Story for the delay. I'm actually kind of wrote myself into a wall. I'm still not sure what I'm planning to do with Dan's return yet. With all that is happening on the show I'm annoyed with my own timing. We need something upbeat and leyton love filled, ya know? I wrote Lucas and Peyton into depressionville.
:-( Sorry. The hundredth episode was pretty good. Lucas confuses the crap out of me. How does a person live in so much denial for so long? I just don't get him. It sucks that it looks like we won't be getting any leyton for awhile, because Lucas needs to mourn Lindsey or whatever he has to do to pull his head out of his own ass. I'm also worried about where Brooke's storyline is going and its involvement with Lucas. If it is what I think it is, Brooke is a selfish dumb bitch and Mark is very very mean if he lets it happen.
Lucas walked into his and Peyton's bedroom with Anna and set her down on her feet. She made a beeline for the bed and Lucas scooped her up just in time. They hadn't changed the sheets yet and he wasn't about to let Anna roll around in them.
He sat down at the window seat and set his daughter in his lap. How to start? Lucas had known one day Anna would ask who his biological father was, but he figured that would come when she could figure out how to say the word biological and know its meaning. Anna had asked him where his daddy was once and he had replied that "Uncle Keith was up in Heaven with Grandma Anna and Ellie." The answer had satisfied her. He just hoped this wouldn't confuse her too much.
"You din make your bed, Daddy," Anna admonished, wagging her finger at him. Lucas smiled.
"It's been a busy morning. Honey, you know how you asked me once where my Daddy was and I said Uncle Keith was in Heaven?"
"Yep. He's Lily's Daddy too."
"Yeah, well when I said that I wasn't telling you the whole truth."
Anna's little mouth dropped open in shock at the prospect of her father not telling her everything having been under the misguided impression that Lucas told her everything.
"Daddy, why? You ask me to tell you everything," Anna pouted.
"You're right, baby girl. It's not fair of me to ask you to be honest with me when I'm not honest with you. But you have to understand sweetheart that a Mommy and Daddy's job before anything else is to protect their children. I was trying to protect you."
"From what Daddy?"
"Baby, Keith is Lily's Daddy just like I'm your Daddy, but he wasn't really mine. Anna that man at the park was….my father."
"That scary man is your real Daddy?"
Lucas winced. "Yeah. See, when I was growing up, I didn't have my real daddy. When I was in Grandma Karen's tummy my father left us and I don't really understand why. But I had Keith and he was kind of like my dad."
"Where did your real daddy go? Did he get lost?"
"Kind of. You know how Uncle Nathan is my brother? Well he and I share a father. That man at the park is Uncle Nathan's father too. But we didn't grow up together the way you and William get to grow up together."
"Did Uncold Nat'an not have his daddy neither?"
"No, Nathan grew up with him."
"Then why didn't your daddy come see you?"
Lucas was quiet for a moment, wondering how much of this she would be able to wrap her mind around. She was a smart little girl and she had understood it all up to this point.
"He…Dan my father's name is Dan. Dan is not a nice man. He hurt a lot of people, Anna."
"Mommy too?"
Lucas thought back to the night in the auditorium when Dan had confronted him about the fire. He had made some hateful comment about Peyton not having a family and pushed her away. It was the first time Lucas's fist connected with his father's face.
"Yeah mommy too."
"But Daddies aren't sposed to be scary or hurt people or leave their kids! You'd never leave me would you Daddy?"
"Oh baby doll Daddy would never leave you. Not on purpose. Dan wasn't a daddy to me like I'm a daddy to you and Will or the way Uncle Nathan is a daddy to Jamie and Amalia. Some Daddies and even some mommies don't do what they should when it comes to their children."
"Didn't he love you like you love me?"
Lucas felt his eyes burn and blinked quickly. "I don't know if he loved me Anna. I think he is only capable of loving himself. Sometimes, I think he loved us in his own way. But you can never compare whatever love he may or may not feel for me with the love I feel for you. Because I love you so, so much, Anna. And nothing in this world would have kept me from being your daddy. I would never leave the way Dan did or hurt you in any way."
Anna stared at him for a long moment. She had a way of reading her father as well as her mother and right now her Daddy looked very sad.
"Daddy?"
"Yes, baby?"
"Were you sad not havin a daddy? I'd be sad if I din have you an mommy." Anna finished this statement with a slight pout and Lucas felt tears sting his eyes once again as he stared down at his daughter. His beautiful little girl.
"Sometimes," he replied softly. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled wistfully. "But I had Keith."
"Daddy?"
"Yeah baby?"
"I love you so so much too. I love you this much!" She extended her arms as wide as they would go and grinned at him. Lucas wrapped her little body up tight in his arms and rocked her back and forth. He couldn't imagine his life without his children in it, especially at moments like these.
"Me too," he whispered through a smile.
"So Lucas is upstairs talking to Anna about Dan," Peyton sighed, pacing back and forth in the kitchen while Brooke sat at the kitchen table, picking at one of the muffins she'd bought.
"Wow," Brooke gasped. "I can't believe the parole board screwed up so bad. Can't you sue them for something like this?"
"What? I don't know. Maybe-Look, the point is I'm worried about what this is going to do to Lucas and Anna is already freaked out and God poor Lily and Karen-My God-"
"Sawyer. Sawyer! Peyton!" Brooke exclaimed, through Peyton's rambling. "Breathe honey. It's going to be okay. If there's one thing the Scotts know how to do it's get through a crisis."
"I'm glad William is too young to know what's going on. He's slept through most of this," Peyton sighed as she finally came to a stop.
"Is Dan the reason you're playing hooky from work today or what?"
Peyton raised an eyebrow and glanced at the "I'm sorry muffins." She shook off the fact that it seemed Brooke thought she wouldn't be home when she dropped by that morning. She also ignored the fact that blueberry muffins were Lucas's favorite.
"No," she said finally taking her eyes off the muffins and resting them on a friend she wasn't sure she trusted again. "Lucas and I were up most of the night so we slept in."
Brooke swallowed her muffin thickly and narrowed her eyebrows slightly, before plastering a smirk on her face. "The dress did its magic, huh?"
"What are you doing here Brooke?"
"I came to apologize for last night Peyton."
"Apologize to me? Or to Lucas?"
"Peyton that's not fair,"
"No Brooke what isn't fair is making your best friend feel like a whore for being married to the love of her life. What isn't fair is making your best friend feel like she doesn't deserve the life she has."
"I know," Brooke said quietly and on some level she did feel like a shit for making Peyton feel bad. "What I said last night was out of line. I was drunk, I mean you know how I get when I'm drunk-"
"You get loose, Brooke," Peyton said, crossing her arms in front of her. "Loose enough to say what's really on your mind."
"Peyton," Brooke sighed. "I'm not going to lie and say I'm not jealous of what you and Lucas have together. I want everything you have now, Peyton. I may be a multi-million dollar name but, you have the perfect guy and the perfect children living in the perfect house. You are living the dream, Peyton. I lost my dream and I lost Chase. That's why I'm moving back home."
Peyton wanted to ask her if Chase wasn't her dream, but kept her mouth shut, once again wanting to give Brooke the benefit of the doubt.
"You're moving back home?"
"Yeah, I mean you got what you want and I figure it's my turn."
"Your life not going the way you wanted it to has nothing to do with me, Brooke," she said quietly. "I want to be here for you but you are making it really hard. Especially when you say things to me like you did last night."
Brooke pursed her lips. "I'm sorry Peyton."
"I mean, you go on and on about all the plans that you and Lucas had and your four children and Rocket Jr, but you never once asked me about Lucas and my wedding or when I was pregnant with Anna or William. You haven't asked me about my life and my family and all the really important things that a best friend should want to know about if they missed it. And I really wanted you there, Brooke. I needed you there."
"So this is my fault?"
"Ugh-no," Peyton growled escaping into the family room. Brooke shot up and followed her, abandoning her muffin on the table.
"Peyton I would have been at that wedding I would have been there when you kids were born, but you didn't exactly reach out to me, either, you know?"
"God," Peyton murmured, sinking down to the couch. She had hoped they would never have to rehash all of this. She had hoped the look of jealousy on Brooke's face had been all in her head. "Do we have to talk about what happened in LA Brooke?"
"I thought you had too much to live for in the present to live in the past?"
Peyton stared at her silently for a long moment and then got up. "You know what I am not going to do this right now with you. There is way too much going on and I don't have the time or the energy to get into it with you if you aren't going to take it seriously. I think you should leave."
"You're kicking me out because I didn't ask you for all the cutesy details of the wedding you didn't even call me about?"
"Would you have come?" Peyton challenged.
"Considering the timing and the fact that we were barely speaking to each other, I gotta say no, but you didn't even have the courtesy to call and ask for my blessing," Brooke said. She'd said it only slightly in jest, but they both knew that she had meant it. Peyton clenched her teeth and turned her head towards Brooke.
Careful not to start screaming, Peyton ground through her teeth, "We didn't need your blessing, Brooke."
"God! I will not apologize to you again! Not for the past and NOT for what I have with my husband. I'm sorry your life didn't turn out the way you wanted it to, but that gives you no right to come back and try to fuck up mine!"
"Peyton! How the hell is my being hear fucking up your life?"
"No! I am tired of you acting as though he is a thing you loaned me out of the goodness of your heart and now you want back. He never belonged to you Brooke and he certainly doesn't belong to you now."
"Way to rub your perfect fucking life in my face Peyton while I have nothing, that's fabulous. You don't even care that I'm moving home," Brooke cried. "Funny, it's usually you whining about everything you've lost."
Suddenly a stern voice from the doorway rang out. "Brooke!"
Brooke turned in shock and mortification to find Lucas standing in the doorway with Anna beside him, a look of barely contained anger on his face. His next two words brooked no argument and were laced with fury that made Brooke want to die.
"Get out."
Review please.