One Tree Hill What I Can't Forget

A/N: This is my version of what would have happened if, the night of the storm, Lucas realized he still loved Peyton. In order for this to work, Ellie wasn't really in the picture yet! My first fanfic. R&R, Please!

* * *

Brooke had opened the letter and was reading as he tried to dry himself from the rain. He couldn't wait to hear what she thought of his mix of sweet and sexy words.

He came out of her bedroom and found Brooke with her jacket on, searching for her keys.

"Brooke," he laughed. "What are you doing, crazy girl?" He grabbed her wrist, but she wouldn't let him take her hand.

"Going for a walk to try to forget what I just read!"

"You want to forget what I wrote? Why? And it's pouring out there." He still wasn't sure if he should laugh, or be hurt.

"Read the last line," she said, shoving the paper into Lucas' chest. She stood with her arms crossed while he read.

_You're mine forever._

And it all came back to him. He had written a letter to Peyton after his accident, when it was all he could do to hold a pen, but he needed to tell her how he felt in the most honest and easy way he knew how. He planned on giving it to her the night she told him they couldn't hurt Brooke. Even after Brooke found out about them, Lucas knew that he and Peyton still couldn't be together. Peyton wouldn't do that to her best friend.

"Brooke..." He didn't know what to say. All of a sudden, the only image in his head was Peyton, and his hands were tangled in her blonde curls as she kissed his chest with her arms around his waist. He was taken back to the hotel room last year where they got so wrapped up in each other they'd forgotten about the world.

He didn't want to hurt this beautiful girl standing in front of him, but he know he was going to, no matter what he did. He had said it himself, "It's always going to be there."

"Lucas, if you're trying to hurt me - AGAIN - this is the easiest way to do it." She was holding back tears, and it was killing him that he was the one making her feel this way. He cared about Brooke. She was an amazing girl. But she wasn't THE amazing girl.

"Brooke, I'm not trying to hurt you." He tried to close the distance separating them, but she stepped back so the counter was placed between them.

"The same words, Lucas? Why the same words?" She quickly wiped a tear from her face, hoping desperately that he didn't notice. Why did this have to happen to her? Just when she thought she was happy, all the moments that brought her here crashed around her. She loved this boy. This beautiful blonde boy who had opened her heart to the world and saw in her a spirit she didn't even know she had.

"Maybe I'm just not as good a writer as you think I am." He hoped himself that was the reason.

"Luke, I'm serious. I need to know who you want- what you want from me." She said it quietly and reached for his hands over the counter. "I'm not going to get hurt like last time. I won't let you do it. So before I do something crazy like say that I love you, you need to tell me if you're going to let me."

"Brooke, I..." he couldn't finish the sentence. He couldn't even finish the thought. Every time he tried to think of Brooke, he would see Peyton in his mind. Green eyes and intensity. Cynicism only he could see through.

"I think you should go." She looked down and took a corner of a placemat between her thumb and index finger. She didn't want him to see the effect he had on her, though she was sure he saw it anyway.

"Don't be mad, Brooke." It was all he could think of.

"Lucas, I'm not mad. I just think you should go. Call me when you have an answer." She didn't look up at him. He stared at her for a few moments, trying to remember all the reasons he'd fought so hard for her in the first place. As he turned and closed the door behind him, he heard her sigh. It sounded like a heart breaking.

* * *

Peyton was listening to the rain pound against the window. The power was out, so the music she would normally play to drown out the silence wasn't there. It was just her, alone in her room with candles and her thoughts.

_Where are they now? _She looked at the pictures on her wall. The ones she drew. Her mom and Ellie and Jake and Jenny.

Jake. The boy who made her forget about Lucas. The only boy she ever admitted to loving. The boy who awakened in her a hope and a belief that life wasn't as terrible as she thought. But he was gone as quickly as he came to her. His daughter, the little girl Peyton came to adore, was always going to be the number one love of his life. Peyton loved him for that, but knew he had to go. So she watched him drive away. A couple memories and a tail light in the distance the only reminders that he was ever in her life.

She turned back to her desk, pen in hand. She knew that someone else belonged on that wall with the others who had left her behind to fend for herself. After a summer of friendship, Brooke came back to town and took him away from her again. She knew her best friend's intentions were pure, but she couldn't help feel that Brooke was just turning a blind eye to Peyton's true feelings about him.

He was the only one who every truly saw her. Even Jake didn't understand her mind like he did. Their relationship was over before it had even gotten off the ground, but still she felt like it might have been the one with the biggest effect on her.

She began to sketch the lines of his face. A face her hands had held and her fingers had memorized. Her pen moved almost without thought - she was drawing from memory of the moments they had stolen before everything came crashing down. She moved her pen in circles she knew would be unable to capture the life in his eyes and remembered the words he once spoke to her. "It's always going to be there, isn't it? You and me."

She finished the drawing and posted it on her wall. But she knew where he was. He was with Brooke. And there was nothing she could do about it.

* * *

He had walked home in the rain. The entire distance, trying to gain perspective. Peyton was an incredible friend, and an incredible woman. She was beautiful and intense and funny and brilliant. They could keep each other company without needing to entertain one another. The fit. But they didn't _work_. The last time they had tried, the three of them ended up hurting: Brooke betrayed by her best friend, Peyton lost her best friend, and Lucas left in the wake with no girlfriend and no girl friend.

So which girl did he want to be which? Girlfriend and girl friend.

When he got home he went straight to his closet, at the very back, and pulled out a shoebox. Drawings and letters and photos from Peyton. He re-read her words from a year earlier and they still made him smile. He moved his thumb over a photo of them together in her car - him driving and her head resting on his shoulder. They fit.

He abandoned the stack of memories and went to his dresser. He pulled out a small wooden box which housed his heart pills and a few mementos from his times with Brooke. A feather from her Halloween costume. The red feather from the night she had played a game and made him look like a fool. A photo of them kissing on the beach. The same one she had on her wall among photos of all the other boys she had kissed while he pined for her in Tree Hill.

He shed his wet clothes and lay on his bed, a photo in each hand - one of him and Peyton, the other of him and Brooke.

He wasn't sure when he fell asleep, but when he awoke at midnight, there was only one thing on his mind.

Peyton.

* * *

No one ever knocked on her door. Until the unnerving instant messages, she never even locked it at night. She had only given keys to Lucas and Brooke.

When there was a knock at the door at 12:30, it startled her, and she was afraid at who she might find outside at this time at night. It was still pouring rain and the power was still out. This is how horror movies start. She peered out her window and saw a figure on her porch. It looked like a man, with a hood, drenched from the rain. This scared her even more.

She didn't want to, and felt horrible doing it, but she dialed Lucas' number. He would be with Brooke doing God knows what, but she couldn't think of anyone else to call.

As soon as he answered the phone, before he could even say hi, she started talking.

"Lucas. Hi. I'm sorry. I just got scared and there's someone on my porch and I don't know what to do."

"Peyton, calm down. How do you know it isn't someone you know?" He tried not to laugh. He also felt relieved that she called him. Not her dad, not Brooke, not Nathan. Him.

"Luke! Anyone I know who would come over this late has keys!" He quietly unlocked the door and closed it behind him. He started walking up the stairs, forgetting that the fifth step was creaky. "Luke," she whispered, "someone is in my house!"

"I know," he said. She whipped around to see him standing in the doorway of her bedroom.

"Lucas Scott! I hate you!" She ran to him and hit him flat palmed in the chest before melting into him in relief. He wrapped his arms around her, both of them forgetting he was drenched to the bone, and breathed in the moment. If he wasn't sure before, this moment, with her in his arms, was proof enough that Peyton Sawyer was the girl for him.

"I'm sorry. You were just so...pathetic." He laughed.

"Shut up! I was scared." She finally pulled away from him. "Now I'm soaked."

"Yea, sorry. I would have warned you, but you just ran into my arms before I could say anything." A giant grin came upon his face.

"OK. Are you here for a reason? Or just to be a jackass?" She grabbed a towel from her bathroom and threw it at him.

"I just wanted to check on you. It's pretty nasty out." It wasn't really a lie. He wanted to check on her. He also just wanted to _be_ with her.

"Well, aren't you just a night in soaking wet armor." She joked as she dried her hair with a towel. "Give me a minute."

She disappeared into her closet and came out wearing a robe. He couldn't remember the last time he saw her like this. It must have been months. But even then it hadn't felt like this. Suddenly he found his mind wandering- curious about what she was wearing under the flannel plaid.

"You should get out of those clothes unless you want to catch pneumonia." She pointed at him, moving her finger up and down.

"You know, I think I'm OK." He was uncomfortable around her now, and wondering if she would be this nonchalant if she knew the thoughts that were running through his head.

"Don't be a loser. I have a t-shirt you left here this summer and I was hoping you'd forgotten about, and a pair of your basketball shorts from the time you changed here after shooting a round at the River Court." She retrieved the clothes from her closet and tossed them on the bed.

"You stole my t-shirt?" He asked, with the half grin that always made her stomach flutter.

"I didn't steal it. You left it here and I just...chose not to return it." She turned around so he could shed his wet jeans and sweater.

"Luke, why aren't you with Brooke?" She asked the question while her back was to him because she didn't think she'd have the courage to look him in the eye and say the words.

"Oh. Well. We, um...had a fight. I haven't seen her for a few hours. OK. you can turn around."

He was just grabbing the shirt from her bed. She didn't know how, but she'd forgotten how incredible his body was, how his muscles tightened and rippled as he moved. He pulled the shirt over his head and she wished for a moment that she hadn't told him about the shirt.

"Peyton?" He noticed her lack of focus. Or rather, mistook her focus on his stomach as something other than what it was.

"Yea. Sorry. What did you fight about?" She asked him, but was afraid she already knew the answer.

"You know. The usual. You." He was laying on her bed now, on his back with one arm raised and behind his head. His casual tone took her by surprise. He and Brooke fighting over anything, especially her, wasn't something to joke about.

"Luke..." She sat on the edge of the bed and hung her head. She glanced over at the sketch of him on her wall she had finished only hours before. If he had seen it, he didn't say anything. The room was fairly dark now, with only a few candles still burning. They cast beautiful shadows on his face and she saw him as a man for the first time; not just a high school boy.

"Do you remember when Brooke found those things you gave me?" He looked at her, and even through the darkness, she could feel his blue eyes looking into her soul.

"Of course I do. I had to convince her that those things didn't mean anything." She played with the hem of her robe to avoid those eyes of his.

"Peyton," he turned his body and propped himself up on an elbow. "Did you really think those things didn't mean anything?"

"Well, I don't know. Brooke thought they meant something." She hung her head again and a blonde curl fell into her face. Lucas wanted desperately to take that curl between his fingers and tuck it behind her ear like he used to do when she'd stand so close to him and place a hand on his chest.

"She thought that even more tonight when she read a letter I wrote and it ended the same way a letter I wrote to you did."

"Luke, you never gave me a letter." She finally looked up at him again, and saw a vulnerability on his face.

"I know. But I wrote one. And she read it."

"Well, what'd it say?" She wanted to know, but she didn't want to hurt Brooke again.

"It said 'You're mine forever." Now he was the one looking down. He was afraid of the look that might be on her face, hoping with everything in him that it wasn't disappointment.

"Oh. But was I ever really yours?" The question caught him off guard and he snapped his head up to look at her. She was right and he knew it, but he wished so much that she had been his, that she was his.

"I wanted you to be." She took note of the past tense. Wanted. And again she was reminded of his girlfriend. Her best friend. Lucas Scott and Peyton Sawyer would always have something come between them. Maybe that's why they both thought it would work- because they never got the chance to have the world prove them wrong.

"I wanted to be, too. It just got too hard. Too messed up. Too...you with Brooke."

"So what happens when I tell you I'm not with Brooke any more?"

He hadn't seen Brooke since he left her place, but he had called her. He didn't have to say anything. He just said her name, and she said "Lucas, I know." She explained that she understood. That she couldn't keep two people who were so connected from being happy. Even when that meant it would take her longer to find that same happiness for herself.

"I would say," she caught herself. She didn't know what she'd say. And now, faced with the reality of needing to find the words to fill this space, to say to this person she loved and needed, she couldn't find them. "I don't know what I'd say."

"I need you, Peyton. I miss you when I'm not near you. I missed you so much when I was...whatever I was with Brooke." He was closer to her now, sitting up and staring into her eyes. He took her hand. "I'm pretty sure I love you."

"Pretty sure?"

* * *

He leaned across her bed and pressed his lips to hers. Her hand found the familiar place on the back of his neck as his tongue parted her lips. She let out a little moan as he deepened the kiss and pulled her closer to him. His hands once again became tangled in her curls before finding their way to her stomach. He slid his hand inside the opening of her robe and found nothing there. He pulled away and looked at her.

"You are telling me that this whole time I've been here with you, you have only been wearing a robe?"

"I have on underwear." She grinned at him and he let out a breathy laugh as he pushed her back onto the bed.

His mouth found hers again and he kissed her with a passion he forgot he had inside him. He moved his lips to her neck and collarbone and got so caught up in her- in wanting her- that he almost didn't notice her nibbling on his ear. He almost didn't notice, until she stopped.

"Luke, wait." She said, with heavy breath.

"Wait?" He kissed her jaw line again. "We might be past the point of waiting."

She felt him hard against her and knew how much he wanted her.

"No. No. I want our first time to be special." He pulled back and stopped placing kisses on her neck.

"We just said 'I love you'. We are finally both single at the same time and want to be with each other. We are in an empty house with candles and rain in the background. This is pretty damn special, Peyton."

She smiled again and pulled him back towards her with her hands framing his face.

"I know it is. I just wanted to make sure you wanted this for the right reasons."

* * *

They made love that night for the first time, but not the last. Long after the last candle burnt out, they lay awake in each others' arms and just breathed. In the morning, Peyton simply watched him. Took note of every rise and fall of his chest, every movement, every sound he made. She didn't want to ever forget that night and his words and how it felt to be with him. He woke up and saw her.

"I was worried that was a dream." He sighed and turned to face her.

"Just the kind that comes true." She laced her fingers into his.

"So listen, this drawing of me, which is great, by the way, can we remove it from the depressing 'people always leave' wall now?"

It's been in a frame on her bedside table ever since.

Sometimes they come back...


End file.

One Tree Hill, Humor, Romance