A/N: Well, hello there. Been a long time hasn't it? No need to worry though I'm back and terribly inspired. review!
I'd like to give on giant thank you to Susan8876. She sent me a very touching message and actually inspired me to write this next chapter as well as to edit and re-wrtie the rest in my spare time! so thanks Susan8876, this chapter is for you.
Because You Live
Chapter 6
People Always Leave
Peyton staggered backwards. She hit the bed and her knees folded on contact falling into the now to soft mattress. Lucas backed away too, backed from the room wringing his shaking hands. He shouldn't have come. No, this had not been a good idea. He was just tired of the ache that settled over his chest. It was always there, no matter what he did. He couldn't remember a time when it wasn't around though he knew that he had been happy once. He had laughed and was a carefree teenager with nothing more on his mind than the nest test in school. He remembered those times as if it were a dream. Someone forgot to press play on his happily ever after. This life here was completely different.
Peyton's hazel eyes were wide, not staring at him and filled to the brim with salty tears. She silently went over every detail in her head, then again to make sure she didn't miss a single thing. The call, the crash, the police report, the hospital, and the body. Her best friend lying on a white table, long brown hair nea t and styled and lips still red with her favorite lipstick. But there was something absent. It looked exactly like Brooke. So much that it physically hurt her eyes. It looked like Brooke but Brooke was nowhere to be found. Her brown eyes weren't sparkling with devious plans, they were closed forever. Her lips weren't curved into that heartbreaking smile and deep dimples. It looked exactly like Brooke and nothing like her at all, at the same time. The body was nothing without the girl inside of it.
Peyton saw the bruise and tiny cut behind Brooke's ear herself. She was in the car, alone. She didn't see a stop sign hidden by a tree. She went into the intersection. A car nipped her back bumper. She spun out, went over the curb and into a telephone pole. All of it was an accident. Peyton blinked back to reality, her room blurred at the edges from the water built up in her eyes. "I don't understand." Her voice cut though the silence too loud and she winced.
Lucas was out the doorway, his face down and cast in shadow.
It was the first time Peyton really saw him. She was so overcome with emotion when she first saw him that she just say her Lucas. But he was nowhere to be found. Sure, Lucas had always been what some would say broody. He was sensitive, quiet, kind, and downright irresistible. The young man standing before her looked nothing like the Lucas Scott. Nothing at all. Of all the things Lucas was he had never just simply given up and that was exactly what the man was who stood from before her. Defeated. Defeated and to worn down to fight anymore. "Lucas?" she whispered when he didn't respond. The name felt weird on her tongue.
She hadn't said it. She hadn't said his name in so long. She could remember the exact day down to the very minute. It was 1:23 on a Wednesday, a year and 6 days since Brooke's death and Lucas's disappearance. It was the day of her last final of her freshman year of college. Her roommate along with all of her stuff was gone two days ago when she had finished her own finals. Now the room was half empty and Peyton was alone lying on her lofted bed staring up at the stains on the ceiling, her textbook of the histo ry of American art open on her lap.
She was on the second paragraph on the third page of the chapter about the early 1900s when it her. It was 1:23 on a Wednesday when she realized that Lucas wasn't coming back. That was the day her book fell to the floor and she cried this time, not for Brooke but for Lucas. She had lost her best friend. Both of them. And she didn't realize until right then that she had two best friends.
People always leave.
She received an incomplete for the class because she never showed up to take the final.
"Tell me, I don't understand." Her voice was stronger. She felt the pain and anger rise over boiling onto every one of her senses. She said the words but at that moment she didn't think she could bear to have him speak. She would lose it. Her carefully construed mask would shatter. It had grown considerably weaker in his absence and she couldn't old it on for much longer. Who was this guy in front of her. He must have stolen Lucas's face. "You came here." She quivered. "You came here so talk. I've been here all along. I've been here all along Lucas! You left!" She wished he was closer so she could shove him backwards by the chest. "Look at me!" The anger was white and hot burning her inside. She was so furious. He left her. He left her all alone when he knew. He'd seen the drawing, commented on it even and still he did the worst thing in Peyton's eyes. He left. People always leave.
When he looked up all the anger built up was washed away when she saw those blue eyes full of tears, spilling over and leaking down his cheeks. He was crying. "I'm sorry Peyton." He choked and Peyton's heart, never quite whole but over the last few years had been healing around the scars nearly broke again. In her head she could hear the sharp break of it cracking like glass. "So sorry." His eyes tore into hers and in one blink Peyton found salty water forcing their way into the corners of hers. "But I had to-" His fists were clenched to his side, knuckles white.
Peyton found herself moving forward though Lucas was rooted to his spot. Peyton moved but she didn't remember telling her feet to do so. She reached with shaking hands taking his clenched hands pulling them up away from his side. It was cold. Peyton rubbed her hands over his the pension slipping and the fists slacking. "Lucas," Peyton quivered. He looked over his shoulder to the little girl sleeping soundly on the couch before letting Peyton pull him though the invisible barrier of the doorway pulling the door shut behind him.