A/N: I don't know exactly when the next chapter will be out. Hopefully a week. Maybe less, depending on whether I can get this next chapter done. Oh and for the record, LP won't be apart forever. Their paths will cross again, probably soon. I promise. Any other questions. Address them to me as a PM. I will answer them honestly no matter what you ask.

Hope y'all enjoy this chapter (and tonight's episode of OTH...oh the angst to come...). Remember reviews make me write so much faster.

Disclaimer: I don't own One Tree Hill.

Chapter Six: Past

The past truly haunts us. The mistakes we make days, weeks, even years ago are always nestled away in the back of our minds. Their words are like the Telltale heart, drumming against our conscience, driving us mad. Change the past. Learn from it. Embrace it. Whatever the case, it can't be ignored. Humans must face it.

Why is it we find it so much easier to remember the past than we do to plan our future? Why can't we deal with the latter without glancing over our shoulder to heed warning to the former? Is the present really so vast that it manages to completely separate past from present? Maybe we've just created this illusion that the past matters.

Maybe it helps to blanket our fears of living in the present; our fear of living with our mistakes.

Peyton Sawyer no longer loved Jake Jagieleski. It was as simple as that. And yet it wasn't simple at all. Jake was honestly the first guy she ever saw herself spending the rest of her life with. At the time, it had been a foolish proposal on her part. He had Jenny to worry about, but the fact that he said yes had given her this strange sense of hope. Before Jake, she felt as though she had never been enough for any guy, Lucas included. With Jake, she had been plenty and more, and the only thing he put before her was his daughter which was such an admirable quality it made Peyton want to fall in love with him all over again.

But she wasn't going to, and she knew it. Lucas had ruined her for any other man. The love she had experienced with Lucas had been so deep that it rocked her very core. When Jake left, Peyton had cried. She had felt sad and broken for days on end, and even when she did get over him, it had taken a good chunk of time.

When Lucas left her in that hotel room, Peyton fell apart. She had no possible way to describe how it felt. The words "sad," "hurt" and "lost" didn't even begin to sum up what she was feeling. It was an empty hole of swirling and confusing mixed emotions. And it was the fact that Lucas could keep breaking her over and over and she still couldn't let go that made it all the more worse.

Loving Lucas Scott was a different experience all together than loving Jake Jagieleski.

Besides, even if she didn't love Lucas, even if he was just another boyfriend, it had been over five years since she had seen Jake. People changed. Who knew where Jake was at in life? He could be an entirely different person now, and seeing as she had already broken his heart by proposing and the confessing her love for Lucas, she couldn't see him ever really letting her back in.

All she knew for sure was that he was interested in making a record. Their conversation on the phone had been short and filled with awkward pauses. It was nothing short of a miracle that she had gotten him to agree to make the record.

She had come to Jake first because as much as she needed to move on, she needed a piece of home with her. Jake reminded her of Tree Hill, but only of the times when she wasn't pining over Lucas. Jake was always good at keeping her mind off of her soul mate. And besides that, he was also an amazing singer with a voice like an angel.

And that brought her to where she was; standing outside Jake's apartment, trying to will herself to knock on the door.

"You know as amusing as this is. You've been standing outside my apartment for twenty minutes now, and I really need to get in there myself."

Peyton spun around on and came face to face with a smirking Jake, arms filled with paper grocery bags.

He had gotten taller, that was for sure. His hair was still the same, and Peyton was glad to see the dark circles under his eyes had all but disappeared, probably as Jenny grew older.

"Hey," Jake finally said, after what seemed like minutes of them just staring at each other.

"Hey to you too," Peyton smiled. An uneasy silence settled over them.

"This is awkward," Jake admitted, and Peyton laughed.

"Seriously. It was never this awkward."

"Well it's been five or so years since I've seen you," Jake said as he opened the door to his apartment. He gestured for Peyton to enter first and she slid inside. The place looked exactly like she remembered, and that memory of simpler times settled her worried heart.

"How's life been, Jake?" Peyton said as she watched him place his bags on the counter and begin sorting through them.

"Not bad," he shrugged, "Jenny just turned six. She starts first grade next month."

"Oh wow…"

"I know. What about you? What journey has life taken you on?"

"Me?" Peyton asked, thinking the best way to explain the rollercoaster her life had been on. "Well after high school, I worked in L.A. for awhile. It started as an internship and then I was the assistant to the assistant to the manager…you know…that type of thing. But in L.A. no one has any value on the music they put out there, so I got tired. I came home to Tree Hill, and with Brooke's help, I started my own label."

"I always knew you could do it," Jake smiled.

"Yeah you did," Peyton said, smiling back.

"What about you and Lucas? Did you two ever figure that whole thing out?" he asked, his attention diverted towards stacking macaroni and cheese boxes. Peyton's smile immediately turned into a frown. She was surprised Jake wanted to talk about that, and she didn't even know how to explain the relationship she and Lucas had had.

"We dated two years. But then the distance kind of killed us. He's married to someone else."

"Those things never stopped you two before," Jake smirked, peaking around the cabinet door. She saw the humor in his eyes.

"I don't know if I'm supposed to find that funny or if I should throw something at you," Peyton glared, playfully.

"I'm just saying…I expected you two to be riding off into the sunset right about now, not you coming to see me about a record deal."

"We weren't meant to be."

"Or maybe you were," Jake said, "And you both just screwed it up."

"Either way, Dr. Phil, I didn't come here for a lecture."

"You'll have to forgive me. Ever since I started on my degree in psychology, I've been prone to psychoanalyzing everything."

"Psychology? Really?" Peyton said, her eyes lighting up.

"Yeah."

"Tell me all about it."

"Well, there's nothing really to tell," Jake shrugged, "I finished up my GED three years ago. Now I go to the University of Savannah. Classes in the morning, work in the afternoon, and then I take care of Jenny nights."

"And Nikki?"

"Nikki's still involved. She's taking her back to school shopping."

"That's really good to hear, Jake. I'm glad you two have worked through all that."

"Uh yeah, about that," Jake said scratching the back of his head.

"What?"

"We're kind of…married."

"Excuse me?" Peyton asked, not understanding exactly what Jake was getting at. They were talking about Nikki. Psycho bitch Nikki. The woman who had had Jake arrested, stolen Jenny right from underneath Peyton's nose, and stirred up more than enough drama in Tree Hill. (Plus, she slept with Lucas. And Peyton wasn't over that above all.)

"I know it's hard to understand," Jake sighed, "Hell, she and I put each other through a lot of heart ache. At the end of the day though, it didn't matter. When you love someone, you take them for who they are, regardless of whether or not you should."

Peyton pondered his statement for a second. The words resonated so much more than they should have. "You know what Jake? I think that makes a heck of a lot more sense than I thought it would."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Lucas stared at his computer screen. He had written 254 pages, a complete novel. Those pages had all been written in a span of six months. It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize that his muse only visited when Peyton Sawyer was around. He sighed clicking the mouse absentmindedly. He didn't know whether he should delete it all or keep it.

It felt wrong to publish these pages. Here he was addressing why love didn't work. Why he and Peyton didn't last and how he found love with someone else. He was writing the logical and reasonable explanation for why he and Peyton walked away from something that he had claimed was meant to be.

They were too young. They had hurt each other too much. They weren't enough for each other. He had moved on. He was in love. They weren't the same people that fell in love before.

All lies, and he knew that, but they were necessary lies. How else could he possible explain why he gave up on them? Because, in his heart, he knew that he was the one who walked away. He was the one who ran into someone else's arms. He was the one who broke her heart, even though he was the one who promised he never would.

Call him an asshole, and he'd agree with you. He didn't think he would ever be worthy of Peyton Sawyer again, and part of him may have never been worthy in the first place.

Peyton Sawyer will move on. Peyton Sawyer will make the most of her life. She'll be successful. She'll get married and have a couple kids. She'll smile a lot more than she ever expected to. She'll be happy. I admit that part of me wishes that happiness could have been with me, but when you truly love someone, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. You just want to see that person smile.

Lucas stared at the paragraph, waiting for the words to transform themselves into how he really felt.

Peyton Sawyer will never move on. I broke her. I tore her heart out, just like she tore out mine, because I'm a childish person who couldn't handle the heartbreak she doled out to me. So instead I made her suffer. She will be successful because she's going to throw herself into her work. She probably won't get married though because why the hell should she trust men after what they've put her through. She'll try to convince herself that she'll be happy with Jake, but then she'll run for him, because she knows he deserves better. She won't have kids, even though she'd make the most amazing mother. She'll make do watching kids like Jenny and Jamie grow from the sidelines.

She won't be happy. No. She'll never truly smile again. And all the angels looking down from heaven will shed a tear because Peyton's real smile was so beautiful it could move mountains. It hurts to know I'm the reason the world won't get to see that smile again. I just want to see Peyton smile one more time. But I know it won't happen.

Lucas sighed, deleting the thoughts from his mind. The words on the page, the ones about moving on and Peyton being happy, were things that the world needed to hear. They needed to believe that you could recover from love. There were already enough stories about heart ache and tragedy. He didn't need to add another to the list.

He closed his eyes, and tried hard to picture Peyton's smile. But his thoughts were haunted by the last look she gave him. Her lips trembling as they turned down in a frown. Her eyes dripping with tears. It was as though all those happy memories he had of her had been suddenly masked by the few months of total agony he had put her through.

Even in his thoughts he would never see Peyton smile again.

She's tongue tied when it comes to where we are

She can't imagine life without her fundamental scars

She pretends that there's nothing left for her here.

But when she's faced with death it's everything she fears

She's the standard deviant, the contradiction of terms.

I'm always wrong when I think I've finally learned

When I show her the moon high over heaven

She sighs to me, 'Yeah, but it's the daylight I'm dreading.'

So tell me why…

She can coast, but never fly.

And tell me why…

She's the one you can't deny.

Why…

Is she a thousand feet above the sky, but can't get by.

Just can't get by.

The guitar stopped, and Jake looked up.

"That's about all I've got," he said, crunching his eyebrows, "And I think it sounded a lot better in my head."

"No, it was good," Peyton reassured him, as she opened up her notepad and began to scribble things down. "The lyrics were really good. Nothing too deep or metaphoric where people could get lost, but then it's not mindless crap either. For me, the message really hit home."

"Well it should," Jake said, "The song's about you."

Peyton's eyes shot up from her note taking. "Seriously?"

"Peyton, who else do you know who's a total contradiction of terms?"

Peyton opened her mouth to respond but found nothing. "How long ago did you write this?"

"This morning," Jake shrugged.

"Wow. You wrote all that in one morning."

"Song writing comes to me in spurts. You're kind of like a muse to me. You're so screwed up and all over the place that I just find motivation from your story-"

"Thanks," Peyton deadpanned, "I'm glad that you find my tragic life useful."

"Don't get mad at me," Jake argued, "Have you read Lucas's book? That thing was fueled on your issues."

"Very funny," Peyton hissed.

"If it helps, you make a really good muse."

"Well, at least I can do something right," Peyton sighed, "Although I don't really do anything besides screw up or get myself hurt, and other people find a way to profit off of it."

She quirked a smile and looked over at Jake, but his mind was elsewhere.

"Jake?"

"I just got an idea how to finish the song! Thanks Peyton."

"Jake, that's just not-"

She's cold from all the disappointment she's been given

And men of honor are making profit from her sinning-

"Okay just shut up now," Peyton yelled, over the guitar, though she couldn't contain the grin waiting to burst forth.

She tells me to shut the hell up

But it's okay 'cause I know she means it all in love

"I'm going back to the apartment," Peyton giggled as she heard the guitar continue going.

Pretty lady's still looking at me like I'm absurd

And oh my, I think she just flipped me the bird.

Just like Lucas Scott and his book were, Jake Jagieleski and his guitar were going to be the death of Peyton Sawyer's sanity.

Yeah I wrote the lyrics. And they seem kind of corny looking back...but hell, I tried. lol.