A/N: Hey! Thank you Lucasandpeytonfanatic, lukenpeyton4ever, Ace5492, Anon, OTHGirl24, cayt326, Lexie-Rae, annabelle18, christina248, jamyj30 and lEYtOnFoREVERyay for your amazing reviews! And Anon, no I agree with you about what you said about the Leyton reunion, so it'll take time. Hopefully you'll enjoy the journey! :)

I was going to write more to this chapter, but then the rest just did not fit into it, so this is a shorter one and the next chapter then will move things forward a bit more.. Enjoy!

At 9 am Nathan was making pancakes in the kitchen and Peyton was half asleep against their kitchen table. Lydia had woken up at 8:30 and about 15 minutes later she had realized her godmother was in the house. She had ran straight to the guest bedroom, woken Peyton up and dragged her to the kitchen with her. Peyton had guessed it would happen, but as she had reasoned, at least she got the four hours of real sleep. Waking up to Lydia was also way better than an annoying alarm clock. Luckily the little girl was also content drawing quietly next to her and she could just enjoy the smell of Nathan's pancakes, close her eyes and rest her head on the table.

Lucas was the next one to arrive. From the way he was walking it was obvious his back was hurting because of the night on the couch. Haley followed basically right behind him, but she had much more energy and instead of falling into another chair around the table like Lucas, she went on to join her husband in breakfast preparations.

"That's what you get for keeping my wife away from my bed.." Nathan said to Lucas, who was fidgeting on the chair trying to find the most comfortable position. Of course Nathan would have preferred to get to sleep next to his lovely wife all night, but he wasn't mad. He had nothing to worry about. It was more just amusing. "What's going on anyway?"

"Oh, you know.. Best friend business, had some old conversations to finish." Lucas gave Haley a much telling look that he did not want to make his situation public yet.

Nathan looked at his wife and brother weighing the meaning of the information. Seemed like even if something was up, this was not the setting to get to it. "So everything is okay?"

"Yeah, apart from this back of mine.."

"You know, you're lucky I'm so much hotter than you. Otherwise you'd be wishing you only had a sore back.." Nathan laughed.

Lydia on the other hand rose her head from the drawing "What! Don't Aunt Lindsey kiss Uncle Lucas?"

Her question got all the four adults' full attention. Lucas gave Haley a worried look. How could she know what was going on? Haley was confused and Peyton felt herself quite awake all of a sudden. She tried to hide the sudden change, though.

"Honey why would you ask that?" Haley voiced everyone's thoughts.

"Well, Jamie said that hot is adult language for someone who gets kissed a lot and I thought aunt Lindsey was uncle Lucas's mama, but doesn't uncle Lucas get kissed then?" the little girl's logic was fabulous, but at not much after 9 am and after not that great night's sleep it all sounded extremely complicated, although very convincing.

"Isn't aunt Lindsey your mama?" Lydia directed a rephrased version of the question straight to Lucas.

"Honey, we talked about this. Aunt Lindsey is uncle Lucas's wife, like I am not daddy's mama but daddy's wife, although I'm your mama." Haley tried to save her best friend.

Lydia looked at her as if to say, 'So? You're getting side-tracked..' And she totally was.

"Honey, you know how your daddy sometimes says some funny things to you, but you don't have to take them seriously?" Peyton tried explaining. She had at least better success than Haley. Lydia nodded. "Well that was just like that, except he was goofing around with uncle Lucas instead of you. I'm sure your uncle Lucas... ...gets kissed, too. You don't have to worry about the adult things." Peyton looked around and noticed a tennis ball on the floor. "But if you Have to worry about him, you could take that ball and roll it over your uncle's back a little, it seems to be really sore and I think a nice back-rub from you might help."

Lucas shot Peyton his most grateful and sincere look. This woman was amazing: so passionate and kind, creative and incredible with kids. Inside and out she was the most incredible creature he had ever met. Looking at her he knew what should what he needed to do. Or maybe not quite that much, but he knew what needed to be the aim when making decisions for his life.

After the break up, Brooke had told him to write an amazing book and be the best version of himself, for Peyton. Ever since then that had been his goal - motto for life, in a way. He had written the book and mastered being what he set out to be as a writer, but in the rest of it he had fallen short of that. He had tried by committing to loyalty and in many other ways, but now it seemed it had all gone to waste most of his tries had turned out to be mistakes. Maybe his general issue was also part of the connection problem with Lindsey. If he was only good at the books, why would their relationship be good outside of them. Then again, there was always a connection with Peyton, maybe it was more than that with Lindsey. Anyway, no matter what the case, Lucas recommitted himself to being the best possible version of himself and trying to be the kind of person Peyton deserved to have in the world she lived in.

"By the way, Peyton what are you doing here at this time already? Not that we don't love having you here, but I thought you were coming only a little before 10 am?" Haley changed the subject as the situation had calmed down.

Nathan chuckled from the stove. He turned around and stuck his tongue out to Peyton, who returned the gesture a little annoyed.

"Oh it was so funny... I went to check up on you at 4 am and Sawyer here was entering the house. I wish you had been awake for that, it was like watching an entertaining case of walk of shame in our own house.. But it makes all the sense in the world, considering you were at Tric until that later, or early.."

Lydia had once again alerted and had been dying to pipe in already in the middle of Nathan's sentence, but having been brought up well she waited until her father finished. "What's a walk of shame?"

It was Nathan's turn to be embarrassed. Twice in the morning had his sweet and innocent daughter caught words and phrases from his speech that she maybe shouldn't have. "I think we have enough pancakes. Lydia go wake up Jamie!" He said sternly and as soon as the little girl was out all the three others burst to laughter they had been holding in.

He needed to get them to stop laughing and change the subject, so he decided to go back to the Peyton topic. It was the most interesting one after all. "But Peyton why did you come home at 4 anyway?"

They all stopped laughing and Peyton grinned. They had had so much fun. "Well Mia had a gig at Tric and challenged her manager Neil to a game of pool."

"The hot Neil?" Lucas couldn't help but ask and it came out at exactly same moment as Nathan's "Some game of pool" and Haley's question "You played pool until 4 am?"

Peyton laughed at them. "Yes, we had fun. It got intense and we made it best of 5. And wait, the hot Neil?" As soon as she said it she realized why Lucas new about him and called him that.

"Brooke!" they all answered at the same time.

Peyton and Haley moved on to talk about Neil's search for an NC office and Haley's realtor friend, who could maybe help, and what they guessed could be the best locations for him. But the men stayed quiet, in their own thoughts until the kids arrived for breakfast. There was something startling to them about the last 24 hours' of Neil hysteria. Who was this guy anyway? Just because the women seemed to love him, didn't mean he was good enough for Peyton. Maybe they were a little jealous, too. Lucas admitted to the feeling, but had to remind himself to be the better guy he had decided to be even through this all. He had a lot to think about and one thing to add to that list was, why Lindsey, his wife, never made him feel like he needed to be better for her. It was always Peyton, who had been out of his in a long time.

A/N: What did you think? I'll aim to have the next chapter up about mid-week next week. It'll most likely skip ahead a few days to the next Tuesday and Lucas and Lindsey may have a talk about their situation.. But there will be more than just them :) I look forward to hearing your thoughts in reviews..