A/N: So this is not my favourite chapter ever in terms of the present-day stuff…things are dragging along a bit right now and

A/N: So this is not my favourite chapter ever in terms of the present-day stuff…things are dragging along a bit right now and I'd really like them to move more, but I felt that the flashbacks (in italics) were necessary, and I'm happy with those. Your response to this story has been amazing – over 550 reviews, wow. I'm honoured, seriously.

I realize that a lot of you are getting impatient with the way the Jenny- Peyton conflict and withholding of info seems to be unending; I feel that way, too, but I have the chapter in which they fully reconcile written already, and it doesn't fit in until further along in the story line. Sorry about that, but your investment in this story really has been awesome…so awesome that I'm toying with the idea of a sequel. I actually enjoy writing the sequel more because…well, because there's more L/P. ;) I know a lot of you are confused about how I'm going to get them together…but I have a plan. There's always been a plan. Read and review, please.

Andante: Italin, it means "walking", music set at a slow and steady, almost reflective, pace

Peyton and Jenny sat down on opposite sides of the table, having a hesitant staring contest over their cereal. Neither of them had actually eaten yet that day, despite Haley's best efforts to get some food into both of them.

Jenny could feel her mother's contemplative gaze on her. She arched an eyebrow, waiting for Peyton to speak.

Peyton's smile was soft. "Talk to me," she said in a voice just above a whisper.

Jenny sighed heavily as she chewed her Cheerios. After she swallowed, she said, for what felt like the infinite time, "How about you talk to me?"

Peyton was no longer eating. "You really want to do this." It was a question, a statement, and almost an agreement.

"I really do," Jenny agreed, setting her spoon down.

"Okay. Alright. I'll tell you everything."

Jenny's eyes widened. "Everything?"

"Okay, it's not some sort of scandal, Jen. And no, not everything. I don't have to share my entire history with you. But I'll tell you the things…that you need to know. I'll try to answer your questions."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Okay." There was a pause. "Go," Jenny added, in case Peyton was waiting for some kind of instruction.

Her mother shook her head, exasperated. "You are such a brat, you know that?"

Jenny shrugged, feigning modesty. "I try. Mom…come on."

"Alright, babe, I guess it all started when I was dating Nathan, and then Lucas joined the basketball team…"


Peyton stood on the porch, ringing her hands. She wondered if he wasn't at home – at work or with Jenny or somewhere else. She probably should have called first. She probably should have asked if this was okay, just rushing back here after the emotion-packed night they'd shared, sex and crying and talking and yelling.

To her relief, the door swung open, revealing the surprised face of the boy she'd proposed to forty-eight hours ago. "Peyton," he said.

Her reply was nothing more than, "Hi." She decided to give him a moment to assess it all, to let his eyes wander to her beloved car, packed full of her most precious belongings…and her pillow. That was the last thing she'd taken out of her room. She'd wandered down the walkway leading away from her house clutching the pillow like a kid going away to summer camp. But this wasn't a one-month deal, in which she'd go away, miss home, learn to love her new experience, and head back to the safety and familiarity of what she'd always known. This was permanent.

This was going to her place in the world for the rest of her life. Already, it felt like safety and home, where Jake loved her and Jenny cooed sweetly at her and there was no Brooke and no Lucas and no stupid love triangle drama. This was Peyton and the boy she was going to love from hereon in, nothing more.

"You're back," he finally said after taking in the sight of all her things, before he began drinking in her personal appearance. Her makeup was a little smudged from the crying she'd done on the drive, the one wave of sadness for the town she'd grown up in and the people she'd loved, but other than that she looked pretty damn good. She was still wearing her bridesmaids dress, and her hair was still twisted upward prettily, with only a few stray hairs falling down into her face.

"Jake, I love you," she blurted out, needing to say it all, to get it out there in the open, to know if he would want this too. "I really do. I told Lucas I loved him, yeah, but it was only because he saved my life – it's so much different than the way I love you, and I love you so much. I've missed you so much. For these past hours that I've been away from you, I've missed you so much. Jenny, and the art school, and all the ghosts, the history, and your kickass crib," she added playfully, nodding to his rundown home, "those are all great reasons to marry you, but really I asked you because I love you. You're my home. This is where I'm supposed to be, I know it, I do."

"You mean that." It was both a statement and a question.

"Every word," she whispered back. "Except for the stuff about your house…we're gonna have to move once we tie the knot," she joked before her lips slipped into a shy smile. "If you'll have me."

He shook his head, fighting a smile. "Peyton…of course I will. I love you so much. But I want you to have come back here on your own. For you and what is right for us, not just because you're scared or because you want what you can't have. Not just because you feel safer here, safer with me. Because you've looked into your heart and you found me."

She nodded, grinning shyly. She knew that. She didn't say a word, letting him fill in the blanks for himself. She wasn't going to contradict him, so he could only take it to mean one thing.

"Peyton…" he breathed, his voice possessing the same sexy huskiness it had on the first night that they'd ever kissed as a couple, standing in her room while Jenny cried, and without even realizing that she'd flung herself into his arms, she was there, and they were kissing, and he was lifting her up off the ground.

"Let's get married right now," he muttered against her lips, and she couldn't stop smiling.

"Okay," she said gamely, her breathing shallow with anticipation. "Let's go, right now. Jenny should be there, can we pick her up?"

"I think I can swing that," he agreed, the same unstoppable smile lighting up his face.

"God, I love you," she said breathily, pressing her lips to his again and cupping his face. He backed her into his bedroom just like he had two nights before, and they both laughed breathlessly as they fell to the bed.

Her eyes fluttered shut as Jake pressed kisses right above the neckline of her dress, and his hand sought out the zipper at her back. "Maybe the wedding can wait," he muttered.

Peyton giggled, tugging at his shirt. "Maybe just an hour."


In the afternoon, Haley walked her twins over to the home of the other Scots, and used her emergency-situations-only key to let all three of them in. She wasn't going to wait to be invited in, not today. Normally she walked in without preamble, but when she'd discovered that the door was locked, she didn't hesitate for a moment to pull out her key. She didn't have the patience for it. "Lucas Eugene Scott!" she yelled, in a tone of voice that made her little boys cringe.

"Uh-oh," Lucas said, entering the front hall and grinning at his nephews. "She's using the sca-a-a-ry voice," he commented menacingly, diving at them with hands ready to tickle.

Have gave her a serious looks over their heads, which he caught, and he instantly straightened up. "Hey, you guys, Mira's in the dining room with board games, cookies, and apple juice. You interested?"

They nodded eagerly.

"Okay, off you go," Lucas laughed.

"Not too many cookies, you two!" Haley called as they hurried off.

Lucas studied her. "What's going on, Haley Bob?"

Haley threw down her purse and sweater onto a nearby chair. "Okay, firstly: I can pull out your middle name whenever I want because it is in your best interest; only my own mother gets to call me Haley Bob. And secondly, Lucas, I know."

"You know…"

"I know," she said pointedly, staring him down.

"Hales, you've gotta give me more than that."

"You and Peyton," she told him bluntly. "Yesterday. Eight years ago."

Lucas' jaw dropped. "O-oh," he stuttered.

"Yeah. Oh." She paused. "Should we sit?"

"Why not?" he asked quietly, allowing her to enter into the living room before he did.

Haley paced in and sat down, looking up at her best friend with an appeal in her eyes. He seemed afraid to sit down with her. "Lucas, what are you doing?" she breathed worriedly.

He sighed and flopped down on the couch next to her. "I don't know. I'm sorry."

"Oh, Luke. I am not the person who deserves any apologies from you here."

"I know," he groaned.

"You need to make some decisions. You really do," she told him seriously.

He gaped at her. "I am married to Brooke."

Haley rolled her eyes. "I'm aware of that, thank you. And Lucas, I…I want that to be your dream, you perfect world, you happily ever after." She sighed, licking her lips nervously. "But is it?"

"You cannot possibly be condoning what I'm doing. What I've done. Any of it," he said disbelievingly. "Haley, you're like the moral compass of…everything, and this isn't exactly morally correct."

"I'm not condoning anything," Haley quickly replied. "I'm really not. Lucas, I just wish everybody could…be happy. Are you happy?"

"I…I don't…I…I don't know," he finally confessed softly.

"I want you to be happy," she said adamantly, leaving no room for contradiction. "Luke, I don't agree with what's going on with you and Peyton now, and I definitely don't think it was fair of you to show up in L.A. and bombard her with what could have been, but I can't…I can't be mad at you, Lucas. You're my best friends, and…the heart wants what it wants. My heart wants for yours to be happy. What's it going to take for that to happen?"

He shook his head, looking bewildered. "I love Brooke."

"I know you do," she said sympathetically. "And if we'd been having the conversation yesterday, I'd tell you that you have a wife and a daughter, end of story. But…"

"But?" he prompted eagerly.

"But Peyton is still in love with you," Haley sighed. "She'd never admit it, but she is, even after all these years, and if you're still in love with her, too…then it's truly meant to be."

The gleam of hope in his blue eyes was gone just as quickly as it had appeared. "But what about Brooke?" he asked quietly, shamefully.

Haley smiled gently. She'd spent enough time being judgmental and accusatory. From now on, she was going to be helpful. That was, after all, what she tended to excel at. "If it's still Lucas and Peyton, tragic and epic love…then it will always be. If you are…I don't know, if you're destined, or…whatever, then…there's some rich, handsome hunk out there meant for Brooke."

"It's not…as simple as that."

"I know," she agreed comfortingly, and said no more for now. Sometimes helping meant silence.


"Nathan? Honey, you ready to go?" Haley called hesitantly into the perfect silence of the room at the back of the gothic cathedral. She didn't want to ruin the peaceful atmosphere.

Her husband had been staring out the window, into the garden behind the church. He spun around and his eyes widened. "Hales…you look…wow."

She smiled, walking over to him and wrapping her arms around his waist, stepping into a hug before she tilted her chin up for a kiss. "Yeah, well, you get the good dresses when the bride's a designer."

Nathan smirked appreciatively, but the smile quickly dropped from his lips.

"Hey," Haley said softly, forgetting that they were necessary parts of the wedding, and that they were already running late. "What's wrong? Talk to me."

"Nothing," he shrugged, smiling down at her again. "Definitely nothing I should be thinking about when my wife looks as hot as she does right now."

She grinned, giving him his reward in the form of a kiss before leaning away and prodding, "Nathan, come on. Just tell me."

"I was…thinking about Peyton. Just wondering how she is. It's been so long. I miss her."

"Yeah…Brooke tried so hard to get her to come, but she wants to let it go" Haley said softly before remarking, "If she was here, she'd be the one in this dress that you seem to love so much."

Nathan chuckled. "I love the woman in the dress, too," he assured her. "The thing is, Haley, that I always thought Peyton would be wearing a completely different dress on this day."

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I always thought that…on the day I was Luke's best man…I'd be watching Peyton walk down that aisle."

"Don't say that," Haley pleaded instantly, feeling that it was unfair to the bubbly brunette she'd just left who was practically hyperventilating with excitement.

"I don't mean it in a bad way; you know I love Brooke, and I think that the two of them are really happy. This just isn't how I pictured it, I guess."

"Well," she said softly, "Did you ever picture yourself married and with a kid by the day you graduated high school?"

He grinned abashedly. "No, I didn't."

"And that turned out pretty good, didn't I?" she asked, arching her eyebrows.

"Yeah…it definitely did."

She smiled. She couldn't feel bad on this day; there was just too much happiness in the air, too much love. "And this will too," she replied, full of optimistic confidence, and the subject she'd wanted to bring up with her husband fell out of her mouth unbidden, "Hey, Nathan? Do you want to have another baby?"

His eyes registered shock at her abrupt question, but it faded quickly as he pulled her closer. "With you looking like that, how can I say no?"

She blushed, feeling the heat in her cheeks. "Seriously," she whispered.

He nodded, his blue eyes trained on hers in that way that made her knees weak. "Seriously."


"…And that was it. That was the end of Lucas and I."

Jenny frowned. "It's weird…it's all so complicated but really simple…and then again, really not."

Peyton laughed lightly. "Only in Tree Hill."

"So you and Lucas were hooking up behind Brooke's back?"

"Yes. Did I mention that I set bad examples?" she added, shooting Jenny a look.

"Point taken. And then…you broke up with him. You fell for Dad a little bit. Dad and I left, you fell apart, Lucas called Dad to come help you, and he moved back here. Then he had to run again…and then you came to Savannah, to us. That's it?"

Peyton nodded. "Pretty good summary, yeah." She grimaced. "What are you thinking?"

"I think some people made mistakes," Jenny shrugged. "I don't see why everyone makes such a big deal out of all of this."

Peyton smiled sadly. She had kept her promise – told Jenny when she thought she needed to know. But what she thought her daughter needed to know wasn't even the half of it, and that was why her daughter couldn't understand all the drama, still.

"Mom?"

"Yeah?" she asked quietly, jolting back to the world of her apartment, her kitchen, her daughter.

"What happened with Lucas last night?" Jenny asked hesitantly.

Peyton reached across the table to squeeze Jenny's hand. "Nothing, honey. Nothing at all."


"Awesome," Peyton said appreciatively, gazing down at the artwork completed by one of the students whom she was student-teaching for. As much as she loved her art, music was still her biggest dream – but they needed money before she could pursue anything else. The same went for Jake. It was their fantasy, their ideal life, a world in which Peyton owned a label that signed Jake Jagielski as its first artist. They discussed moving out to Los Angeles countless times, but they had nowhere near the funds they would require were they just to up and leave, not if they wanted to maintain their standard of living and be successful. Their life in Savannah wasn't bad at all – it was pretty near perfect for a second-choice of lifestyle. Both of them taught at the local high school, Peyton art and photography classes, Jake Shakespeare and modern literature. They had Jenny, who had countless friends at her elementary school and who was already playing basketball like she couldn't get enough of it. They had two months of vacation each year.

They had one another.

Peyton's cell phone rang, and she rummaged through her purse to grab it. "You've made greats progress, Kelsey," she told her student with a grin. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" With one last wave to the fifteen-year-old, she flipped open her phone and answered, "Hi, you've reached Peyton."

"Mrs. Jagielski?" an unfamiliar voice asked.

"Sawyer," she corrected automatically, still strangely attached to her maiden name.

"I'm sorry…are you not married to Mr. Jacob Jagielski?"

Never in her entire time of knowing him had Peyton heard anyone call Jake by his full first name, not even his own parents. "I am, yes, I just kept my maiden name; we were really young when we…" she trailed off, realizing that she'd gone off onto a tangent. "What can I do for you?" she asked, laughing lightly.

"Ms. Sawyer, you need to come down to Memorial Hospital –"

She didn't wait to hear any more. She couldn't. The phone fell from her fingertips and before she knew it she was outside and in a cab, holding her breath on the ten-minute drive there, increased by the rush hour traffic. A pedestrian walked out into the street at a crosswalk and she wanted to cry. She didn't have time for this; if only Jake hadn't taken the car that morning.

If only.

She bolted through the doors of the emergency room and hurried toward the desk, starting to speak before she came to a halt: "My name is Peyton Sawyer, my husband's Jake Jagielski, I got a call, what hap –"

"Mommy!" Jenny's little voice interrupted her. She was sitting by the desk on a hard hospital chair, a nurse next to her. Her chin had a large bandage on it.

"Oh, baby!" Peyton cried, rushing over to her and kneeling down to give her a bone-crushing hug. "Oh, my little girl, what happened?" she asked, gently cupping Jenny's injured chin.

"Ms. Sawyer?" the nurse asked. "Hi. There's been a car accident," she said gently, two words which always made Peyton's heart skip an unpleasant beat. "Jenny's chin hit the side of the car. It was a nasty bump, but we've stitched her up and she's going to be fine. The doctor's prescribed a light painkiller for her."

"Oh, Jenny…does it hurt?"

"Yeah," Jenny admitted. "But they said I was brave and they gave me a popsicle," she added hurriedly, sticking out her purple tongue.

Peyton smiled in relief at the sheer normalcy of the five-year-old's behaviour. "You're fine," she sighed. "Thank God." She wrapped Jenny into another warm hug, pulling back and looking Jenny right in the eyes. "Where's your daddy?" At Jenny's shrug, she realized that she was asking the wrong person, and straightened up to speak to the nurse. "Is my husband okay?"

The nurse's kind eyes clouded over. "Why don't we go to a quieter room and talk," she suggested gently.

Peyton picked up on her tone immediately and was seized with panic. She felt as though someone was holding an open fist around her heart, waiting, threatening to clench it closed and make her suffer. "Or we could just talk right here," she responded. She wasn't going to agonize over the countless horrible possibilities while the nurse found them somewhere quieter to talk.

Gently, the older woman forced her to sit down, pulling her into a chair. Peyton's mind went into overdrive. Did Jake lose a limb? Did he have amnesia? Could he no longer speak, or walk, or play his guitar? Was he going to be sick for the rest of his life?

For some reason, she never considered death.

"Ms. Sawyer…your husband suffered a fatal blow to his head. Machines are the only thing keeping him alive right now. He's brain dead. I'm so sorry."

The fist closed over her heart, squeezing with all its might. She started to shake, her hands grasping for something to hold on to but coming up with nothing.

"Ms. Sawyer? I'm so sorry…Peyton?" the nurse asked kindly.

"Mommy?" Jenny asked fearfully, but Peyton couldn't even look at her.

"What now?" she murmured, feeling as though the voice wasn't even her own. "It…it's over? He's over? There's no…no chance, no percentage, no…miracle?"

"I'm so sorry," the nurse repeated, genuine sympathy in her eyes. "We'll let you say goodbye…let you pull the plug when you're ready."

"Mommy?" Jenny demanded again.

Peyton looked down in to her daughter's gorgeously innocent cerulean eyes. "Can someone stay with her?" she asked the nurse.

"I will," she replied, nodding. "Dr. McGrath will take you to your husband," she added, nodding to the doctor who stood nearby.

"Mommy!" Jenny got up to go with her. Peyton placed a comforting hand on her daughter's head, running her fingers lightly through her blonde hair, but she couldn't think of a single word to say to Jenny at that moment.

"You stay with me, sweetie, okay?" the nurse coaxed. "Mommy will be back soon."

"I wanna go with you!" Jenny cried, appealing solely to Peyton, but her mother shook her head. There was no way in hell she was taking her five-year-old with her. She wanted Jenny to remember Jake like the excellent man and father he was. Vibrant and loving and intelligent and musical and playful.

She did not want Jenny Jagielski to remember her father as the shell of a man Peyton encountered when she walked into that room.

"Take your time," had been the instruction she was left with, and she found it cruel. She had no more time. Her time with Jake was over.

She stared at him sadly for a while, memorizing the body she'd come to know so well. He looked broken…and empty.

After a while, she cleared her throat to speak, and simply said, "I love you," before a terrible realization struck her. It didn't matter what she said – Jake was already gone from the world. "I-I know you can't hear me, and you're gone from me, but Jake…I love you. You know that, right? You had to have known that."

When she couldn't take it anymore, she took his hand in hers and pressed her lips to her fingers. She whispered, "Bye, babe," and she yanked the plug from the outlet, rushing out the room before the machines keeping her husband alive could fully shut down.

Outside, the same kind nurse and a grief counselor were patiently waiting for her, but Jenny got there first, running to her and flinging her arms around Peyton's legs, whimpering about her chin and her father and other incomprehensible things.

Peyton scooped her up and did not set her down once. She ignored the grief counselor. She did only what needed to be done, paperwork and formalities and insurance forms and lawyers and wills, and then she bolted from the hospital as fast as her feet would carry her.

The car was in bad shape, somewhere in police or city custody, so she had to take yet another taxi. She made the driver stop so that she could pick up coffee on her way home, a mocha-and-foam thing, the same exact drink she'd imbibed on that weekend in high school when her father had told her to follow her heart and she'd gone to Jake.

She took Jenny inside their home, which suddenly felt as though it were lacking so many things. She gave Jenny a painkiller and sat both of them down on the couch, cradling her daughter in her arms as she carefully answered Jenny's infinite list of questions. It didn't really sink in for the little girl until she demanded, "When is Daddy going to come home?" and Peyton gently answered, "He's not, honey." Jenny fell asleep in Peyton's arms, knocked out by her tears and her medication.

Peyton felt like she should call someone, but she didn't know who. She couldn't call up her friends and conversationally inform them that her husband was gone. Jake's parents had chosen that week to go on vacation in Mexico. Her mind flashed briefly to Brooke, who'd crawled into bed with her when her mother had died. To Lucas, her constant saviour. To Haley, the most comforting and maternal person she knew. To Nathan, who was familiar and sweet and always on her side. To Karen, her surrogate mother, who'd looked out for her whether or not Peyton was currently engaged in a relationship with her son. For the first time in years, Peyton missed them all so badly that she physically ached for them. It had been too long. It was too late for her to call them for help.

She called her dad, but he was out in the middle of some ocean. She left him a brief message that consisted of no more than, "Hi, I miss you."

Exhausted and still sort of in shock, she retreated to the master bedroom, crawling into the comforting warmth of their – her – bed with her caffeinated drink. She could still remember what it tasted like, warm and sweet on her tongue.

But she'd left it for too long. It was cold and bitter going down her throat, and that was what made her lose it. She huddled into a ball in the sheets that still smelled like Jake and cried.

The phone woke her up the next morning, ringing incessantly. It had made Jenny stir, too, and the five-year-old climbed into bed with Peyton as she picked it up, irritably demanding, "What?"

"Once a morning person, always a morning person," her father joked sarcastically. "Hey, honey. I just got into Tree Hill, I was hoping you might come up and visit me, bring your boy and that sweet little girl."

Peyton stayed quiet for a long moment, long enough for her father to ask, "Peyton? Honey?"

"Jake died," she whispered into the phone, and her father's gasp was loud in her ear.

Six and a half hours later, she and Jenny were sitting on the couch, watching some stupid cartoon that neither of them could laugh at, eating toaster waffles with gross amounts of syrup for lunch, when there was a knock on the door. The phone had been ringing off the hook – funeral home, lawyer, car insurance people, the principal of the school, who sadly had told Peyton that he was worried about her, about how bluntly she'd informed him that Jake wouldn't be returning that day, he'd died – and she was sick and tired of people.

Peyton stumbled up to get it, wearing the pink pyjama pants with dancing elephants on them that Jake had gotten her as a joke of a Christmas gift – he'd given her lingerie later, when they were alone, in addition to a record she'd been searching for for years and that he'd loved her enough to go to all the work to find – and Jake's favourite sweater. She flung open the door with a scowl on her face and her eyes rimmed red, only to set eyes on the troubled orbs of her father, who looked incredibly concerned.

"Hey, baby girl," he said gently, dropping his bag and opening his arms.

"Daddy," she said, diving into his embrace, and she let him handle it from there. Lawyers and funeral home managers and those people who sold coffins…babysitters for Jenny and calls to her school and getting Peyton a leave of absence…bankers and friends and Jake's distraught parents. Peyton let Larry handle it all. He hovered around her worriedly, gently reminding her that he'd been where she was, but she couldn't deal with any of it. All the while – from the lawyer's office to the school's office to the banker's office to the cemetery, Peyton kept glancing up at the ceiling, up at the sky.

She would look toward heaven, and her own words would play over in her head.

I love you. You know that, right? You had to have known that.


Jenny slowly pulled her hand back, hurt reflected deeply in her eyes. "You're lying."

She struggled to maintain her composure, wondering if maybe one day she'd die of dehydration from crying too much. At least then it would all be over, once and for all. "I'm sorry, Jenny," she whispered brokenly. "But this time it's not for you, okay? Please understand that."

"Then what…why…?" her puzzled fourteen-year-old demanded.

"If I keep telling myself the same thing over and over…" She lifted her eyebrows, trying to joke around. "Then maybe I'll start to believe it sometime. Things with Lucas didn't end the day we broke up or the day I left Tree Hill, and I'm not ready to tell you why or what or how. I'm not ready to say it out loud; I'm not ready to see the look in your eyes when I do."

Jenny furrowed her brow, looking deeply worried. "But what are you gonna do?" she asked quietly.

"I don't know, babe," Peyton sighed, sick and tired of her own self. "I never have."

A/N: Thoughts? Comments?