch on the edge of her paper.

She startled when she heard his voice so close to her ear. She followed his gaze and realized that she had been mechanically scribbling and sketching her… Well, her wedding dress.

She blushed furiously and swiftly slammed her notebook shut. She rammed it in her bag and hurriedly put on her coat.

"Wh─ Where are you going?" Lucas asked, taken aback by her sudden rush.

She made sure that she wasn't looking him in the eye, gave him a quick peck on the lips, muttered she was late for dinner, and dashed off before he could even react.

When she got home, she went straight to her bedroom and wrote down everything she could remember from her travel, including the dress. She simply could not believe that she would get married one day, it was all so surreal… Absurd, just like Alice's adventures. Except hers were just a dream, and Brooke's were very real.

Mouth and Haley agreed to hold a meeting the next morning and they all came early to school, half an hour before anyone would get there. They went to the tutoring center, where Haley knew they would not be bothered.

While Brooke was checking her phone, her friends read everything she had put down on paper. Mouth did so silently, as usual, but Haley kept gasping and making small noises. Brooke looked up at her, wondering what was going on, and saw with shock that Haley was crying.

"Why are you crying?" she asked, alarmed.

Mouth's head shot up; he too had not realized that their friend had been muffling her sobs. "Haley," he said, stroking her back, "what's wrong?"

"I─ It's just that he's so p─polite and well-behaved."

Mouth seemed even more lost. "Who?"

Brooke chuckled. She knew exactly who Haley was talking about. "Jamie, that's who."

"I'm sorry, it's those stupid hormones. But, oh, Brooke," she said, sniffing and wiping her tears, "is he really like that?"

"Yeah," she answered with a grin.

"And you're getting married!" Haley exclaimed, smiling with her wet eyes.

"No!" Brooke retorted with a frown. "No, no, no, I'm not getting married."

"But─"

"Future Brooke is getting married in 2027, not me, not… yet."

"How does that feel?" Mouth asked her with a worried glance. "I mean, we already knew you were engaged, but this," ─he tapped on the paper he had finished reading─ "this makes it more real."

"Too real, if you ask me," Brooke mumbled. She sighed and gave them a vague shrug. "I don't know, I think it's best if I try not to think about it too much." Especially when she would see Lucas.

"But that dress, Brooke, it sounds…" Haley let out a dreamy sigh.

"Wanna see it?" she asked them tentatively. They both gasped at the same time, making her chuckle. "But if I show you this, that's it, we can't speak about it again, got it?"

They both swore they would drop the subject. She took out a sheet of paper she had been hiding in her bag and handed it to them: it was a detailed sketch of the dress she had seen in the future.

"It's…" Haley murmured.

"Fascinating," Mouth breathed out.

Fascinating. Again, with that word. She could understand Haley's reaction, but Mouth's? "What do you mean?" she asked him bemusedly.

"Well… Who thought about this first?"

"About what?"

"The dress," he said, tapping on her sketch. "Who designed it first?"

"Isn't that the future me?" she asked, confused as to why that could be fascinating.

"Yeah, but the future you went through the same travel you just went through. So, she also got it from her own future-self."

Brooke frowned. Haley looked up from the sketch and nodded to him. "You're right. There's no way to know who designed the original dress."

"But…" Brooke mumbled. "How can that be? Someone, one of my… I don't know, one of my past or future versions, whatever, one of them must have done it first, right?"

Mouth's eyes lit up. "Not necessarily." He took a book out of his bag and showed it to them: Paradoxes of time travel, by a certain R. Wasserman. "It's a bootstrap paradox." He opened it to a marked page and read: "A bootstrapping paradox is caused when a person, through time-travel, causes or witnesses an event A in the future, which in turn causes an event B in the past, that leads to event A. It's a causal loop."

"I see," Haley said, apparently thrilled by this explanation. "You drew this sketch Brooke, and in seven years you'll use it to create your dress, which your past self will see through her travel. Then she'll get back to 2020, draw this sketch, and she'll recreate the dress seven years later" ─Haley moved her hand in a circular movement, imitating a wheel that kept turning─ "and so on, and so on. It's a perfect loop."

Did that mean that… "So, there's no beginning to this?" Brooke asked, pointing at the dress.

"And no ending," Mouth answered.

She was starting to get a headache again. "You two are making these club meetings too intellectual for me," she admitted with a chuckle.

"Club meetings?" Haley repeated.

"Doesn't it feel like that's what we're doing?"

"It does," Mouth said with a grin. "Too bad I can't put that on my resume, 'time-travel club' sounds pretty badass. Any Ivy league would take me."

"Actually, it would be 'time-travel analysis club', since Brooke's doing all the travelling," Haley corrected.

"Still sounds badass," Mouth said, making them laugh. He frowned, going over her paper once more. "What do you think they were talking about? Lucas and Nathan?"

"I don't know," she said with a sigh. "What could Keith feel guilty about for years?"

"And then Nathan said they all felt down…" Haley murmured pensively.

Brooke's eyes travelled between her friends. "Do you think… Do you think it's important?"

"I don't know," Mouth admitted with a frown. "This whole time-travel stuff has been so incredible that it's easy to think that all the pieces matter, but maybe they don't. I mean… Not everything happening in our lives now has a deep meaning, so why would it be any different in the future? Maybe what Keith feels guilty about is not that important." He paused, and hesitated before adding, "Maybe the accident Lucas talked about is not that important."

Her mouth turned into a frown and she looked down at the table. She knew why Mouth had just told her that, he wanted to reassure her, but… She could not help this thought that kept creeping in her every time they mentioned the 'accident': the thought that something terrible was about to happen.

Haley picked up on her change of mood, because she cleared her throat and said, "So, um, what does Nathan look like in 2027?"

Brooke looked up and broke into a grin. "He's bald."

The face Haley made at that comment was enough to lift her spirits up for the rest of the week.

That day, at lunch, they talked about their future plans; it was on every senior's lips since they would start getting college letters in a week or so. Brooke had always been clear about going to NYU, but if she could not get in, she had a few plan Bs all located in or around New York. Peyton was waiting to hear from the art school she had applied for in L.A. and she had also asked for an internship there in a recording studio for the summer. Lucas' first choice was Columbia, although he wasn't really sure he could even afford it if he got in, but his parents had told him not to worry about that, and he had applied in a bunch of other schools, some of them in New York. Mouth had sent letters to different schools with media and journalism departments; almost all of them were located in North Carolina.

Nathan and Haley were the most unsure about their future: they had applied in different states because at that time, having a long-distance relationship had not scared them, but with Jamie now in the equation, they couldn't go to different places. That meant that Haley, who had always dreamt of going to Stanford, was almost sure that she would not go there, even if she got in, but as she would tell her later that day, when it would be just the two of them, she didn't mind that because she knew, thanks to Brooke, that things would still be alright in the end… Or at least, up until 2027.

Brooke looked around her. She was in a house packed with people she didn't know, and who all had their backs turned to her. She walked through the crowd, looking right and left to spot a familiar face. Her eyes landed on Lucas; she could see just the top of his head. She came closer, apologizing to the random people she kept bumping into.

"Why are you not letting me through?" she asked aloud, frowning when no one answered her.

She sighed and stared at the front. She could still make out Lucas' head, bobbing as if he was listening to something. Or someone. Yes, it was someone who was far, far away.

A voice rang in her ears: "Promise me."

She spun around, looking for the person who had just said that, but there were only backs turned to her.

Lucas' head went up and down, giving a clear nod.

Suddenly he was gone. Vanished from the crowd. She looked up at the ceiling and blinked; she knew these ceiling lights.

"Promise me," the voice repeated.

Brooke woke up and let out a groan of frustration. "What promise?" she grumbled, tossing in her bed.

She thought about her dream while taking her shower. It had been the exact same one as when she had dozed off in Lucas' bedroom, down to every detail. She frowned and rested her forehead against the shower wall, closing her eyes as the hot water was running down her back. Why did that dream, out of all the others, bothered her so much? She had the feeling that she was forgetting something, but she did not know what it could be.

She did have the hunch that it had nothing to do with her travels, so she decided not to mention it during the meeting they had decided to hold this Sunday afternoon.

When she arrived at Mouth's house, she was, as usual, greeted by Mrs McFadden, then went straight to the attic. Haley had arrived before her and was updating the timeline.

"Why did you circle that part?" Brooke asked, noticing a circle drawn at the end of the timeline, that covered summer 2026 to May 2027.

"Jamie said something about your latest travel, and I don't think that has happened yet," Mouth said, sitting down next to her. "So, you're gonna travel at least once more between June 2026 and May 2027."

Haley came to sit down with them and stretched out her legs. "I wonder when Karen will be pregnant."

"We do know she's getting married." Brooke crossed her legs and rested her head on her folded hands. "But it shouldn't take long." She glanced at her. "How was you first week of cohabitation?"

"Great, Nathan's been a─"

"I meant with Deb."

"Oh," Haley said with a slight frown. "Erm, rocky. She barely talked to me during the first three days, but she said good morning to me today. And she asked me where I was going this afternoon."

"Is that a good sign?" Mouth asked tentatively.

"Well, she's talked more to me today than in the past week, so yeah, it's definitely a good sign."

Brooke scoffed. "At this rate she'll be able to talk to you by the time Jamie gets to college."

"Maybe a little sooner than that," Haley said with a chuckle. She paused and turned to her with a hesitant look. "So, um… I've been meaning to ask… Why do you think you'll stop talking to Peyton?"

Brooke blinked at her, then turned to Mouth and saw that he too did not seem to know what Haley was talking about. "What do you mean?"

Haley seemed to ponder on whether to go on about this. "Well, you still haven't heard about Future Peyton."

"So?"

"And in 2025, she's not in your phonebook."

Brooke frowned, recalling that travel. "That was my work phone."

"According to Lucas, yes. But then there's all these photos in your different apartments, and in" ─she paused briefly, as if she couldn't believe her own words─ "my future house in Tree Hill, but none of them include Peyton."

"Wh─ That's not true!" Brooke argued, throwing a glance at Mouth to check if she could get some help from him. He didn't look like he was going to: he was lost in his thoughts. "She's on there!"

"But the oldest pictures you have─ we have, are from high school. Nothing further than that."

Brooke's heart rate sped up. "She doesn't like getting her picture taken," she murmured, shaking her head as she realized that it sounded like a poor excuse to explain Peyton's absence from her future life. Haley was right, there was no trace of Peyton there. How could that be? How could she have missed it? It didn't make any sense to her.

"I─ I didn't mean to upset you, Brooke, I just thought… I thought you had noticed it too," Haley said, leaning over to check Mouth's reaction.

"I didn't," he admitted with a frown.

Brooke could feel their gazes piercing through her head. "There has to be another explanation," she murmured, avoiding their stares. "I mean, I only travelled to a few points in time, who knows, maybe Peyton called me in the future right after my latest travel and I simply missed it. It… It doesn't prove anything."

Although she kept repeating to herself that it did not prove anything at all, Brooke couldn't help the uneasiness creeping in her once again. However, she could not believe that she would one day stop talking to Peyton.

On her way home, Brooke called her, thinking that it would somehow put her at ease to hear her best friend's voice. It ended up having the opposite effect: Peyton told her about her latest date with Jordan, her colleague working with her at the Post. He was a year older than her and worked in the editing room. Peyton had been on three dates with him so far, and things had seemed like they were smoothly going on, except that now, she was backpedaling. He was nice, and funny, and had great taste in music, but for some reason, she wasn't sure she wanted to go on another date with him. After harassing her for a few days, Brooke learnt that it was because Peyton didn't want to start a relationship when she was probably about to live across the country in a few months. What would be the point? She would surely cut off her ties with many people, and there was absolutely no way she could manage a long-distance relationship.

Now, if Peyton were to leave for L.A. in this state of mind, could it be that she would also be cutting her ties with Brooke?

She kept thinking about it, and during the following week, after observing her daughter racking her brains for several days, Victoria decided to ask her about her weird behavior.

They had been watching TV one evening, and while Brooke had been unable to focus on the movie, her mother had been, unbeknownst to her, watching her closely.

"Alright, what's wrong?" Victoria asked her, cutting to the chase.

Brooke took a handful of popcorn from the bucket sitting between them and gave her a confused look. "What do you mean, what's wrong?"

"You've been going round in circles for days now. What's bothering you?"

"Nothing," Brooke mumbled, shoving the popcorn in her mouth. Her mother didn't move an inch and kept staring at her. She sighed and turned to her. "Fine, it's… It's stupid, I'm just… Who was your best friend in high school?"

Victoria seemed thrown away by that sudden question. "Naomi Atkins."

"I've never heard of her," Brooke observed with a pained look.

"That's what's been bothering you?" her mother asked, at a loss.

"No, but… I've never heard of her, Mom. What happened to you guys? Are you still in touch?"

"No, we went our separate ways in college." Victoria had a fleeting nostalgic smile as she reminisced those days. "We kept in touch for a while, but then the weekly phone calls became monthly, then once a semester, then once a year for Christmas or birthdays, and… Well, I haven't heard from her in years."

"Were you close?"

Her mother chuckled. "We were glued to each other from beginning to end of high school. Why?" She waited for her to answer, and when she didn't, asked, "Brooke, is this about Peyton?"

"Yeah," Brooke said with a frown. "I've been thinking… What if we stop being friends too?"

Victoria's quiet laugh came to a halt when she noticed that her daughter was being serious. "Why would that ever happen?"

"Because I'm going to─ I mean, I'm probably going to New York, and she's probably going to L.A., so what happens then? What if we can't keep in touch?"

"Brooke, your father lives in L.A., I'm sure you'll have plenty of opportunities to go meet her," Victoria rightfully pointed out. "And even if he didn't, I'm sure you won't grow apart."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, your life is definitely going to change after high school, but I don't think you could ever not have Peyton in your life, and I think the opposite is even more accurate." Brooke stayed silent, waiting for her mother to elaborate. "Peyton doesn't have a lot of family. She lost two mothers, her father is not often around… You're pretty much the only stable family she's had, Brooke. That's not the kind of bond that could ever disappear."

Brooke felt a wave of relief; her mother was right, there was no way she could not have Peyton in her life. There had to be a perfectly good explanation as to why she still had not heard from her in the future.

Brooke looked around her. She was in a house packed with people she didn't know, and who all had their backs turned to her. She walked through the crowd, looking right and left to spot a familiar face. Her eyes landed on Lucas; she could see just the top of his head. She came closer, apologizing to the random people she kept bumping into.

"Why are you not letting me through?" she asked aloud, frowning when no one answered her.

She sighed and stared at the front. She could still make out Lucas' head, bobbing as if he was listening to something. Or someone. Yes, it was someone who was far, far away.

A voice rang in her ears: "Promise me."

She spun around, looking for the person who had just said that, but there were only backs turned to her.

Lucas' head went up and down, giving a clear nod.

Suddenly he was gone. Vanished from the crowd. She looked up at the ceiling and blinked; she knew these ceiling lights.

"Promise me," the voice repeated.

Brooke woke up with a groan. She looked around her and recognized Lucas' bedroom. She looked down to see that she was lying naked under the sheets. She patted the bed, only to find an empty spot next to her.

She lifted her head and saw that Lucas was behind his desk, typing on his computer. He was only wearing his shorts, which made her smile.

Another week had passed and they still hadn't heard from any college, but as Haley had told them at school two days before, they were only at the first week of March. They still had three long suspenseful weeks ahead of them.

Lucas had suggested that they could spend the afternoon outside, but when they had gotten drenched after five minutes of walking, they had quickly retreated to his house, and neither of them were going to complain about that.

She got up, wrapping and tying the sheets around her and walked to the desk. Lucas was so focused on what he was working on that he did not even notice her moving around and stopping behind him.

"Watcha doing?" she asked, whispering in his ear.

She giggled when he startled. His chair pivoted until it faced her and he brought a hand to his chest. "You almost gave me a heart attack."

She slid her arms around his neck and hopped on his lap. "So, what are you doing?"

"Writing," he replied, kissing her collarbone.

"You looked very focused."

His lips stayed glued to her skin, but she still managed to make out the words he mumbled: "I was very inspired."

"By what? Me?" she asked giddily.

He left a trail of kisses along her collarbone and started nibbling her neck. "What do you think?" he asked, one of his hands moving to untie the sheets around her. He froze when he heard her stomach growl, then a second later, burst into laughter.

"I didn't get a real lunch, alright?" she told him once he had calmed down. He nodded, pressing his lips together in a failed attempt to contain his laugh. "Peyton left early for the Post, so I didn't really get to eat."

He kissed her neck again and gently pushed her off his lap. "I'll be right back," he said before heading to the kitchen.

She was about to follow him when she felt a stream of hot air hitting the right side of her face. The tingle quickly appeared and was followed, as usual, by the buzzing in her eardrums. She went back to the bed and lied down, waiting until her eyes would close on their own.

She felt disoriented when she opened her eyes. Her first thought was that something was wrong with her eyes, since everything was tinted in brown, and it took her several seconds to realize that she was wearing sunglasses. She looked to her right, through a lowered car window and saw the road go by; correction, not the road, the ocean. Her legs were stretched out, her naked feet were resting on the dashboard. She was wearing a pair of black swimming shorts and an assorted bikini top.

Her head turned to the left: Lucas was driving the car, wearing a basketball cap and a thin blue t-shirt. His window was also rolled down, and while his right hand was steering the wheel, his left was tapping on the edge of the window.

She listened to the music coming out of the radio for a minute and recognized it as one Peyton would often listen to, but she failed to remember its name.

"What's that song again?"

Lucas stopped humming and briefly turned to her. "Comfortably numb."

Now it came back to her. "Pink Floyd," she murmured. "One of Peyton's favorite."

"That doesn't surprise me," he said with a soft chuckle. "How's your head?"

"My head?"

"Did the Tylenol kick off?"

She didn't have any headache at all. "Probably, yeah."

He looked puzzled by her answer. She lifter her sunglasses and took a closer look at him. He looked younger than in 2027, and from his tan and hers, she could tell that it was summer, but she couldn't guess further than that.

"What's the date?" she asked tentatively.

He frowned slightly and let out a chuckle. "What do you mean what's the…" his voice trailed off as he understood what was going on. His frown deepened and he sent her a sidelong glance. "Did you just travel?"

"Yeah. So, what's the date?" she asked impatiently.

He seemed reluctant to answer. "August 28th, 2023." He cleared his throat nervously and threw another glance in her direction. "How are you?"

"How am I?" Why was he acting like he was walking on eggshells? "I'm… good." That didn't seem to make him relax, as if he wasn't completely believing her. "I'm fine." From the way his jaw clenched, and his hand gripped the steering wheel, she knew he was still tense. She put a hand on his arm, making him look at her, and gave him a soft smile. "Really, I'm fine." He finally looked like he was relieved. He mirrored her smile and watched the road again. "Why wouldn't I be fine?" she asked, not expecting to get any answer from him.

"You, um… You were upset the last time we met."

Wait, was he actually answering her questions? "Upset? About what?"

"I can't tell you", he murmured, avoiding her gaze.

Well, never mind her last thought. "Of course, you can't," she mumbled begrudgingly. She turned her head to the ocean. "Where are we going?"

"Home," he replied quickly. He sounded like he was relieved that she was asking a question he could answer, which softened her up.

"So, we were on vacation?"

His lips stretched into a grin. "Yeah."

Brooke's eyes stopped on the rearview mirror and what was missing from it. "Whose car is this?" she asked, looking around them.

"Mine, why?"

He would get another car, then. It was not surprising, considering the fact that Lucas had told her how his car had already been resuscitated three times by his uncle. "Where's the foot?" Brooke asked, her eyes riveted on the spot wherefrom the rabbit's foot usually dangled.

Lucas looked at her like she was speaking a foreign language. "What foot?"

"Your lucky rabbit's foot."

His eyes darkened for a fleeting moment; it happened so quickly that for a second, Brooke thought she had imagined it. "Lost it."

"You lost it? How can you lose something that's always in your car?"

"I… I don't know, I just did. So, erm" ─he cleared his throat─ "where do you come from? I mean, when do you come from?"

"March 7th." Her eyes fell on the sleeve of his t-shirt. There was a symbol embroidered on it. The letter c, a short horizontal line below that, and the letter b below that. She frowned, wondering what brand that was. "Luke, I've been wondering…"

"Yeah?" he asked after she had stayed silent.

How could she word this so that he would answer? "When's the last time you saw Peyton?"

His immediately tensed up. "Why do you ask?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

He kept staring at the road. "I… I don't know."

She crossed her arms and sent him an accusing glare. "You're lying. Did we stop talking to her? Did I stop talking to her?"

"Can we just drop the subject, please?"

"Why? I don't get it," she said, shaking her head in disbelief, "why do you keep not answering my questions if you… If you care about me?"

"Come on, you know I love you, but I can't answer this today, alright?" Her heart skipped a beat then started pounding loudly. Had he just told her that he… "Look," he said hesitantly, "I've already told you."

The flutter in her chest died down. "When did that happen?" It had to be sometime before August 2023 then, but during a travel she had yet to go through.

He fell silent again. She sighed and turned her head away from him again, focusing on the road. "I'm sorry," he eventually said. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that he finally dared to look her in the eye. "I swear I don't like this situation anymore than you do."

She was about to answer but paused, lowering her gaze to her hands. "It's okay, it'll be over soon."

"What?" he asked, taken aback.

She raised her hand. "Tingle. I'm going back."

"Already?" He sounded genuinely disappointed. "Wait, you said you were from March?"

She nodded. The buzzing sound started echoing in her head. "March 7th."

"That means we'll…" his voice trailed off, and his eyes kept travelling from her to the road.

"We'll what?" she asked, trying to hear his voice over the deafening buzz.

He looked torn in two, unable to make a decision. She felt her eyelids becoming heavy, but she tried to fight it off. He eventually made up his mind and turned to her. "At the end of the month, you'll…" He paused and shook his head. "Just don't forget that I lo─"

She woke up in Lucas' bed, frustrated and lost.

Her mother was right about Peyton, she had to be, but then why was Lucas unwilling to talk about her? Because he had already answered her questions, although it hadn't happened to her yet? But if he had already told her, why was he reluctant to tell her again?

And why did that horrible feeling keep creeping in her?

She shifted to her side, her back to the door, and closed her eyes, tightening the sheets around her. She heard Lucas' footsteps coming in the room but didn't move an inch. She heard him put something down on the bed, at her feet, and she could guess it was a food tray. He lied down behind her and kissed her shoulder.

She stiffened under his touch and he seemed to catch on it immediately: he put a finger under her chin and made her turn her face to him. Begrudgingly, she locked eyes with him.

"What's wrong?" he asked, his confusion and worry showing through his voice.

She thought she would be mad at him if she saw his face, but she had been so wrong: she actually felt better now that she could see the way he looked at her. How could she even be mad at him? He hadn't been the one talking to her in the car… At least, not yet. She couldn't be mad for something he hadn't done yet.

She buried her head in his chest. "Nothing," she mumbled.

He chuckled, further lightening her mood. She liked hearing him laugh. "You're lying. I can recognize a pout when I see one."

She sighed and looked up at him. "I'm just… confused."

"Anything I can help with?"

She pondered on it and eventually sat up. "If you care about someone, I mean if you really, really care about them, and they ask to know about something, something you don't want to talk about, then… Would you tell them whatever it is they want to know?"

He furrowed his brow. "That's oddly specific and vague at the same time."

"I know," she said with a sigh, "I'm not making any sense but…"

"That's not what I said," he retorted, sitting to get on her eye level. "If I care that much about that person, then… I think I would tell them, yes."

"And is there any reason you wouldn't tell them, no matter what?"

"Erm, I don't know where this is going, but…" He paused and thought about it for a moment. "Maybe if it hurt them. If telling them whatever it is that they're asking for would hurt them, then I'd probably think twice before saying anything. If that makes any sense."

She snuggled against him and closed her eyes. "It does," she murmured.

Was that why Future Lucas was so secretive? To protect her? What would he need to protect her from?

She shook her head, recalling that she would one day ─probably soon─ know everything; he had told her that himself. In the meantime, she would just have to be patient and focus on the Lucas that was holding her right now, the one who did not hold any secrets.

All this was soon forgotten anyway, because three days later, when she went home after school, accompanied by Peyton who was having dinner with her that night, she found that her mother had been waiting for her, nervously sitting at the kitchen table, with an envelope sitting against the flower vase. An envelope from NYU.

"Is this…" Brooke's voice trailed off.

"Open it," Victoria urged her, handing her the envelope.

Brooke walked over to the table and looked at the piece of paper that was slightly shaking in her mother's excited hands. She slowly took it and turned it over. "I'm not sure I want to know."

"What?" Peyton and Victoria exclaimed at the same time.

"Why didn't you open it?" Brooke asked her mother.

"Just open it, Brooke," Peyton added, leaning against the table.

"But… There's no way I got in. My grades got better but I'm no Haley, and I still don't know why I sent them those ridiculous sketches, they probably just laughed at me and─ Hey!"

Peyton had just snatched the envelope from her hands. She unceremoniously ripped its side and unfolded the letter.

Brooke could see through the paper that there were several paragraphs written there, but she did not know whether it was a good sign. "What does it say?" she asked, her voice quavering.

Her best friend's expression was unreadable as she went through the letter. After a moment of silence that seemed to last forever, Peyton's lips finally moved. "You got in," she said in a low voice. For a second, Brooke wondered if she had heard her right, and she knew she had when Peyton broke into a broad smile and shouted in her ear: "You got in!"

"I got in?" she repeated, in a daze. "Mom, I…" Her voice got muffled when she got suddenly crushed by her mother and her best friend's respective weights.

They celebrated that night, and even though it was a school night, Victoria opened a bottle of champagne. She only allowed them one flute each at first, but after much persistence, she pretended not to see when they went for seconds.

Brooke had been the first in their group of friends to get her reply. In the next ten days, they all got theirs, one at a time.

Peyton got accepted in her art school and was still waiting for a word from the recording studio. Haley got accepted in every school she applied for, including Stanford, but when Nathan received a basketball scholarship for Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a school she had applied for too, they both decided it would be a great compromise. Mouth was waitlisted in Chapel Hill and accepted in a school nearby, in Raleigh.

Lucas got accepted in most schools he had applied for, including his first choice, Columbia, but still didn't know which one to pick. He spent the next few days discussing over his options with his parents and figuring if he could go to Columbia without ending up broke after a week.

"Look, this is gonna work," Keith told him one evening.

Brooke looked up from her homework and glanced at them. They were sitting around a table at the Café; Keith and Lucas had been glued to his laptop for over an hour now, making all kinds of complicated calculation.

"We've already applied for their main financial aid," his uncle said, talking mainly to himself. "Now with this additional scholarship─"

"If I even get it," Lucas grumbled.

Keith ignored him and kept going, "And the money your mother and I put aside for you… You'll be fine for the first two years!"

"But what happens after that?" Lucas asked with a sigh.

"Well, um, we'll just figure it out then."

Brooke frowned and scanned the room, looking for Haley. She was busy behind the counter, writing something on a notebook.

"Haley?" she called as she walked to her side.

"Yeah?" her friend answered absent-mindedly, her eyes glued to the notebook.

She lowered her voice. "Do you think I should say something?"

"About what?"

"Lucas' college plans. He thinks he can't afford Columbia, or even New York, but we both know that's not true."

That seemed to catch Haley's attention, who looked up at her and said, "We don't know that."

"Haley, we know we'll be living in New York and that he's probably gonna live off his writing." At least, that was what they had guessed from Future Haley's comment about Lucas 'touring' the country.

"Yeah, probably," Haley repeated, emphasizing on the last word. "We're not sure of that."

"But…"

"And we don't even know if he goes to Columbia, or even New York. We know you're both living there in" ─she frowned, trying to remember something─ "2022, but who knows what happens until then?"

"I could still just make an innocent suggestion that─"

"What if you change it all?"

Brooke sighed and rested her elbows on the counter. "You sound just like Mouth," she murmured grumpily.

Haley chuckled and patted her back. "You have to admit he's right. You don't know how much you could change the future if you try too hard to make it happen."

"But what if it doesn't happen?" she asked, watching Lucas and his uncle go over their calculation one last time.

"It will. Everything fits, so far, so why would it be different now?"

"Yeah, maybe," she admitted reluctantly. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Deb was passing by behind them and as she did so, smiled at them both. "Things are getting better with her, huh?" she asked once Deb's ears were far from them.

"It took some time, but yes, she's coming around," Haley whispered with relief. "She even took me out shopping the other day."

"So maybe we won't have to wait until Jamie gets to college, then."

Brooke went back to her homework and listened quietly as Keith was telling his nephew to cheer up and have a little faith.

"A little faith?" he repeated in disbelief.

His uncle gave a vague shrug. "You know, sometimes, in life, things just fall into place."

"Did you hit your head?"

Keith chuckled. "No, I guess I'm just a little euphoric."

Lucas seemed at a loss for words, so Brooke decided to speak for him. "About what?" she asked, making him look at her.

"Actually, Brooke, it's kinda thanks to you."

"Me?" She raised an eyebrow and turned to Lucas. "Maybe he really did hit his head."

He roared with laughter, got on his feet and told them that he would tell them more after closing time. Brooke shared a confused look with Lucas; they both shrugged it off and went back to their respective work.

When the last clients had left the Café, and after Haley had turned over the 'Closed' sign, Keith came back with Karen and Deb in toe. He made them all sit down at a round table, Karen standing by his side, and cleared his throat.

"So, um, we have an announcement to make."

Brooke and Haley gasped at the same time and shared an excited look: they both were thinking of the same thing. Karen was either pregnant, or they were getting married, or both. But wait… What did Brooke have to do with that? Keith had said earlier that it was thanks to her… How could that be?

Everyone stared at the girls, waiting for one of them to explain themselves. "Sorry," Brooke said with a nervous chuckle. "Please, continue."

Lucas sent her a quizzical look, to which she shook her head, silently telling him that he shouldn't mind her. He looked confused by her reaction but seemed to brush it off when he focused his attention back on his parents.

"We're getting married."

Lucas' mouth fell open; Deb squealed with joy; Brooke and Haley gave an Oscar-worthy performance and acted surprised. While Lucas and Deb were congratulating them, Brooke leaned over to her friend's ear and whispered, "Do you think they're getting married because she's pregnant?"

"I don't know," Haley answered in the same tone.

"When did that happen?" Deb asked them.

"A few days ago," Karen said with a bright face.

"But… Why did you say it was thanks to Brooke?" Lucas asked with a puzzled face. "Did you know about this?" he asked her directly.

"N─ No, I didn't," she answered before turning to his parents. "I don't get why you said that."

"It's been on our mind for a while, actually…" Keith admitted, running his hand in his hair. "But it was what you said the other day that helped us decide."

Brooke still had no idea what he was talking about. "What did I say?"

"You know, a few weeks ago, you talked about marriage, your parents, and Peyton's parents."

"Oh," Brooke murmured, stretching out the word as she recalled that conversation. Well, it hadn't really been a conversation, she had mostly just rambled on.

"You're a genius, Brooke!" Haley cried, putting an arm around her shoulders.

Lucas, who had still been in a daze so far, suddenly looked like he was struggling hard not to kiss her right now.

"Did you decide on a date?" Deb enquired.

"Actually…" Karen said tentatively. "We're getting married in two days."

They all gasped at the same time ─and this time, neither Brooke nor Haley had to fake their shock. "Yeah, we figured we've waited long enough," Keith added with a laugh.

Deb was the first to find her voice back. "B─ But you need a license and─"

"We got it yesterday and we have an appointment this Saturday at the City hall."

Lucas was gob smacked but managed to break out of his stupor to congratulate them one more time. Brooke smiled, thinking that she had never seen him this happy and she could guess why: this was basically a dream come true to him.

Deb gladly accepted to be their witness and pulled them in for another round of hugs before running behind the counter to get a bottle of champagne. While Lucas was busy talking to his parents, Brooke laughed when she saw, as expected, that Haley was struggling to fight back her tears.

"We don't have any champagne, but I found a good replacement," Deb said as she came back to the table. She poured them each a glass and assured Haley that she could drink this safely. After clinking their glasses together, they all gulped down their drinks. Well, they didn't exactly drink it; instead, they all spat it out. All except from Deb, who drank it down without any trouble.

"What the hell is that?" Keith exclaimed with a disgusted face.

"Ginger ale," Deb said with a shrug. "It was either that or sparkling water. But anyway, where are you gonna celebrate?"

"Isn't that what we're doing right now?"

Deb snickered and fell silent when she saw that the almost-married couple looked dead serious. "Are you kidding me?"

"You have to have a party!" Brooke chimed in. "It's not a wedding if you don't have one!"

Karen and Keith shared a dubious look. "Come on, you really want us to remember this," Lucas said as he pointed at his half-full glass of ginger ale, "when we talk about your wedding?"

Karen let out a quiet laugh. "Well," she said hesitantly, "it's so last minute, I don't think we'll be able to organize anything─"

"Leave it to us!" Brooke cried, putting an arm around Haley's shoulders.

"Are you sure?" Keith asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Definitely, yeah!" She paused, then added sheepishly, "We'll just need some money I guess."

"I'll take care of that," Deb told them with a wink.

"Deb…" Karen said with a slight frown.

"It's my wedding gift to you, alright? You can't refuse it."

Karen shared another look with Keith, and eventually broke into a smile. "Fine, let's have a party then."

When Brooke came home that night, she rushed to the couch, where her mother had been sitting, to tell her the news. To her surprise, Victoria didn't seem to share her excitement.

"You said you'd organize a party?" she repeated with a frown.

"Well, yeah…" She picked up a piece of paper from her bag and showed it to her mother. "They gave me a list of possible guests and they said they'd have it at the Café. Karen said she would close it for the day."

"And you have twenty-four hours to do that?"

"Well, thirty-six actually, the party is on Saturday afternoon."

"So, while you still have school tomorrow, you're gonna call all these people, get a caterer, flowers, buy decoration for the Café, and plan the music?"

Now that she put it like this, the task sounded a little more difficult than what she had had in mind. "I'm good at planning, Mom."

"I know that, but this may be a bit too much for you."

She sighed, looking down at the list of guests in her hands. "Then what should I do? I already told them I'd do it."

"First, you need to call all these people to know if they'll show up or not. You have to know how many guests there will be before tomorrow morning."

"But it's already 8 pm."

"We better get to it, then," Victoria said with a shrug.

"We?"

Her mother chuckled at her genuinely surprised tone. "Of course, I'll give you hand."

They spent two hours calling the list of possible guests, including Whitey, who she had thought at first would give her hell for calling him this late, but instead softened up very quickly when she explained why she was calling him.

They narrowed it down to twenty-five guests; Victoria said she would get in touch with her contacts in catering, flowers, and decoration, so that everything would get delivered at the Café on Saturday morning.

Saturday was going to be a very busy day: Brooke and her friends agreed to meet early in the morning at the Café so that everything would be ready for 3 pm, when Karen, Keith, Deb and Lucas would come back from the City hall. Then, at around 7 pm, they would go to Peyton's who had decided that they could continue the party at her house, without any parental supervision. It was about time they too celebrated their college replies.

Her mother had done an amazing job. When Brooke arrived with her in the Café that morning, everything had been delivered as planned. With help from Nathan, Haley, Peyton, and Mouth, they managed to get it all done by noon.

The place was almost unrecognizable. They had hung up paper lanterns and fairy lights over the ceiling and on the walls. The tables had been decorated with white tablecloths, wild flowers that they had arranged in bouquets ─Nathan had pricked his fingers at least a dozen times─ and candles; they had been pushed around to leave plenty of space in the middle of the Café. One table had been put aside for presents, and two were used for the buffet. Peyton had brought her stereo and come up with a playlist. Victoria showed them how to make wreaths and garlands out of the remaining flowers, and they hung them all over the place.

Everything was ready when the guests came in and, after fifteen minutes, the newlywed arrived. They all cheered loudly as they entered the Café; Karen was wearing a simple but elegant blue dress, and Keith and Lucas were both wearing suits.

An hour later, Brooke was sitting at a table, laughing as Mouth was showing her the pictures he had taken so far. "See this one?" he said, and she pressed her eye against the viewfinder. She giggled as she watched Whitey just about to shove an appetizer down his throat.

She glanced up from the camera and noticed that her mother was still talking to Karen; at first, Victoria had wanted to go home before the party would start, but since her mother had worked so hard to plan all this, Brooke had insisted that she should stay at least for a few minutes, to give her just enough time to introduce her and tell Karen and Keith that she had done most of the work.

They had thanked her profusely for about ten minutes and Victoria had humbly said that she hadn't done much, she had only helped 'the kids' with the planning bits. That wasn't entirely true though, as Brooke had pointed out, she had also guided them through the whole decoration process. Her mother had been great, and she looked like she had really enjoyed herself.

Now, after an hour, she was still there, and she didn't look like she was going anywhere anytime soon. Brooke's eyes stopped on the champagne flute Karen had been sipping: she definitely wasn't pregnant yet.

"What do you think they're talking about?" Lucas asked as he slipped in the chair next to hers.

They both turned to him. "Probably of all the times Brooke sneaked into your room," Mouth said with a smirk.

Brooke nudged him hard in the ribs, making him wince. "That only happened once, alright?"

"I don't know why, but somehow, I doubt it," Mouth said, running away from her before she could hit him again.

Lucas laughed and kissed her temple. She dropped her head on his shoulder and watched the people who were dancing in the middle of the room, including Nathan and Haley. "Your mom should make a career out of this," he said pensively.

"Wedding planning?"

"Or events, in general." He motioned at the place around them. "She did an amazing job in twenty-four hours."

"Thirty-six," Brooke corrected.

"Still impressive."

Brooke thought about it for a moment and recalled what Jamie had told her in her father's former study. "I'll run it by her." She turned to him. "Dance with me?"

They danced, and laughed, and chatted for more than three hours. Everybody seemed to be elated, as if they had entered a bubble of happiness. When it was almost 7 pm, the youngest ones bid their goodbyes, once again congratulating Lucas' parents. Victoria, who had been dancing with one of Keith's employees, told Brooke to be careful tonight.

"Why?" Brooke asked as she watched her friends going out of the Café one by one.

"Didn't you hear? There's a storm coming. If it gets too bad, stay at Peyton's, alright?"

"Sure," Brooke said, kissing her cheek. Lucas was waiting for her on the street, holding the door open. She grabbed his hand and followed him out. Her mother was probably right: dark clouds were starting to fill the sky.

By the time they arrived at Peyton's house, the sky was growling and a few raindrops were falling on them. They all rushed inside and went to the kitchen to take out the food and drinks Peyton had put away for the night, including a bottle of champagne that Nathan had managed to steal from the Café's party. Haley had given him a disapproving look, but he had justified himself by saying that it was their payment for today's hard work.

The music blasted loudly in the house, and they were soon joined by Skills, Fergie and Junk, along with a couple of cheerleaders and Ravens. They ate, drank, played cards, some beer-pong, tasted Skills' fishy homemade cocktail, and danced again.

Brooke had been dancing for half an hour now, shouting at Peyton to turn the volume up every time they heard a rumble outside, and for once, her mind wasn't thinking of anything but this moment, right here, right now.

The music combined with their voices had been so deafening that they didn't notice the windows rattling with the wind, or the rain pouring outside; that is, until a sudden power cut.

The house was plunged into darkness and silence at once; someone screamed in fear, others laughed, and Brooke could hear people bumping into each other. She shrieked when she felt a hand sliding on her waist, but relaxed when she recognized Lucas' voice. "Found you," he murmured in her ear. She could smell the alcohol in his breath, but even without that, she could tell that he was slightly drunk. "Do you have your phone?"

"No, it's in my bag."

Another voice rose from the darkness. "I've got mine." Haley took out her phone and used its light to scan the room. Haley and Mouth were sitting on the couch and everybody else was standing around the room. Peyton walked around the room and halted by the fireplace, kneeling next to it. After a few minutes, the small fire she had started was lighting up the room. It didn't replace actual bulb lights, but it was enough for them to see each other.

"I'm gonna check the breaker," Peyton told them as she stood up from the floor. She grabbed Nathan's arm and dragged him with her. "Come on, I'm gonna need some help."

"From me?" Nathan retorted, raising an eyebrow. "You know I don't know shit about that stuff."

"I'm not going downstairs on my own, I can barely stand straight," Peyton said, holding the wall on her right to steady herself.

Nathan scanned the room until he found Brooke sitting on the floor, near the fireplace. "Brooke, you're up too."

She groaned, and before she could get up, Lucas pressed her shoulder. "I'll go."

They took Haley's phone and used it as a flashlight as they left the room and made their way to the basement. Brooke looked around the room: there was only Haley, Mouth and Skills left with her now; the rest had gone to the kitchen to get candles and food.

Nathan appeared after barely a minute, surprising them, and hadn't come back empty handed.

"Is that…" Brooke murmured, squinting to see something in the dark.

"Yup! Larry's old guitar," Nathan said gleefully, brandishing it. He walked inside the room and handed it to Haley, who immediately started tuning it.

Nathan came to sit on the floor, his head resting against Haley's legs. His eyes fluttered and he yawned. Brooke wondered what time it was; probably not that late, but they were all tired from their day.

Skills shifted from his spot and came to sit closer to them, at the other end of the fireplace. "Play us a tune, Hales."

She gladly complied; her fingers started stroking the strings, giving out a soft melody. It was slow and hypnotizing, strange but familiar…

Brooke's head jerked up. She knew this tune. "Comfortably numb," she muttered.

She had told Mouth and Haley about her latest travel, but she hadn't told them about the song that Future Lucas had been listening to in the car; she knew that for sure, because she had pondered on writing it down on her entry and had decided not to, as she couldn't see the point in that.

Which meant that it was purely coincidental that Haley was now playing an acoustic version of this song, thereby reminding her of her latest travel. Brooke frowned and closed her eyes, trying to keep it out of her mind and to focus solely on the music and on the thunder outside. The afternoon and the evening had been perfect so far, why would she start brooding now?

"Where did they run off to?" Nathan asked after they had spent several minutes listening to Haley's music. Brooke chuckled when she heard his slurred speech. He really would have been of no help down in the basement.

"Who?" Mouth asked him, bending over to look at him.

"Peyton and Lucas. Shouldn't they be back by now?"

"They're having a hard time getting the power back up," Brooke answered with a shrug.

Nathan blinked at her. "How..." He turned to her and seemed to lose balance even though he was sitting down. "How do you know that?"

Brooke pointed a finger up. "Because we're still out of light."

"Oh, wow, you're right," Nathan answered, apparently amazed by her deductive mind. He scratched his chin then let out a quiet, drunken laugh.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing, nothing's funny," he said, still laughing. "I'm just proud of you."

Haley chuckled but kept playing her tune. The song was coming to an end now. "Oh yeah?" How come?" Brooke asked him amusedly.

"I never thought you'd be okay with those two spending so much time in the dark."

"Those two? Who? Peyton and Luke?"

"Who else?"

Brooke snickered. "Why would I mind that?"

"Well, you know, since─" He suddenly shut up and stared at her with a confused expression on his face. He then turned around to look at Haley, who, just like Brooke, didn't seem to have a clue on what he was going on about. He glanced back at Brooke and stammered, "You know what, I, um, I─ I don't know, what I'm, er, saying…"

He motioned to get up, but Brooke grabbed his arm and yanked it down, making him stay still. Haley's hand suddenly stopped playing, and the room fell silent, except for the rain and thunder they could hear through the walls. "What are you talking about?" Brooke asked her friend, her voice hardening with each word.

She could see Nathan's drunkenness fade away as he now looked terrified by her. "I─ I don't know, Brooke, I think the booze just went up my head and─"

Her grip tightened around his arm and she looked up at Haley. "Do you know what he's talking about?" she asked, her voice slightly quavering.

"No," Haley said, shaking her head before sharing a confused look with Mouth.

Nathan's lips moved and mumbled something that none of them managed to understand. "What was that?" Brooke asked him with a frown.

"They kinda hooked up."

Brooke's blood froze. She opened her mouth, but for the longest time, it seemed as if she couldn't speak anymore. None of them could, they all seemed to have stopped breathing. "When?" she eventually managed to mutter.

"Brooke," Nathan murmured, avoiding her glare, "I'm not the one who should tell─"

"When?!" she shouted, shaking his arm.

He sighed and eventually met her eyes. "It was, erm… It was a while ago, alright? Way before you started going out with him. I'm sorry, I thought you knew."

"So they hooked up once," she murmured more to herself than to the others. Nothing to be mad about, right. Nothing at all. She hadn't given Lucas the names of the guys she had been with before him. Except that none of these guys happened to be his best friend… No, she thought, it was useless to get worked up about this. "A while ago. Just once, a while ago," she repeated as a mantra. "That's okay," she said, though as she could hear herself speak, she realized that her voice sounded very uncomfortable. "That's okay."

Something was wrong; Nathan kept eyeing her as if he was afraid of her reaction.

"Not just once?" she asked in a murmur.

Nathan refused to answer her, but surprisingly, it was Skills who slipped up. The room was so quiet that even though he only murmured, Brooke heard his words loud and clear: "Wait, that was Peyton?"

Her head turned to him. "What do you mean?" He didn't answer, but she then remembered a night, weeks ago, at Nathan's house, where Skills had said something about Lucas getting his heart broken. "Nathan?" she asked, turning back to her friend. Her eyes started prickling and her voice was shaking as she pleaded with him: "Please, just tell me."

"Brooke," Haley said in a soft, hesitant tone, "maybe we should─"

"Just tell me," she repeated, her eyes stuck on Nathan.

Nathan sighed, then looked up at her. "It wasn't once. They had a… A thing, for a while."

He had to be mistaken. It could not be, it simply could not be. If her best friend had really been with Lucas, she would have known about it. At least one of them would have told her.

It could not be.

"Promise me."

The power came up, startling them all; they were suddenly blinded by the light and deafened by the music. Brooke blinked, covering her eyes, and looked up at the ceiling.

"Promise me."

The ceiling lights. She knew them, she had seen them for years now, whenever she went to Nathan's house. The end-of-presidency party. She had gone to the kitchen and overheard a conversation between Lucas and Peyton. It was all coming back to her now.

The storm seemed to worsen outside when a cracking sound, loud enough to overtake the music, made them all jump up, all except from Brooke. She couldn't move anymore. She knew everyone was staring at her, waiting for her reaction.

"And then there was light!" They all looked behind them and saw that Peyton and Lucas were coming into the living room, grins plastered on their faces. "I'm gonna get something to eat, you want something?" Peyton asked Lucas.

"I'm good." They all watched as Peyton walked off. Lucas was about to say something, but he fell silent when he noticed their gloomy faces. "What's wrong?"

Brooke jumped to her feet and marched across the room. She brushed past Lucas, opened the closet below the stairs, grabbed her bag, and left the house, ignoring Haley's voice pleading her to wait.

The storm was raging now; as soon as she took a step outside, her hair was blown out of her face and she got drenched in less than ten seconds. She had to cover her eyes to see anything, and she had to plant her feet in the ground to properly walk, but she didn't care: she was getting the hell out of here.

The wind, rain and thunder were so loud that she didn't hear the door open behind her and the footsteps approaching just as she reached her car.

"Brooke!" Lucas' voice rang in her ear. She turned around and saw that he had followed her outside. He looked lost and confused. "What are you doing?" he shouted so that she could hear him. "Get back inside!"

She ignored him and started rummaging through her bag to get her keys. Where the hell were those─

Lucas grabbed her forearm. "What are you doing! Stop, come─" She yanked her arm from his grip, dropping her bag on the ground. She knelt and quickly got her stuff back in her bag. Lucas crouched down and grabbed her shoulders. "Brooke, what are you─"

"Get off me!" she shouted, pushing him with every bit of strength she could muster. He lost balance and landed on his back. She watched as he got on his knees and stared at her as if she had lost her mind.

Something snapped in her. She could have punched him endlessly, and she knew that she still wouldn't feel any better, because right now, it seemed to her that he had ripped her heart out and was now stomping on it.

The tears she had been fighting so far escaped all at once, so much so that she couldn't tell anymore if the water streaming down her cheeks was from the rain or from her crying.

"Brooke!" Lucas called in an alarmed voice. "What happened?"

"Is it true?" she asked as she tried to wipe her tears.

"What are you talking about?"

The words were stuck in her throat. If she were to say them, and if were to give her an answer, then… What would happen then? "Did you go out with Peyton?"

Lucas frowned and brought his face closer to hers. "What did you say?" he shouted over the wind.

"Did you go out with Peyton?"

His face fell and he moved back, staggered by her question. His eyes darted to the house for a millisecond then landed back on her. "It's not what you think." Her heart sank. She hurriedly grabbed her bag, took out her keys and got up on her feet. "Wait, Brooke," he pleaded, trying to take her hands.

"No!" she shouted, jerking his hand away. "No, no, no," she repeated, pushing the button to open her car. She rushed into it, slammed the door shut and locked it.

She threw her bag on the passenger seat and shut her eyes tight, trying to ignore Lucas' fist pounding on the window, or his voice begging her to wait just a minute. She started the car; Lucas was now telling her that it was too dangerous, but she could not care less.

She drove away, her hands tightly gripping the wheel; the rain was pouring straight into her windshield and the wind made it difficult to keep her car steady, but she still managed to drive through the storm.

"Promise me."

Brooke burst into tears as she drove home, overcome with a mix of sadness and… humiliation. When she thought the wind had calmed down a little, she took a hand off the wheel to wipe the tears that made it even more difficult for her to properly see the road.

It only took a second. She was turning left, and just as she was wiping her cheeks, a blast of wind hit her car on her side. She stiffened, tried to get control of her car, and failed: her car crashed into the nearest pole. Her head slammed into the wheel, and everything went dark.


And that's it for now.

I ended up finishing this chapter earlier than planned, so I figured I could also post it earlier... There's a lot of things happening there, and I wasn't sure whether to cut it in two, but there you go, you got the whole chapter.

Again, I want to thank you all for the time you take reading this and I want to say an even bigger thank you to those who left reviews.

Now, for the next chapter... I have a very, very busy work schedule in May, so I'm not even sure I'll be able to write then. Either by some miracle I manage to finish it by the end of this month, or I don't, and then it will probably be ready by the end of May/beginning of June. I can't promise anything, but I'll definitely try my best.