A/N - Bet you all thought I'd forgotten about this story! Truth be told, college can keep a girl busy but I'm on break and determined to finish this one. Hope this chapter makes up for the unforgivably long wait.


He's not surprised when he wakes up alone in his bed. Part of him questioned whether or not he'd even seen her last night but the boxes sitting on the floor by his bed prove that she had in fact slipped into his room and changed everything yet again.

He scans the room for a note, any kind of message that meant she didn't completely regret everything that happened last night. He tears his old room apart but cannot find anything. Much like the last time she crept into his room at an ungodly hour and took off without a word, she'd disappeared. At least last time she'd left a note, even if it did only say two words.

But that was a long time ago.

He finally gives up his search and heads into the next room to find Brooke sitting at his kitchen table, coffee cup in one hand and a newspaper in the other. She doesn't so much as glance at him when he walks in but that doesn't bother him as he is focused on something else entirely. He finds himself noticing just how she looks so perfectly in place. The sunshine streaming through the window is hitting her perfectly while her brow furrows as she reads. She takes a sip of her coffee without once looking away from the page and it is all so ordinary and mundane, but so comforting. He cannot explain why this particular sight has such an effect on him. He sits down in front of her and realizes that it is the feeling of normality that is extraordinary, that this all feels so normal to him, even after all this time, that it makes sense. She looks like she belongs, something she'd struggled with for as long as he'd known her.

"Good morning." She says, putting the paper down.

"Good morning." He replies, unable to stop a smile from finding its way onto his face.

"You look a little awestruck, Lucas." She says, raising the mug to her lips again, her eyes now trained on him fully.

He shrugs. "I guess I kind of am. You didn't disappear."

She bites down on her bottom lip and puts the mug down. "It wouldn't have been fair to disappear. And you and me Luke, well, life has not been very fair to us. So I'm trying to play fair now."


Lucas didn't particularly enjoy his senior year of high school. Most of the year felt like an out of body experience, like he'd watched it all happen from the sidelines. This was largely due to the overwhelming numbness that took over the day Brooke Davis told him she'd stopped missing him because she'd felt like he'd long ago stopped missing her. She said she loved him and she was so, so, so sorry but that if love was all you needed so many people who want to be together would be together.

Her eyes had been shining with tears ready to spill over. Her voice, her very tone, was cloaked in finality, a lilting stream of kind yet heavy words, tumbling out one after the other. Yet despite this finality that she spoke with, her eyes betrayed her completely. She was begging him to stop her, knowing that it was highly likely he would not be able to. But it was clear what she'd wanted in that moment.

She'd wanted him to at least try.

And as the pain in her eyes grew so did the quietness of her voice until she was speaking barely above a whisper. But with each word he became more and more numb. Maybe he'd known what was coming, maybe this was a way that he was protecting himself from the pain he should have been feeling. But the numbness did not vanish after she'd walked out the door.

He'd like to think that if he hadn't detached himself from the situation the second he'd realized she was breaking up with him he would have fought to keep her. But there was no way of going back. So he'd found out about Haley's pregnancy from the sidelines, won the state championships from the sidelines, graduated from the sidelines.

It's not as if Lucas was not happy on these special days. It's not as if he didn't feel some sort of pleasure. But it was tainted. He could never fully connect to it, could not feel it in its fullest capacity and this trouble to connect is what left him feeling numb. Brooke was golden, Brooke was what was good, Brooke was who held him when Keith had died and had been the only one to look at him with hope, not with pity. Brooke was the one with the quiet, throaty laugh and the raspy voice that stayed in his ear long after she'd stopped talking. Brooke was the one with so much light in her eyes and so fierce in the way she loved that disappointing her was devastating.

He loved her sundresses. He loved the way she danced. He loved the way she left his books dog-eared instead of using the bookmarks he'd asked her to use a thousand times before. He loved that she didn't care when he told her she made her coffee too bitter for someone so sweet. He even loved when she wrinkled her nose at him calling her sweet, because he'd always see her that way even if she'd never see herself that way. He loved the way she'd cheer for him while he played at the Rivercourt because, unlike a real game, these times it was her job to cheer just for him. He loved the way she laughed and he loved the way she cried and even more than both he loved the way she blushed. He loved the sound of his name on her tongue, loved the way hers seemed to fit in between his lips like no other name.

He had loved her. But he'd allowed himself to learn how to be without her. He'd taught himself to experience important things without her, learned that there was such a thing as Lucas Scott without Brooke Davis. At the ripe age of twenty-two, a little over four years since she'd turned her back on him, he realizes that he's not so sure he wants to be Lucas Scott without Brooke Davis anymore.


They sit side by side in silence, neither one having spoken on the walk over or in the fifteen minutes they've sitting on the front steps of their old high school. It's pretty early for a Saturday morning, but Lucas knows they are both fully awake and fully alert.

"Luke," Brooke starts her sentence as if she has more to say but fades out after saying his name. He turns to look at her and smiles. He's pleased when she smiles back, her dimples displaying beautifully.

"I feel like there's this big thing we have to talk about, like there's something hanging over our heads. But I kinda just like sitting here with you." He shakes his head, feeling like a kid avoiding confrontation. "Remember when we used to sit here during lunch? You'd find me before fourth period and you wouldn't even have to say anything. I'd already know we'd be eating out here."

She nods her head, her smile returning. "I would have a rough day and not want to see anyone except you." She pauses, the smile now gone.

"What?"

"I remember the first day I didn't go find you before fourth period. I just went by myself. It was a Wednesday and it had been exactly five days since you'd gotten back from your road trip with your mom after Keith had died and two days since Nathan and Haley's wedding. I'd gotten used to sitting out there alone while you were gone, and I'd just gotten into that huge fight with Peyton." Her eyelids close slowly, heavily. "I'd wanted to be alone because I was already feeling alone. But I'd also wanted to believe that you'd know to come out here and look for me. But you didn't that day. You didn't on Thursday and you didn't on Friday. So on Saturday, I broke up with you."

"Because I didn't look for you?" he raises an eyebrow, staying cool even though the mere memory of that day still stings, if only a little. She opens her eyes and turns to look at him and he is embarrassed when he sees that she looks disappointed in him.

"No, Lucas. Because you hadn't spent time with me and really been there in so long. And that hour, that one hour out of the twenty-four that you have in your day used to be reserved for me. And when I stopped reminding you, you stopped coming. You stopped missing me, Luke." Her voice breaks on his name.

These words have an awful effect on him. He feels as if the wind is knocked out of him and all of a sudden it looks as if he is staring at a ghost of a seventeen year-old girl about to break up with him. He must not have been good at hiding how much her words hurt him because her expression changes from disappointed to apologetic.

"A lot of it was about Peyton, yeah. But not all of it, not the part that hurt the most." She adds. He can't make himself say anything in response which just makes him angry because for a successful, published author he sure loses the ability to form words at the worst possible times.

"It was never about Peyton for me."

"Don't lie to me, Lucas. Don't ever lie to me."

He shakes his head. "It stopped being about Peyton when I came back to Tree Hill after moving to Charleston, all the way back in eleventh grade, Brooke."

She doesn't fight him on it a second time but also doesn't say anything either.


He can't say he's surprised when he runs into Peyton Sawyer and Jake Jagelski in the supermarket. He sees them before they see him so he has a moment to decide whether or not to head over to them. They are at the other end of the aisle; Jake is leaning against a shopping cart while Peyton is reading the label on the cereal box on the shelf in front of her. After a second she picks it up off the shelf.

As he starts to walk over to them, Jake happens to look over in his direction. "Lucas, hey!"

Peyton drops the box.

"Hey man, good to see you again. Twice in the same month, haven't done that since high school." Lucas says giving his old friend a hug. He leans down and picks up the cereal box, then puts it in their cart. "Hey Peyt."

She's grinning, which is unlike the timid smile she's reserved for him since the end of high school. Her arms wrap tightly and comfortably around his torso but she is also quick to end the hug.

"Sorry I missed your welcome back party, I'd gotten a call about a meeting I couldn't afford to miss." Her eyes dart to Jake for a moment and Lucas understands immediately.

"Don't even worry about it." He says. She mouths 'thank you', glancing at Jake for another second. Lucas is under the impression that she does not yet fully believe Jake is standing next to her, as if she doesn't get in all the looks she can possibly get she'll have missed out when he disappears.

They had a lot in common, he and Peyton. Disappearing acts seemed to always come in the form of the ones they loved most. They talk about Jenny, who is with her grandparents in Tree Hill, they talk about his book and the tour.

"I read it twice." Peyton quips.

"You flatter me." He says sheepishly, albeit a little truthfully.

Her eyes light up like she has a secret that she's not telling. Jake seems to notice too because he laughs and says, "She liked all the parts about herself."

Peyton rolls her eyes but also laughs. Her expression then quickly turns serious. "It was quite the love story." The corners of her mouth twitch, fighting back a smile. "Brooke's the only one who didn't see that she's the star."

And there it was, the elephant in the room. Peyton had read his book and understood what all of their friends seemed to pick up on. She'd also talked to Brooke about it, which surprisingly did not make him uneasy.

"I think she really wanted it to be me." Says Peyton, her expression softening into a more sad, apologetic frown. Jake raises an eyebrow but does not say anything.

"Why would she want that?" asks Lucas.

Peyton shrugs, as if to say she wishes she had a better answer for him. "Because then maybe she wouldn't wonder about you so much."


"I am sick of feeling guilty and stupid for still caring about this. I keep telling myself it's gotta look idiotic that I wrote an entire book about my high school experience and about these people that I loved then, and these girls I was crazy about who I'd hurt so badly. I keep thinking that it's pathetic to still be wondering 'what if' about a high school relationship when so much has changed since we were eighteen. But just because it was in high school doesn't mean it wasn't the most real and honest thing I've ever experienced." He pauses to take a deep breath because he'd said all of that a lot more quickly then he'd even thought he was capable of doing.

She stands in silence, her words caught in her throat. It had been two weeks since their talk on the steps of Tree Hill High. He'd ran to her place, practically banged on her front door until she answered and didn't so much as let her invite him in before dumping all of that on her.

"Lucas, we're so young. And back then, we—we were kids. We didn't know anything—"

"Look me in the eyes right now and tell me that we didn't know we loved each other. I dare you to tell me that it doesn't still hurt, that it doesn't still feel like a fresh wound on your worst days. Tell me that just because we were sixteen and seventeen and eighteen all of it didn't feel heavy and life-changing. Tell me I was just a high school boyfriend. Say it, say it and mean it and I promise I'll do my best to try and believe you and to understand how you could possibly feel that way." He doesn't mean to sound angry but he is so tired of trivializing their relationship.

She looks at him for what feels like forever and he wishes he could hear her thoughts for what must be the thousandth time since he'd first met her. She looks so small to him, so tiny, as if she's shrinking back in fear. She would not look like that if it hadn't mattered, if it didn't still matter. The look in her eyes changes and he can sense that she's made some sort of decision.

She walks over and closes the gap between their bodies. For the first time in four years, Brooke Davis and Lucas Scott share a kiss. It is quick and innocent, and very sweet. It feels more like a question than a kiss. She pulls back slightly to gauge his reaction. He places one hand on the small of her back and the other on the back of her neck. This time it is not so quick and not so innocent.

And it feels wonderful.