Hey guys! I’m back. Sorry it’s been so long, but I have been so so busy with work and getting things ready for school, and my best friend just left for college, so I’ve been a little depressed cuz she’s now living two and a half hours away when I’ve been so used to her living only ten minutes away. But…I do have the first chapter ready on this story and I have been throwing around some ideas for it too. I think I’m going to make this story another POV story, but not only from Brooke and Lucas’ POV, but from several other POV too, like Peyton, Haley, Nathan, possibly Chase…and I’m still considering throwing Mouth and Rachel into the story too. Anyway, I’m going to start the story going with Brooke’s POV. And further information, the story is being told in present day, unless it is in italics. Then, it is a flashback from highschool, or college. If there’s any confusion, please let me know. And…on to the story.Chapter One: ChangedShe was fiercely independent…Brooke Davis. Brilliant, beautiful and brave. In two years, she’s grown more than anybody I’ve ever known. Brooke Davis is going to change the world someday. And I’m not sure she even knows it.Those were Lucas Scott’s words, the words he’d written about her in his novel, his first novel, An Unkindness of Ravens, which had proven to be a major success once it was finally published and sold. Yes…his words, his thoughts of her, were flattering ones, but not ones of truth, not in her eyes anyway.
She wished they were true, his words. She wanted them to be true, wanted to feel about herself the way he’d written about her. And she’d hoped, when she’d read those words the first time, that she could and would change the world someday. But it didn’t happen. She, Brooke, Davis, hadn’t changed the world at all. But the world had certainly changed her.
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Brooke ran her fingers along the black binding of the book again. She traced each gold letter with her finger as she stared at the book in her hands. And after tracing over all the letters, she opened the book again to the page she had become so familiar with in the past six years. And she read his words again.
Brooke wasn’t exactly sure why she did this so often, or why it brought so much comfort to her. Maybe, she thought, she did it because she needed to feel as special as those words had made her feel the night she’d first read them. Or, maybe she pulled that book out every night she couldn’t sleep like this because she was so lonely and needed to feel important to someone. Maybe, it was because she felt she was missing something important from her life and she wanted it more than anything. Maybe the book allowed her to escape the pain she’d been feeling for months now.
Whatever the reason was, taking that book out, opening to that page, and reading those words was something she did on lonely nights like these, when she sat in her room, alone in her bed, with nothing but a small lamp on her bedside table to brighten the darkness. Or, maybe, she’d been reading that book so much recently because the day she’d first read those words about her, six years ago almost, was vastly approaching.
But whatever it was that made her feel the need to read her friend’s book again, she did. And whenever she did, she remembered that night she’d first caught a glimpse of it, which also happened to be the same night she’d made a pact with her friends, the pact in which she’d promised herself and her friends that nothing was going to change. Wow…she had sure been premature and wrong in that promise.
Everything had changed. It had all changed so fast and so much, and before they had even made it back to that court by the river as promised. When it came time for her to leave, to go to California that summer, everything changed, even though she hadn’t wanted or expected it too. She left her high school world behind that night and became an adult. She bonded and grew closer with her friends and with…Chase. She remembered how close she and Chase came to be that night…
They’d decided to escape from the end-of-the-year blowout party for a bit and spend some time alone together in his car. And it felt great to be that close to him after the time they’d spent apart. His lips felt so sweet and amazing against hers. It was hard to pry herself away from him, she felt so in love. And it was that love for him that compelled her to show him exactly how much she loved him.
She finally pulled herself away from him and smiled as she looked into his beautiful brown eyes. Then, she reached down and pulled her shirt up and over her head. Chase smiled back at her and watched as she moved close to him again.
“Did I mention that this is the greatest night of my life?” he said to her.
“Well, you said it was a night to be great and to try new things,” Brooke returned. “So I figured we’d do both at once.”
He smiled and kissed her again. Then, he held her face in his hands and said to her, “You know you’re going to change the world someday, Brooke Davis?”
She smiled again. “Yeah…so I’ve been told.”
He swallowed nervously. “Be gentle with me.”
Brooke grinned again and giggled as he laid her down across the back seat of his car….A smile crept across her face as she recalled that night with Chase. The memory of that night always makes her smile, but when she looked over and saw that he wasn’t there next to her, the smile left her face. She hung her head in shame, in sadness, in anger and disappointment…she’s not really sure which. But it’s an act she’s performed a lot recently, on every night that he hasn’t been there next to her like he should be.
Brooke puts the book back in its place in the top drawer of her nightstand, and she pushes the drawer closed. And with one last glance at the bedroom door, she reaches over and turns out the light. And as she finally lays down in her bed and in the darkness, she finally gives up wishing and hoping that he’ll walk through that door and lay down next to her.
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Though she’d been so exhausted when she finally laid down in her bed, Brooke had tossed and turned all night. Her tears had kept her awake for hours, as did the terrible stomach ache that lasted all night and well into the morning.
Brooke wiped the corner of her mouth with tissue as she flushed the toilet for the third time that morning. She gripped her stomach as she tossed the tissue in the wicker wastebasket near the toilet. She moved over to the sink then and turned on the faucet. As she gently splashed cold water onto her face, Brooke closed her eyes and hoped that she was only dreaming, that she would open her eyes and feel perfectly well again.
But…she wasn’t dreaming. And she wasn’t well either. There was a queasy, nauseous feeling rushing through her still, a feeling that had lasted all night. And she knew that feeling well. She had felt it before, after all. And she hadn’t been prepared for it then either…
Her coughing echoed in the porcelain white toilet bowl. As she finally felt okay enough, she pulled her head up, wondering how it was possible to puke so much when she’d barely eaten anything in two days and hadn’t drunk in at least a month. As she pulled some tissue from the roll on the wall, she looked up as someone knocked on the bathroom door.
“Come in…” she barely managed to get out.
She wiped the nasty moistness from her face as Peyton stepped into the bathroom.
“Hey,” Peyton said, watching her with a concerned expression. “You don’t look or sound too good either. Are you okay?”
Tossing the wadded up tissue into the toilet as she leaned against the wall, her head directly underneath the towel rack, Brooke shook her head and answered, “I think…I may have caught the flu you’ve had for the past week and a half.”But it hadn’t been the flu. It had been something much bigger then the flu. Life…an actual human life had been making her so sick. And it was the same human life she could now hear laughing in the living room down the hall.
Brooke left the bathroom and bedroom and made her way down the hall, still trying to pretend like what she was now certain was wrong with her, was not wrong with her, or at least she was trying to forget about it for awhile until she had time to figure out how she really felt about it, and what, exactly, she was going to do about it. She wasn’t really angry or upset that it was happening. She was just scared…really, really scared. Terrified, actually.
Brooke reached the living room and saw her daughter laughing uncontrollably as her father tickled her on the beige colored sofa. For a moment, as she leaned against the wall of the archway separating the living room from the kitchen in their home, Brooke smiled as she watched her daughter and her husband play. But when Chase looked up at her, his smile faded and with it, so did hers.
“Hey,” he said as he stopped tickling their daughter, who then sat up on the couch to catch her breath.
“Hey,” Brooke returned, her arms folded over her chest. “You two looked like you were having a ball.”
Chase nodded and the little girl with the short dark hair in front of him, smiled at Brooke and said, “We was having a tickle fight, Mommy!”
“You were?”
“Yep, and I won.”
“You did? Are you sure?” Brooke glanced over at Chase with half a smile as she spoke to her little girl. “Cause it looked to me like your daddy was winning.”
“Okay,” her daughter sighed, shrugging her little shoulders. “So maybe he won. But I’m gonna win a tickle fight one of these days, Daddy.”
Chase smiled at her. “We’ll see, Ava…we’ll see.”
“I will, Dad. Just wait.”
“Avary,” Brooke spoke after a moment of quiet. Both chase and Avary looked at her. “I need you to go and get dressed now please. We have to leave in a little while for the party.”
“Okay, Mommy.”
Avary bounces out of the room and down the hall to her bedroom. Brooke peeled her eyes away from the hall when Chase moved closer and spoke to her.
“Hey,” he said. “You were in there for awhile. Are you okay?”
“Yeah…I just have a headache. I’ll be fine though. I took some aspirin. Anyway…the party starts in like an hour and a half, so you should probably start getting ready to go.”
Brooke turned and walked around the island counter and over to the fridge. Chase stepped up to the counter.
“Actually,” he said as Brooke closed the fridge door. “I, um…I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it to the party. I have to work.”
Brooke stared at her husband for a moment before looking down.
“Of course you do,” she said quietly as she set the orange juice carton down on the counter. “I should’ve have known you couldn’t make it. Because, of course…you have to work.”
Brooke turned her back to him to retrieve a glass from the cupboard.
“Brooke…” Chase began with a sigh. “Please…don’t do this again, not now.”
“No, I won’t.” Brooke almost slammed her glass down on the green, marble island counter as she spoke. “I won’t start this again, Chase…because I know you have to work.”
“Brooke….”
“No, Chase, it’s fine.” Brooke recapped the carton after filling her glass half full. “You go to work, Ava and I will go to Jamie’s party, and you and I can talk about this later, or whenever you’re ready to discuss how and if we are ever going to fix this marriage.”
Chase watched as Brooke brushed passed and away from him, slamming her glass down on the table as she disappeared around the corner. And after slamming the door to the bedroom, Brooke leaned against the wall and held her hands up to her face as she let her tears go. And she just cried….
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Okay, so that first chapter was a little depressing, but there is a method to my open depressedness. LOL It all sets off the basis for the drama that is about to ensue. So please continue to read to find out what’s going to happen next. You are all going to find out a few things about what happened to some of our characters in college. Just as you’ve just gotten a glimpse of what happened to Brooke and Chase, what changed them, in the next chapter, you will see what Lucas has been up to. After that, I haven’t planned yet.
Anyway, my next step is to try and complete this new oneshot I’ve got an idea for, two of them actually based on two really good songs. And then I will continue work on chapter two to this. So please review and let me know what you thought of this. Am I living up to my previous works? LOL Please tell me! Review Review!