Disclaimer: I own some OTH dvds & that's about it.
A/N: So this is a randomly Tyler Hilton inspired Chris/Peyton piece, because I always thought they had an unexplored potential. In honor of his May 9 return to Tree Hill - - here you go! Oh and the title is a Ryan Adams song that I adore.
Hard Way to Fall
I hope this helps you understand she writes in an email.
It might not be perfect, but it's close enough. She found love in a photograph of a boy she barely knows.
Up late working on the magazine she stumbles on to an article and a picture of a memory. Hours later he's in her office and she laughs at the irony.
Theirs a promise of always and a hint of forever when he entwines his fingers with hers walking back from the café that night.
A week later they laugh over sushi and he whispers "I've been looking for someone like you."
His eyes are the color of the sky on a summer day. She used to stare at the cloudless blue abyss and wish that it would stay.
She hears him sing again and while she watches him onstage she remembers why a part of her understood Haley's betrayal.
She wonders if she found love in old running shoes, burned CDs, Buicks, and his calloused hands.
He's not who she thought he was.
She thinks for just a moment that maybe Chris Keller fooled them all.
Because when Chris looks at Peyton he doesn't see her tragedy.
It's been years since Tree Hill and sometimes she pretends that they never had a past.
She allows herself to forget the brothers, best friends, ex-lovers, and dead mothers who defined her high school years.
Sometimes he's hard to love, but most of the time she feels like she's falling deeper.
He makes her laugh, and when she's not telling him to shut up she's ripping off his clothes.
Chris doesn't' talk in the third person anymore, and even his arrogance has become more refined.
Teenage girls line up for blocks to watch him strum his guitar, and she likes knowing that he's hers.
Months after that first late night coffee they move in together, and she smiles at him over the New York Times.
Peyton loves the way he looks in the morning, how everything she owns smells like him, and their lazy Sundays spent exploring the great big city. So when Chris Keller gets down on one knee at the Modern Museum of Art she just whispers yes through the tears.
This is the only explanation you will get she types, because he's singing a Johnny Cash tune while he burns their eggs she quickly sends the e-mail to the life she left behind and goes to join him.
