The Scott Brothers

"Look, I've heard all about the Scott brothers and how they're irresistible to women..."Brooke said.

Lucas shrugged. "It's been a curse all our lives."

She wasn't smiling. "Well, I'm not interested in a quick roll, an affair or a relationship—which should cover all the possibilities."

Damned if she wasn't even more alluring when she was trying to be rude. "I'm going to enjoy changing your mind. Why don't we start with that quick roll and work our way up?"

"In your dreams."

"You're right about that. Nights are long and cold this time of the year, you know."

"Go write a book," Brooke suggested. "Sit by the fire."

He shook his head. "I'm going to have to add a little excitement to your life."

"Scott," she said with a sigh, "I'm beginning to think you're as bad as everyone says."

He just smiled. "Count on it, pretty girl...."

A/N: Hey guys, so I'm stuck for the moment on all my other stories, and this idea has been gnawing at me for a while now so I thought I'd just put it on paper, I already have eight chapters written but I'll post them as my beta finishes with them (Thanks Gabby 3) but here it is! It's gonna be mostly Brucas of course, but there is some Naley and Jeyton, and it's completely AU. I hope you like it.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but the characters I have created.

Prologue

The Scott brothers were looking for trouble. They usually were. In the small town of Tree Hill, North Carolina, it wasn't always easy to find, but then, looking was half the fun.

When they piled into Nathan's secondhand Chevy, they'd squabbled over who would take the wheel. It was Nate's car, and he was the oldest, but that didn't carry much weight with his two brothers.

Lucas had wanted to drive. He'd had a need for speed, a thirst to zip along those dark, winding roads, with his foot hard on the gas and his reckless mood chasing behind him. He thought perhaps he could outdistance it, or perhaps meet it head-on. If he met it, bloodied it, conquered it, he knew he would just keep driving until he was somewhere else.

Anywhere else.

They had buried their mother two weeks ago.

Maybe because his dangerous mood showed so clearly in Lucas' piercing blue eyes and in the cold set of his mouth, he'd been outvoted. In the end, the youngest Jake had taken the wheel, with Nathan riding shotgun. Lucas brooded in the back seat.

They were a rough and dangerous group, the Scott boys. All of them tall and rangy, with fists ready and often too eager to find a target. Their eyes, Scott eyes, all varying shades of blue, could carve a man into pieces. When the dark mood was on them, a wise man stayed back.

They settled on pool and beer, though Jake complained, as he was still shy of twenty-one and wouldn't be served.

Still, the dim, smoke-choked bar suited them. The slam and crack of the balls had just enough of a violent edge. The wariness in the eyes of the other customers, gossiping over their beers, was just flattering enough.

Nobody doubted the Scott boys were out for trouble. In the end, they found what they were looking for.

While a cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth, Lucas squinted against the smoke and eyed his shot. He hadn't bothered to shave in a couple of days, and the rough stubble mirrored his mood. With a solid smack, a follow-through smooth as silk, he banked the cue ball, kissed it off the seven and made his pocket.

"Good thing you're lucky at something." At the bar, Chris Keller tipped back his beer. He was, as usual after sundown, mostly drunk, and mean with it. He'd once been the star of the high school football team, had competed with the Scotts for the favors of pretty young girls. He still hadn't forgiven them for always being second best. He was looking for a fight, the black eye he'd given his young wife before leaving the house hadn't really satisfied him.

Lucas chalked his cue and barely spared Chris a glance.

"Going to take more than hustling pool, Scott, to keep that cafe going, now that your mama's gone." Dangling his bottle from two fingers, Chris grinned. "Heard you're going to have to start selling off for back taxes."

"Heard wrong." Coolly Lucas circled the table to calculate his next shot.

"Oh, I heard right. You Scotts've always been fools, and liars."

Before Jake could leap forward, Lucas shot out his cue to block the way. "He's talking to me," he said quietly. He held his brother's gaze another moment before he turned. "Isn't that right, Chris? You're talking to me?"

"I'm talking to any of you." As he lifted his beer again, Chris's gaze skimmed over the three of them. At twenty, Jake was tough from basketball and football, but still more boy than man. Then Nathan, whose cool, thoughtful gaze revealed little, He looked back at Lucas. There was temper, hot and ready. Recklessness worn like a second skin. "But you'll do. Always figured you for the biggest loser of the lot, Luke."

"That so?" Lucas crushed out his cigarette, lifted his own beer. He drank as they completed the ritual before battle, and customers shifted in their chairs to watch. "How're things going at the factory, Chris?"

"Least I get a paycheck," Chris shot back. "I got money in my pocket. Ain't nobody going to take my house from over me."

"Not as long as your wife keeps putting in twelve-hour shifts working tables to pay the rent."

"Shut your mouth about my wife. I earn the money in my house. I don't need no woman paying my way, like your mama had to do for your old man. Went through her inheritance like it was water, then up and died on her."

"Yeah, he died on her." Anger and guilt and grief welled up inside him. "But he never laid a hand on her. She never had to come into town hiding behind scarves and dark glasses, and saying how she took a fall. Only thing your mother ever fell over, Chris, was your father's fist."

Chris slammed his beer onto the bar, shattering the glass. "That's a lie. I'm going to ram that lie down your throat."

"Try it."

"He's drunk, Luke," Nathan murmured.

Those lethal blue eyes sliced toward his brother. "So?"

"So there isn't much point in breaking his face when he's drunk." Nathan moved a shoulder. "He's not worth it."

But Lucas didn't need a point. He just needed action. He lifted his cue, studied it, and then laid it across the table. "You want to take me on, Chris?"

"Don't you start in here." Though he knew it was already too late, Owen the bartender jerked a thumb toward the wall phone. "You make any trouble in here, I'm calling the cops, and all of you can cool off in jail."

"Keep your damn hand off the phone," Lucas warned him. His eyes were hard enough to have the bartender backing off. "Outside," he said simply. "You and me."

Curling his fists, Chris stared at the Scotts. "I ain't having your brothers jumping in on me while I kick your ass."

"I don't need any help with you." To prove it, the moment they cleared the door Lucas pivoted to avoid Chris's swing, rammed his fist into Chris's face and felt the first satisfying spill of blood.

He couldn't even have said why he was fighting. Chris meant less to him than the dust in the street. But it felt good. Even when Chris got past his guard and connected, it felt good. Fists and blood were the only clear solution. When he felt the satisfying crack of knuckles against bone, he could forget everything else.

Jake winced, then tucked his hands in his pockets when blood spurted from his brother's mouth. "I give it five minutes."

"Lucas will take him down in three." Nathan watched the grunting opponents wrestle to the ground.

"Ten bucks."

"You're on. Come on, Luke!" Jake shouted. "Beat his sorry ass"

It took three minutes, plus thirty nasty seconds with Lucas straddling Chris and methodically pumping a fist into his face. Since Chris's eyes had rolled up white and his arms were limp at his sides, Nathan stepped forward to drag his brother away.

"He's finished." To decide the matter, Nathan rammed Lucas up against the brick wall of the bar. "He's finished," he repeated. "Let it go."

The vicious rage drained slowly, fading from Lucas's eyes, uncurling his fists. Emptying him. "Let go, Nate. I'm not going to hit him again."

Lucas looked to where Chris lay moaning, half-unconscious. Over his battered body, Jake counted out bills for Nathan. "I should have factored in how drunk he was," Jake commented. "If he'd been sober, it would've taken Luke five."

"Luke would never waste five full minutes on a punk like that."

The arm that was restraining Lucas slipped companionably around his shoulders. "Want another beer?"

"No." He glanced toward the window of the bar, where most of the patrons had gathered to watch. Absently he swiped blood from his face. "Somebody better pick him up and haul him home," he called out. "Let's get out of here."

When he settled in the car again, the aches and bruises began to make themselves known. With half an ear, he listened to Jake's enthusiastic play-by-play of the bout and used Nathan's bandanna to mop more blood from his mouth.

He was going nowhere, he thought. Doing nothing. Being nothing. The only difference between him and Felix Taggaro was that Felix was a drunk on top of it.

He hated the damn cafe, the damn town, the damn trap he could feel himself sinking into with every day that passed.

Nathan had his basketball, Jake his music, He had nothing.

"Pullover."

"Damn it Luke, you gonna be sick?" Not concerned so much as apprehensive, Jake gripped his own door handle.

"No. Pull over, damn it, Nate."

The minute the car stopped, Nathan was out and walking. He didn't need to look behind or hear the curses and mutters to know that his brothers were following him.

"Remember when we spent the night out here, on a dare? Ten years ago, I guess it was. I snuck upstairs and started creaking doors. Jake wet his pants."

"I did not."

"Yeah you did."

"When are you leaving?" Nathan said quietly. He'd known it, saw it now in Lucas' face.

"Tonight. I've got to get away from here, Nate. Do something away from here. If I don't, I'm going to be like Keller . Maybe worse. Mom's gone. She doesn't need me anymore. Hell, she never needed anybody."

"Got any idea where you're going?"

"No. North, maybe. To start. I'll send money when I can."

Though he felt as though someone were wrenching off one of his limbs, Nathan merely shrugged. "We'll get by."

"You have to go to the NBA. Mom wanted that." Lucas glanced behind and looked at Jake. "He'll be fine with his music, this town's going to remember the Scotts meant something."

Lucas smiled. For the first time in weeks, the gnawing ache inside him eased.