"Rachel! Get up! We only have twenty minutes before we have to leave for school." Brooke exclaimed as she hurried into Rachel's room.
"Calm down Brooke, and since when do you care about school?" Rachel asked as she sat up in bed.
"I've always cared about school." Brooke replied.
Rachel snorted in laughter. "I haven't been here that long but even I could tell that you could care less about going to school."
"I've always cared, I just never really applied myself." She retorted.
" You sure it's not because a certain boy is going to be starting his first day today?" Rachel prodded.
"You really need to get up and take a shower, we don't have much time." Brooke said, dodging the question.
"Brooke and Owen sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love then comes marriage then comes Owen with the baby carriage." Rachel sang as Brooke groaned.
Twenty-five minutes later, Brooke and Rachel had arrived at school after stopping to pick Owen up. The three of them were laughing about the previous night and how they bickered about what to watch all night so they ended up playing every single board game Brooke owned. Peyton, Lucas, Nathan, Haley, Mouth and Shelly were all sitting at their usual table in the quad waiting for the first bell to ring. Mouth was the first to notice Brooke walking toward the school holding hands with Owen and laughing at something Rachel had said.
"Who is that guy?" Mouth asked as everyone's eyes drifted toward the three teenagers.
"She sure moved on fast." Shelly shrugged.
"You know nothing about her." Lucas said harshly as he quickly walked over to Brooke.
"Hey Brooke," He tried not to sound too upset. "Who's your new friend?"
"Luke, this is Owen Morello he just moved here from Boston; Owen, this is Lucas Scott." Brooke introduced the two.
"Nice to meet you." Owen said warmly as he offered his hand to Lucas.
Lucas shook his hand but didn't say anything to Owen. He just kept looking at Brooke and then back at Owen.
"What do you think is going on?" Nathan asked as he and the rest of the group watched from afar.
No one answered; they were all trying to hear the conversation between the three.
"Well as much fun as this is, Brooke, Owen and I really need to get to class." Rachel stated as she pushed away from Lucas and headed toward the building dragging Owen and Brooke behind her.
Lucas watched as they walked away, laughing and having a good time. He wondered how things were able to change this much in such a short period of time.
"Who is that guy?" Mouth asked again once Lucas had rejoined the group.
"His name is Owen and by the looks of it he and Brooke really like each other." Lucas said.
"How are you doing?" Haley asked her best friend.
"I hate that guy." Lucas said as he snatched his backpack from the table and made his way inside.
--
"Boys, I'd like you to meet Owen Morello," Whitey's voice boomed throughout the gym. "He just moved here from Boston and he's one of the best players I've seen in years."
"You have got to be kidding me." Lucas groaned.
"Be nice." Nathan warned his brother.
"I'll be nice to Owen when you can be nice to Chris Keller."
"Deal." Nathan laughed.
"Hey Lucas!" Owen called as he ran onto the court. "Do you have a minute?"
"What's up?"
"I just wanted to make sure you were okay with me hanging out with Brooke and all. I know that you guys had a thing and I just wanted to make sure you were okay with us getting to know each other." He rambled.
"You really want to know how I feel?" Lucas asked.
Owen nodded as he sank a three pointer.
"I think you two make perfect sense together." He responded quietly before walking of the court.
--
"I think I just made the biggest mistake." Lucas said as he opened his locker in the locker room.
"What'd you do now?" Nathan asked.
"I told Owen to have at it with Brooke."
"You did what?" Nathan exclaimed.
"He just came up to me and asked me if it was okay to continue things with Brooke. What high school guy does that? He was concerned about me and wanted to make sure I was okay with the situation—"
"Why didn't you say you weren't? He would have backed off if you told him you still have feelings for her." Nathan interrupted.
"I know but I think that she needs him right now. I've never been that guy for her." Lucas wallowed.
"Stop doing this to yourself Luke, you've always been that guy for her. I mean sure you weren't there for her when she lost Ryan but you couldn't have been, you didn't know her then but you've been here for her now. You ran back into this school knowing there was a gunman on the loose and you saved her. That's got to account for something." Nathan tried to explain.
"Who's Ryan?" Lucas asked as he stared at his brother.
"She didn't tell you about Ryan," Nathan said more as a statement than a question. "Shit. She's going to kill me."
"I'm going to ask you one more time, who is Ryan?" Lucas asked again.
"I can't tell you who he was; Brooke should tell you." Nathan said as he headed toward the showers.
"Who the hell is Ryan?" Lucas asked himself as he exited the locker room. Unfortunately, he looked up from the ground just in time to see Brooke leap into Owen's arms and kiss him square on the mouth. "This is really going to suck." He whispered.
"Hi basketball boy." Brooke said.
"Hello pretty girl." Owen replied.
Brooke's body immediately tensed at his nickname for her.
"What's wrong?" Owen asked.
"Nothing," Brooke shook her head. "How was practice?"
"Good." Owen replied, deciding to leave out the part about his little talk with Lucas.
"Were the guys nice?"
"Yeah, Lucas is a great guy."
"You don't have to become best friends with him you know." Brooke said.
"I know." Owen responded as he bent down to grab Brooke's backpack.
"You also don't have to carry that for me." She said as she tried to take her bag back from Owen.
"But I want to." He said ask he kissed her forehead.
--
Instead of walking the long way home from school, Lucas decided to take the shortcut through the cemetery. As he walked beside the graves he thought about the time when he brought Haley there to tell her he was moving to Charlotte, he smiled at the memory. It seemed ironic to him that he was in the same boat right now as he was back then. He and Brooke had had the perfect relationship but then Peyton got involved and it only ruined things, that was almost a year ago and now here he was and the same thing had happened. He was almost out of the cemetery when he tripped on a tree root and landed flat on his face right next to Anna's gravestone.
"Sorry Anna." He whispered as he got up but something caught his eye, something that should have caught his eye earlier because he'd been here countless times with Peyton but never saw it. Two gravestones behind Anna's was a headstone that read Ryan Davis – Beloved Son & Brother. It all made sense now. The Ryan that Nathan was talking about was Brooke's brother Ryan.
--
"No Owen tonight?" Rachel asked as she plopped herself on the couch next to Brooke.
"No," Brooke sighed. "I really need to pull my calculus grade up and if he were here we both know no work would get done." She laughed.
"Brooke, you guys like just met and you're already going at it." Rachel pointed out.
"I know and I don't understand why. I've never been the kind of person that just dives into relationships. Lucas was the only real relationship I've ever had and I'm scaring myself at how easily I'm falling for Owen."
"It's all happening for a reason," Rachel said as she cracked open her calculus book. "Now let me help you with this crap."
Brooke, with the help of Rachel, was really starting to grasp the whole math thing until a loud, constant banging on the door tore her from the book.
"I'll get it, you keep working on those problems." Rachel said as she leaped from the couch to answer the door.
"Where the hell is Brooke?" Lucas yelled as he pushed himself in the door the minute Rachel opened it.
"Hello to you too, Lucas."
"Lucas? What are you doing here?" Brooke asked as she emerged from the den.
"Were you ever going to tell me about Ryan?" He blurted out.
"I'll be upstairs working on my English essay." Rachel said as she scampered up the stairs only to stop at the top behind one of the walls. Like she was really going to work on an essay when she could eavesdrop on Brooke and Lucas.
"How did you find out?" Brooke whispered.
"That doesn't matter, what does matter though is why you never brought your dead brother up in the eighteen months that we've known each other Brooke!"
Brooke remained silent as tears welled in her eyes.
"Are you going to say anything or are you just going to stand there?" Lucas asked as he moved toward her. "You accused me of not opening up to you and letting you all the way in yet you have a brother who died and not once did you think to let me know about that, not once Brooke." He said harshly.
"If you aren't going to say anything I might as well leave. Now I know that the demise of this relationship wasn't my entire fault as you so kindly made it seem. You're a hypocrite Brooke Davis." Lucas said as he turned to leave.
"I didn't want to burden you!" Brooke yelled. That was all it took for Lucas' hand to release the doorknob and turn back around to face Brooke.
"You thought you'd burden me?" Lucas asked in disbelief.
Brooke slowly nodded her head.
"When we're together, you're problems and demons and everything else you're struggling with become my problems and my demons and I will struggle right alongside you because that's how much you mean to me. I never want you to have to go through something alone, Brooke. I feel terrible that you had to go though Ryan's death by yourself." He said.
"How was I supposed to know that?" She asked tiredly.
"You just are." He responded with exhaustion in his voice.
"I'm not ready to talk about it with you yet, but when I am I'll come find you." Brooke said as she moved toward the front door.
"Does Owen know?" He asked.
"His dad had just died and he came over here and I didn't mean to tell him it just slipped out, I never meant –"
Brooke's rambling was cut off by Lucas' lips colliding with hers resulting in the most gentle and loving kiss either had ever experienced.
"It's okay, Brooke. You two make sense together." He whispered as he rested his forehead on hers.
"You shouldn't have done that." Brooke whispered, her breath shaky and uneven.
"I know." Lucas smirked.
"Then why did you?" She asked.
"I'll tell you when you tell me about Ryan." He said as he turned and left her standing in the doorway.
"What the hell just happened?" Rachel asked from the top of the staircase.
"I thought you were working on your English essay?"
"Yeah, like I write English essays," Rachel laughed. "But what happened? I thought you liked Owen now, not Lucas.
"I thought I liked Owen too." Brooke replied.
--
Words cannot express how sorry I am that I haven't updated this since September and my other story since August! I can't believe its been that long! Lately though, I just really haven't been too inspired to write anything because of the lack of Brucas scenes. I hope to update my other fic sometime this week and I promise that the updates will become constant again. The other fic only has a few chapters left and I already have a new story swirling in my head. I hope you liked this chapter and please review!!