Author's Note: This idea popped into my head today and so I just had to write it down. This story promises to be much less angst-y than Chemical Love, despite the first chapter. My intentions for this story is for it be more of an old-fashioned romantic type of journey for our favorite twosome. None of those silly triangles involved. Cross my heart. As always your thoughts are and comments are very much appreciated, because I love to know what you think. Feedback, no matter what, is always welcome. So please read on and hopefully enjoy!

I won't always live in my regrets

Prologue

In a corner of a dark attic, underneath a pile of old newspaper clippings and tarnished trophies it lay there. Forgotten. Lost. Unwanted, for more than two decades.

Its color was still hidden along the black shadows of the room, its vibrancy yearning to break free from its dusty tomb. It was a symbol of a life long ago left behind. A life that was not to ever be spoken of again. This emblem, this piece of the past, did not exist outside of the walls it was hidden within.

It was not to ever be found.

And yet, it was to be found once again, by the blue eyes of one curious boy and his dreams larger than even he would have hoped them to be.

Chapter 1

Nathan Scott wasn't the kind of kid you would call a loner. Outgoing, talkative, adventurous, fearless to the bone, he was the sort of twelve-year-old you would picture any All-American family to have. Talented in sports, handsome, a B average student, the kind of kid who always had at least five friends around him at any time. He was any parent's dream child. He wasn't exactly what he seemed.

At first no one noticed his talent. The way he would hold a basketball in his hands, curve his wrists, and rise up on his feet, to make that flawless basket. No one paid attention when he started beating the neighborhood kids at games of 'horse' at his backyard hoop. Not even when they were twice his age. It just didn't seem real. An eight-year-old with that kind of talent. It couldn't be. It was just luck. Or so they would say, and so Nathan would believe them as well. He would go about his days at school as every normal second grader, fifth grader, seventh grader could.

When he'd get home, he'd grab the orange leather bound ball, the one that sat in the back of his closet so his parents couldn't take it away, and he would go into his back yard and play. Sometimes he spent all night on his own court shooting baskets, one after another, until his hands were raw and his neck and feet ached with exhaustion, his stomach empty and growling.

His mother would call him in then, and he would come, but always after he glanced up into the window of his father's study to see him pull back away. He wondered why his father watched him play, but never joined in, never let him play at school, or in the playground around the block. Always at home, and now always by himself.

It was strange really, but Nathan never thought to ask why his father did the things he did. Why he wanted them that way, when they made him look so unhappy. His mother never asked questions, and so he figured it was better not to say anything as well.

It was in the month that passed, two weeks after Nathan's thirteenth birthday, that everything began to crumble under Scott's perfect existence. Death and pain had befallen them like nothing before ever had. All of it happening so fast, so quick, almost as if it were some cruel touch of fate. A way for destiny to balance out all of the good it had given them in the past.

So huge was the accident that it made the six o'clock news. The dreaded words spread out in bold headlines across their local newspaper: Two Die in Fatal Car Crash.

It had to be a dream. No, no it had to be a nightmare. One that wouldn't stop repeating itself over and over again in Nathan's mind. People didn't die because bridges fall out. It's unrealistic, it's stupid. People died of cancer, or old age, not bad craftsmanship. Things like this just didn't happen in the real world. Not in Nathan's world.

And certainly not to people like his father.

A year later Nathan found himself, outside on his court practicing lay ups. He heard the distinct noise of the back door swing open and shut behind him, but he didn't move from where he stood facing the hoop to turn around and look. Several footsteps slapped against the pavement, coming closer to him, almost asking him to acknowledge them, but he refused. He no longer felt like being compliant, things were much easier if he just didn't respond.

"Nathan," his mother called to him softly, her voice soft and breathy.

He didn't speak. He didn't want to.

"Nathan," she called to him again, and her voice broke a little, the way it always did now when she said his name, like it hurt her to say it. Like it made her remember his father.

"Yeah," Nathan said, this time, bouncing the ball against the asphalt in quick repetition, his eyes focused on the ground and nothing else.

"We have some guests. I'd like you to meet."

There was an awkwardness to the way his mother was speaking, her words jilted and uneven. It was unnerving, and it brought him back to the early days of his father's death, when everything felt dark. When everything was empty.

But being as petulant as he was these days, Nathan stood in place and dribbled the ball a few more times. "And . . . ?"

"And," his mother grew impatient. "I'd like you to drop the basketball, come over here, and politely greet our guests please."

He held the ball in his hand and shut his eyes. He took a deep breath in, turned around and opened his eyes on her.

Only five feet then, with straight brown hair and wide brown eyes, she looked like any other girl his age. She wasn't anything exceptional, he thought. But he didn't look away. He stared at her, and she stared at him, and they stood there in silence, in awe.

"I apologize, he's not usually like this," his mother came across the court to him and put her hand on his back urging forward. "Nathan, where are your manners? Say hello."

Taking a step, Nathan moved out of her eyeline for the briefest of seconds, but it was enough to make the girl conscience of her own staring and she averted her eyes to the grass stained tennis shoes upon her feet. Not one to shy away, Nathan stared at her for a few moments longer before he glanced at the taller figure to her right.

And he felt his heart stop.

It was the woman from the picture he'd seen in the newspaper, right next to the man he'd recognized so well. The man that had died on the bridge with his father. It was them. This was his family. Haley and Susan James.

Suddenly the ball dropped from Nathan's fingertips with a heavy thud . . . his body frozen . . . his eyes wide. He could see the figure of the girl's mother coming towards him, a sympathetic smile on her face, her hand reaching out to touch him. Comfort him maybe? He didn't know. He didn't care to know. This woman's husband . . . had killed his father.

Somewhere off in the distance he could hear his mother saying his name, kind words of the woman in front of him. He couldn't feel his anything, and yet he felt everything all at once, making him numb with pain.

"Nathan . . . " his mother's worried voice carried through his foggy brain and brought him back to reality. He found his mother's face and then pulled away from her touch as if burned. His mother tried to reach for him again, but he stepped away, until he was at the edge of the lawn. And then he took off down the street.

He ran all the way down the block before he gave up and took a seat on the edge of the sidewalk, his lungs working overtime and his body heavy. He could feel the weight of his father's absence heavy upon his shoulders, whispering for him to be strong, to be a man. It was so hard though sometimes. It seemed so hopeless. To love someone, care for them, and have them taken away at any time . . . it was pointless. You could lose them all at any moment, any second. Don't get attached. Don't let the pain in. Never let the pain in. It can't affect you that way. He tried to be strong. To be the kind of son he was before. His mother needed him to be that way . . . she was counting on him.

His thoughts blowing through his mind, Nathan rested his arms on his knees and blew out one long breath. A shadow came over his right side and he slowly turned his head up to see the girl again.

"What do you want," he shifted his position on the concrete and tried to focus on the yard across the street from him, but her presence was shaking him more than he would ever admit. And when she didn't speak right away he feared she might stand there forever and gawk at him this way.

When he looked up at her again, she was standing with her hands twirled around the hem of her shirt, furiously biting her lower lip. He waited for her answer impatiently and then seeing her standing their full of uncertainty, knew he would have to wait longer. A single tear was slipping its way down her cream skinned face, and stopped at the edge of her chin before it fell to the ground. He wanted to look away from her, he didn't need to see her crying when he might cry himself, it was too hard.

"Can I sit with you," Haley asked, her words much less meek than he would've figured. And when Nathan caught the girl's eyes that time he didn't see more sadness there. He didn't see pity, or sympathy, or hopelessness.

He saw his own pain reflected right back at him. A window into his own soul.

"If you want," Nathan shrugged, and so she did. Setting herself carefully on the edge of the sidewalk beside him, careful not to touch him, but not be far away either.

A simple gesture.....That was all it took. That was all that was needed.......

Silence transpired thereafter, and for what seemed like ages neither of them spoke, neither of them had to.

The next day, Nathan finally found the courage to venture up to the attic when his mother had gone to the grocery store for a couple hours. Ever since he was young, he was forbidden from going up into the attic . . . some story about poisonous spiders, or rats, or the floorboards being weak, but Nathan knew then as he knew now that there were no spiders or rats, and the attic was so jam packed with boxes that it was a physical impossibility for the boards to be weak and still hold so many things.

It was dusty of course, and he had to hold a hand over his mouth so as not to choke, but stepping up into that attic was like stepping into a whole other world. Old pictures in large frames were scattered everywhere, and boxes of clothes and Christmas decorations seemed to tower over him in droves. In one corner he could see a collection of all his old toys: legos, tonka trucks, and an antique train set his grandfather had got for his seventh birthday, but nothing of his father's.

Traveling past a covered sofa couch and a collection of his mother's old China sets, Nathan saw something gold catch the corner of his eyes. Interest piqued, he went over to the small cluster of boxes in the very corner of the room, and picked out the golden object. It was a small figure of a man with its arms outreached and basketball in it's, as if ready to shoot the ball through a hoop. Glancing down Nathan, rubbed his hand over the trophy, causing the dust to float away in little brown clouds. On the bottom of the plaque read: Regional Championships--1958, Royal Scott.

Now more confused than before, Nathan began searching through the box for anything that would explain what in his hand he could not believe to be true. He rummaged through the first box and then a second and then a third, finding nothing. Pulling at the top of the final box, Nathan's mouth dropped open at what he saw.

Everything was now beginning.