Thank you for all your reviews! It's great seeing people take an interest in this story. I probably should warn you though... I'm a sucker for a bit of heartbreak, so this story will definitely not be smooth sailing and you'll all hate me at certain points, and you'll hate Lucas at certain points, but remember - it's always darkest before the dawn ;)

For now, Brooke struggles with her new roommates and tells Lucas all about her first love... enjoy!

Chapter Three – The Friendzone

Monday morning soon rolled around and Brooke sleepily walked through the hallway towards the bathroom to begin getting ready for the day. Peyton and Lucas had moved in the previous day, so things had been pretty chaotic, but Brooke managed to stay out of the way and let them do their thing. She wasn't really in much of a mood for awkward glances with Lucas, especially considering Chase had lost his head at the gala and dumped her. She made Rachel swear to keep her away from men for the time being. She was just sick of being let down. She also figured she would be saving herself worse heart break down the line. She knew all too well what that was like.

Brooke let out a deep yawn as she approached the bathroom door. She froze mid yawn at the scene she was greeted with. She saw Peyton brushing her hair, Nathan brushing his teeth, Rachel shaving her legs and Lucas in the shower.

"Are you kidding me?" Brooke asked as she ran a hand through her hair. All she wanted was 5 minutes in the bathroom but there was nowhere that wasn't a shared space right now. It was basically a frat house.

"Hey, Brooke" she heard from the shower as Lucas appeared from behind the curtain. She stared at his chiselled chest for a little too long, as Lucas smirked, it not going unnoticed by him. "Could you hand me my towel?" he asked as Brooke snapped out of her daydream, frowned, and chucked it at him.

"This isn't normal. Or fair." She remarked as she snatched her toothbrush from the pot and stormed out of the room and downstairs to use the tiny bathroom under the stairs.

The other four adults all looked at each other and shrugged before they continued what they were doing. This living situation was clearly going to take some getting used to.

"Rachel, we need to talk about this living situation." Brooke began as she caught up with her in the hallway of the hospital.

"I know the bathroom situation was a little crazy this morning, but we'll come up with a schedule! Better yet, let's build another bathroom, how awesome would an ensuite in your room be?"

"Rachel, why are you pushing so hard for this?! If it's about this whole Lucas thing, you can give it up."

"How many times do I have to tell you that I just wanted to help two new colleagues out?" Rachel said as they stopped and Rachel crossed her arms in defiance.

"Peyton suggested we get a chore wheel this morning." Brooke told her. "We're not 5 years old!"

"Suck. It. Up." Rachel told her before bouncing away.

Brooke let out a large sigh just as she felt a shoulder knock into hers and barge past.

"Lucas?" she asked, seeing that he was clearly in an angry state.

"Not now Brooke."

"But—"

"I said not now!" he exclaimed before storming forward just as Ted walked up beside Brooke.

"What the hell just happened?" Brooke asked, completely stunned by his outburst.

"Multi-car pileup, Dr. Scott just saved a little boy's life… we're all a little unsure why this is his response." Ted explained as Brooke nodded her head.

"Strange..." Brooke mumbled. Lucas normally had such a cool head on him. She'd seen him deal with the death of a patient before and his reaction was never this extreme. Why was he responding to saving a little boy like he was?

"Yeah… I do come bearing some good news though" Ted said as Brooke turned to look at him.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. I just got word from the FDA – I got the grant for my research proposal." Ted said with a smile.

Brooke beamed, "Dad, that's amazing! Congratulations" she said as she quickly hugged him. She knew how hard her father had been working on his research as well as trying to manage a hospital, so this was an amazing reward for all his hard work. He could really start making a difference now.

"Thanks Brookie. We're going for celebratory drinks after work if you're free."

Brooke nodded, "Yeah, sounds good."

"Great, and uh—keep an eye on Scott for me, would you?" Ted asked as Brooke gulped and nodded her head as Ted walked away. Clearly there was something going on with Lucas that he didn't care to admit.

Lucas managed to conveniently avoid speaking to anyone else for the rest of the day. Brooke couldn't find him anywhere. When someone told her he was in the lab, she went there to find someone telling her he was in the OR, and there another person told her he was in the ER, but it was no use. Whatever he was doing, he clearly didn't want to be found.

Brooke figured the best place she could talk to him would be at home. When she got there, following drinks with Ted, Kate and a few of their friends, Nathan told her Lucas came in and went straight to bed without eating or saying a word. So, she nodded and went to bed herself. Just as she was settling down for the night, she heard shouting coming from the room next to hers – Lucas' room. She paused for a second and listened, before the shouting started again.

"Greg! Greg!" she heard the voice shout.

She carefully got out of bed and cautiously opened Lucas' door, to see him lying in a cold sweat, rummaging around the bed, panting, shouting for this 'Greg' person.

"Lucas, Lucas! Hey! Wake up!" she shouted as he stopped shouting and appeared to wake up. "You're having a nightmare, maybe you should take something—" Brooke said, but Lucas cut her off.

"Greg? Where's Greg? Greg!" he shouted as Brooke realised he wasn't actually awake.

"Hey, hey! Lucas! It's Brooke, come on, wake up!" she said as he finally snapped out of it and looked at her.

He shook his head and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes before getting out of bed. He ignored Brooke standing there, lifted a sweater and stormed out the door, "I need a drink."

Brooke followed Lucas out of the room just as Rachel arrived at the top of the stairs.

"Hey—wow…" she said as Lucas pushed past her. "What's his deal?"

"I have no idea." Brooke said as she went downstairs to talk to him. She soon found him in the kitchen standing by the sink while he got himself a drink of water.

"Hey" she greeted as she approached him, immediately seeing that he wasn't in much of a mood to talk. When he didn't reply, Brooke decided to just continue anyway. "You know last week at the gala we said that if we ever needed to talk, we would be there for each other?" she asked.

Lucas shrugged; "What about it?"

"I'm just saying, if you want to talk to someone—I'm here. I'm not foreign to sleep problems myself. When my parents got a divorce I didn't sleep for weeks—" she said, laughing awkwardly, thinking about how ridiculous she must sound right now. She had no idea why it affected her so much, but it did.

Lucas finally turned to look at her; "I don't have any problems Brooke. I just pulled half of a car out of a boy and he lived. He's going to live to be stupid another day because of me. His parents aren't going to lose everything because of me. I call that a pretty great night. So what is your problem?" he replied before slamming his glass down on the counter and going back upstairs, leaving Brooke even more confused than before.

Brooke had decided when she woke up the next morning that it wasn't worth her time trying to get through to Lucas, especially when he was going to be so hostile. She scoffed at herself for caring so much about a guy she barely knew, but she couldn't help it. He was a curiosity to her, and she was desperate to know more.

After a long shift at work, she made her way home feeling a little defeated about the whole thing. She tried to watch a cheesy film, but she just couldn't concentrate. Between everything that had gone down with Chase and her concern for Lucas there wasn't much else she could think about.

She did have a degree of understanding for Lucas' actions, however. She understood not wanting to discuss problems. She was the queen of avoidance. She never really had anyone to talk to about her problems growing up. Her parents were always at work, her brother was always off with his friends, her friends were too busy talking about their own problems. Now it had developed into an unhealthy habit of just staying silent. She had barely spoken to anyone about Chase. Anytime Rachel or Nathan asked, she swiftly moved the subject on.

Despite her own actions, however, she also knew how beneficial it was to talk to someone she trusted, whether it was mom or dad, Rachel or Nathan, even Kate. She figured Lucas deserved to have someone like that too.

After finishing her movie halfway through, she made her way into the bathroom and found Lucas brushing his teeth. She found it refreshing that there was only one other person in the bathroom rather than four.

"Hi" she greeted as she walked over to the sink and lifted her own toothbrush.

"Hi… I'm surprised you're still talking to me, I was kind of a dick yesterday." Lucas said sheepishly as Brooke looked at him, not expecting his change in attitude.

"It's ok, I—I understand why you didn't want to talk. I rarely want to talk so I can't be mad at you for that."

"You should be mad at me because you were kind and I threw it back in your face." He said as he spit in the sink and rinsed his mouth and toothbrush before continuing. "My patient crashed his car because he was reckless, and he lived but his brother died. He's going to feel pretty awful that he lived, and his brother died." He explained as Brooke started to make sense of the whole thing "That every time he feels glad to be alive, he'll hate himself for it. He won't want to talk about it, but—" he said as he dropped his sentence, not sure what to say next. "When I was 16, I was in a car accident with my best friend Greg. It wasn't my fault, someone crashed into us but – he died and I lived. He offered to drive and I said no I could do it… but if he had have been the one driving… he would have lived and I can't help but feel guilty about that."

Brooke looked at him through the reflection in the mirror, not really know what to say. "Lucas, I – I'm so sorry." She responded quietly as she rested her hand on his arm. "We're always going to lose patients. It's inevitable. No matter how hard we try, we can't save everyone and sometimes those patients are going to hit a little too close to home because the human experience really doesn't vary from person to person. We all have joy, laughter, pain, tears… we just have to make sure that we surround ourselves with the people who not only make us laugh, but also hold us together when we feel like we're being torn apart."

"That's a pretty good outlook to have." Lucas replied. "Sounds like you're speaking from experience."

Brooke looked to her feet and gulped, "It's kind of freaky how much we have in common." She began cryptically. She rarely shared this part of her life with anyone. The only people in her life that knew about it were her parents, her brother, her godfather and Rachel. It was a part of her life that she kept hidden in order to protect her already fractured heart.

"How do you mean?"

"I have only ever loved one person in my life. I was 18, his name was Aiden. We met in high school and in a lot of ways he was the complete opposite of me" She said with a little laugh. "He grew up in LA and he loved to surf and he didn't not care about school, it just wasn't high on his list of priorities, whereas I'm much more of a sit by the ocean and sunbathe kind of girl and I worked my butt off in high school… despite that, he was the warmest and funniest and sweetest guy on the planet. He just made me feel so beyond loved." She recalled fondly. He was always going out of his way for her. He would have done anything she asked. "Anyway… one night a few weeks before we graduated, Aiden was in a car accident. He was hit by a drunk driver while he was taking his pregnant sister to the hospital. He uh—he sustained some pretty bad head injuries and he died in surgery."

Lucas turned to look at Brooke for real, rather than just at her reflection in the mirror. He really didn't know what to say, so he just gulped and said "Brooke, I—"

"It's probably the worst thing that has ever happened to me and it kind of put me off guys for a long time. I wouldn't say I'm still completely open to relationship now, almost 10 years later." Brooke said with an awkward laugh. She swore to herself that she wouldn't dive into something unless she knew it was the real thing, which was why she was so hesitant with Chase. Right now, she was standing by those beliefs because when she did move forward with him, it was thrown back in her face. "His death inspired me to pursue neuro as well. So I could maybe save other people's first loves. I did get to talk to him before he went in for surgery and he told me that I was made to do great things… so I refuse to do anything less than great. I refuse to let anyone try and demean what I do."

"Your strength is pretty incredible" Lucas said, truly in awe of Brooke and her drive to make true of her boyfriend's beliefs. He wasn't sure he had ever met anyone with such a wonderful life outlook. It made his heartbeat just that little bit faster.

Brooke shook her head, "I certainly do not claim to have it all figured out. I am a work in progress. The advice I just gave you - it's not a remedy for all we're going to go through in life, but it's certainly a start."

Lucas smirked, "There's that wise 80-year-old coming out again. I'm very grateful for her right about now."

Brooke yawned as she replied "She never went away."

"Did you not get much sleep last night?" he asked with a worried frown.

"Uh, no, not really. But it's not an anomaly for me." She replied. Surgeons were some of the most unrested people on the planet. Thank god for caffeine.

"You should take something for that…" he taunted, just like she had yesterday.

"Oh really?" she said as she shoved him away while he laughed.

"I never said thank you for letting Peyton and I invade your house." Lucas said as Brooke finally got round to brushing her teeth.

"It's ok" Brooke said with a mouth full of toothpaste. "It's nice having a full house. My house growing up as always so empty with my parents at work and my brother out doing god knows what with god knows who."

"You have a brother?" Lucas inquired.

Brooke nodded, "Two actually. My older brother Harrison, though he gets Harry, is a cardiothoracic surgeon in New York. Works at the same hospital as my mom."

"Wow, keeping it in the family huh?"

Brooke laughed, "Yeah, says you Scott" he reminded him.

"Touche…"

"And my little brother Matty is 17." She added. She loved her brothers dearly, but like most brothers, they really drove her insane over the years. "Do you have any siblings?"

"Yeah, I have a little sister, Lily. My mom remarried when I was around 10 and she and my step-dad Keith had Lily a year later. She's just started college." Lucas explained with a proud smile. "It's a little bit of a complicated family story... my step-dad Keith is actually my dad's brother but uh- he was more of a dad to me than Dan ever was." he explained as Brooke nodded her head.

"Well, Lily is more than welcome to come and stay here any time if she fancies visiting her big brother" Brooke offered.

Lucas smiled, "I'll let her know… I should get to bed" he said as Brooke finished with her teeth and turned to look at him, their chests almost touching.

"Right… bed." Brooke agreed as they looked at each other intensely.

"No Chase tonight?"

"Long story but my bold move didn't quite work out how I'd anticipated… he was a keen example of me not letting boys demean my accomplishments."

Lucas frowned, hating that someone made Brooke feel that way. "I'm sorry"

Brooke smirked, "no you're not."

"I'm not?"

"No… cause you're just one step away from taking that chance." She reminded him. "Goodnight Lucas" Brooke said in a teasing whisper before leaving a longing Lucas in the bathroom.

When she got back into her room, she sat on the edge of her bed and lifted out an old phone she had when she was in high school. She remembered when the moved in, Rachel had asked her why she bothered to keep this ratty old thing and the answer was simple. After Brooke made her way home from the hospital following Aiden's death, she had looked at her phone and saw she had a voicemail from him. When she finally plucked up the courage to listen to it a few days later, she knew it was never something she wanted to erase. She wanted to be able to listen to it in her most vulnerable moments- like right now.

"Brooke! Hey, it's me, of course you knew it was me, there's this thing called caller I.D and you're bound to know my voice by now…" Aiden rambled in the phone as Brooke covered her mouth to hold back her tears. "Anyway, Mia's about to have her baby and it's amazing and so exciting and I just—I can't wait to do this with you. I'm not saying right now, but some day. I want all of this with you. A life together, a family. After you become a world class surgeon of course, or during because you could do both, you're Brooke freakin' Davis, you're like a superhero. Anyway, I should stop rambling, I need to drive Mia to the hospital but uh… I love you Brooke Penelope Davis. Always have always will. I'll see you soon"

Brooke put the phone back in her drawer before she lay back down on her bed. She wondered if she could ever feel that way again about someone. It just didn't seem possible, but lately she had the strangest feeling of hope in the pit of her stomach – and she had a funny feeling it had to do with the blonde haired, blue eyed surgeon down the hall.

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