Summary: Haley James has been in love with her best friend´s brother for a long time now. Nathan had never been in love, but his brother´s best friend wakes his protective instinct.

Rating: M (for later chapters)

Disclaimer: I don´t own One Tree Hill or any of its characters

Author´s note: So this is my first One Tree Hill story. I´m really excited lol. English isn´t my mother tongue so there might be some mistakes, but I hope there aren´t too many. I hope you all enjoy it!

So this was her world. It wasn´t very special, but for Haley it was all she had. She was sitting in the cafeteria next to her best friend Lucas Scott. At the opposite two other friends of them were sitting. Skills and Fergie. Even though Lucas was popular, played for the Tree Hill Ravens and was the brother of Nathan Scott, the most popular guy at school who also played for the Ravens, he stayed with his old friends.He wasn´t dating a cheerleader or hanging around with the other jocks. Haley´s life had changed when Lucas´s did two years ago.

When Luke´s mum Karen was pregnant at the age of 18 his father had left her and knocked up another woman called Deb and they moved to Tree Hill together. He and Nathan didn´t get along very well at this time, but two years ago Karen had died in a car accident and Luke had to move in with Dan, Deb and Nathan Scott. And then he got popular. Haley wouldn´t call herself popular, but people had liked to pick on her before and she had been an outsider, but everyone knew she was Lucas´s best friend and when he got popular, people stopped their stupid and sometimes really mean comments and now her fellow students accepeted her.

Haley had never cared about this. She had Lucas, Skills, Fergie and the other guys from the Rivercourt. They were her family and gave her the strength she needed. Her parents were travelling around the US, but she didn´t blame them for leaving her alone because now that she was sixteen her parents finally had the opportunity to have some time of their lives for themselves. Haley had six bothers and sisters and she was the youngest of them. She knew and understood that her parents needed time for themselves. She would need that time,too, after 26 years of raising children.

Haley looked over to the table where the jocks and cheerleaders were sitting. Nathan was sitting there. He was talking to his best friend Tim Smith laughing at some idiotic comment. Haley knew that there was no possibility Tim would ever say anything else. Nathan´s eyes met hers and before she could look away Nathan smiled at her. Haley smiled back the blush creeping up her face and then she looked down.

Her and Nathan never talked a lot, just hellos, byes and some small talk. Haley had hated him once because he had always picked on Luke, but since they were living in one house they had become friends and were actually getting along pretty well. Haley was glad about that because now Luke couldn´t be that mad at her if he ever found out that Haley liked Nathan.

She never tried to flirt with Nathan or to do more than just small talk, she knew she never had a chance with him. He was only dating cheerleaders and hot girls and Haley thought that she was the opposite of hot, or at least the opposite of Nathan´s last girlfriend Rachel Gatina who wasn´t only hot, but also a cheerleader.

The first time Haley noticed she liked Nathan she told herself that she was nuts even thinking about liking him, but even though she denied it to herself for a long time at some point she had to give up lying to herself and so she got used to her sweet dreams about Nathan. If he knew he´d probably laugh about her.

Nathan was so bored. As usually he was sitting at a table with the rest of the team, exept for his older brother, and some cheerleaders. He could listen to the talk the guys were having for some time, but he tried to block out everything the cheerleaders said because he didn´t want to scream at them how stupid they all were.

He was the king at school and most of the time he didn´t mind that one bit, but sometimes he just wanted to be some random guy nobody cared about. That way he could be himself. He had to lie to his friends about his grades because they were really bad, most of the time he couldn´t say what he really thought, they expected him to think the same things they thought, and he never could just be normal for a couple of moments.

That wasn´t a possibility if you were the most popular guy at school and everyone was watching you. He knew that, learned it from his father. His biggest fear was missing the winning basket in a game. People at school would probably kill him if he did. Sometimes he wanted to be his brother. Playing basketball for fun, having honest friends and the most important point was that their father didn´t pressure Lucas as much as he pressured Nathan. Of course, Luke had had to start playing for the Ravens, when he became a part of their family, but he didn´t have to practice at least three hours a day plus school and regular basketball practice with Coach Durham.

Nathan laughed when everyone else laughed at some stupid joke from Tim. He looked up and saw Haley, Luke´s best friend, looking at him. He had the feeling her big brown eyes saw right through him and she knew exactly who he was. Nathan really liked her and envied Luke for having such an awesome friend. Haley was a really nice girl and helped everyone that needed her help no matter if she got anything back. From the way she had acted all those years they were going to the same school he could tell she didn´t care what all those idiots at school were thinking of her. Nathan admired her for that. He wished he could care less about people´s opinions on him. He had tried, but it hadn´t worked.

He smiled at her and saw her blush immediately. Haley blushed a lot. He didn´t know if it was only around him or also in other people´s presence. He just thought it was adorable. Every time she smiled at him with this sweet smile of hers he just wanted to cuddle her, like a little sister. Couldn´t his parents adopt her? He knew hers weren´t around anyway. She wouldn´t have to take care of herself all the time that way. Nathan shook his head at himself. This was a really silly idea. It´s not like anyone would voluntary move into the Scott mansion with his father still in it.

And another reason was that Haley was way too good to live in such a screwed up family as his. Why was he thinking about that? It was totally stupid. His parents adopting Haley so she could be his little sister to cuddle. Pffff. Sure. How silly could he be?

He looked over to her again. She was smiling at Skills who seemed a bit mad about her laughing at him, but soon he started laughing,too. Haley could and would make everyone smile and laugh if she wanted to. It was her charm and she could use it on every single guy in this school and it would work, even with him.

„ So, hotshot, why are you staring at your hottie-bro´s little tutor-friend?", Brooke Davis the captain of the cheerleaders asked grinning at him.

„Oh, shut up, Brooke.", he rolled his eyes."I was just thinking about something."

„Hooking up with tutor-girls?", she asked still grinning, but stopped when Nathan looked at her annoyed. She and Nathan were actually friends. Even though she was a cheerleader, Nathan liked her because he knew Brooke had a good heart and even though everyone else thought she was shallow he knew she wasn´t. She had been his friend for a long time now and he really wouldn´t want to miss their friendship for anything in the world because he really didn´t have a lot of friends he trusted. Probably only Brooke, Lucas and his teammate Jake. Everybody thought Tim was his best friend, but he was more Tim´s best friend than Tim was his. Nathan didn´t really trust him because he knew Tim had a big mouth and yeah,...was kinda dumb most of the time. Partying with Tim was always fun, but never ever could Nathan have a real conversation with him. Nathan wasn´t the smartest guy,but he knew he was at least a bit smarter than Tim. He wasn´t as intelligent as Lucas or as good as Jake, but Nathan thought he was pretty okay compared to guys like Damien West, Tim and Chris Keller. Gosh, how he hated Chris Keller. The guy was older than all of them, repeating his senior year,and they were juniors. He was the guy Rachel had cheated on Nathan with. And the guy didn´t stop hitting on Haley though she had showed him that he would never have a chance with her. And Chris talked about himself in the third person. How crazy was that? The guy was totally arrogant and...he was like a lot of other people probably saw Nathan sometimes. The big difference was that Nathan sometimes acted like an ass because people expected him to, Chris acted like one because he really was an ass. And Nathan didn´t want Haley to fall for a guy like that. He didn´t know her all that well, but on the other hand he had the feeling he knew her better than anyone else and that since the first time he had looked into her eyes and from that moment on he had known Haley deserved better than anything anyone could give her because she was perfect and so the lucky guy that would get her some day had to be perfect,too.

And he would protect her from every other stupid guy on her way to this perfect man.

Little did he know that Haley had already found her 'perfect' man.