Disclaimer: I do not own 'High School Musical' or any related characters nor do I own Taylor Swift's lyrics.

A/N: There's not much to say about this chapter, except I think the last chapter over shadows it quite. But that's my opinion and because I really love the last chapter.

I only have one warning, don't get your hopes up with this chapter, just because of its contents. There's a major problem that neither of them address.

Still enjoy!


The Letters Never Read

Chapter Nine: Later

I'll leave my window open,
'Cause I'm too tired at night to call your name.
Just know I'm right here hopin'
That you'll come in with the rain

Come In With the Rain – Taylor Swift

Dear Troy,

What are you doing here?

I'm pretty sure I didn't ask you that when I opened the door to my apartment and was confronted with you dripping wet from the rain that's been pouring since the beginning of this week. I don't think I asked you anything at all, actually. You just wrapped your arms around me and held on.

Now you're asleep on my couch and it's only now that I see how utterly exhausted you are. How could I have never seen it before? I've never seen you so exhausted and I can remember how worried I was about you when you stopped for a few days after a month of tournaments and slept for those three days. I can't believe how easily you hid your exhaustion from me every time we spoke on the phone, I can't believe how I never saw it in your post game interviews or that I didn't listen to the tennis coach at my school who always went on about how it was impossible for someone to play for as long and as hard as you do without faltering or giving in to exhaustion.

I can't believe I was so wrapped up in how much it hurt me every time there was that pause in our conversations where our 'I love you' should have been that I didn't realize that exhaustion in your voice wasn't just from the match you'd just played but from all those other matches.

I can't believe you're here.

I thought…I thought you were in Europe all this month, wasn't it something like Switzerland, France then London? All in one month, one tournament after another? Wasn't this month the final of the ATP World Tour? Wasn't there some sort of special ceremony thing for you to go to as celebration of your finishing the year as number one? God, did you really just get on a plane and fly out of London when you were sure you had no other obligations after that final match at

I can't ask you now because you're fast asleep but I have to tell you Troy, that little ball in my stomach that formed when you told me not to come back in London? It's grown tighter and is now lodged tightly in my chest even though I can feel that block that stopped me from breathing loosen because you're here.

I don't even know why you're here, for all I know you could have come personally to sever all contact with me because it's too hard. I know Troy; I know how hard it's gotten between us since we decided that two summers spent together is enough. I know how hard it has gotten because sometimes I sit at my bay window and I'm so tired of hoping we'll pull it together enough for us to even have that conversation about what we are. Or what we should be. Or what we're going to be.

I'm tired of wondering about it, Troy, of questioning whether or not we will come back together and it'll work the way you said it would work on that crumpled note I keep in a wooden box under my bed. And I was so tired of sitting by my window every night contemplating calling you and only putting the phone down because I'm tired of this dance we seem to be doing every single time we talk on the phone.

Are relationships meant to be this complicated? Is it just about to get even more complicated because you walked through my door thirty minutes ago and I have no idea what's going to happen now that you're here?

Oh my God, what if you're as exhausted as me with it all? What if you knew that I was tired of calling for you and letting you know that my door is always open for you? That I was hoping that you'd come in with the rain that seems to be a constant in San Francisco at the moment.

I'm so exhausted. I don't think I can repeat it enough. I don't think I even know how exhausted I am. I don't. But I don't think I can imagine what you're going through right now. I don't think that's even possible for me to comprehend how physically tired you must be combined with…well I don't even know what it's combined with. You say so little to me over the phone Troy, so little and what you do say is coded or so blunt I'm left so stunned I can't even offer you a reply until afterwards when I know exactly what to say.

What are we doing, Troy? Why am I rehashing this while you're asleep on my couch, exhausted and still untouchable? Why does it even matter now? I don't know why you're here, I don't know if you're really here to sever all contact with me or if you're here to tell me it's time or if you're here because you don't know what to do with yourself the way you didn't three years ago.

Do you know what I'm hoping?

I'm hoping that you'll wake up and tell me that the reason you flew from New York to San Francisco is because you're here to tell me you love me too, that you want me to rejoin you on tour when I can and that we're going to walk down the streets holding hands like I've always wanted to do since that summer by Sturgeon Bay.

But I don't think that's what's going to happen. I could read you back on Sturgeon Bay; I could even read you when you left me in that hotel room but I haven't been able to read you since I stepped off that plane to join you for Roland Garros.

So even though I'm sitting here hoping that you'll wake up and tell me that you've finally figured out you love me and that the reason you walked into my apartment was because you're here to tell me that it's time to give us a chance. That you're ready to stop holding yourself back from me and whatever else you seem to be holding back from.

I know that it's a stupid thing to hope and I know it's almost like I'm hoping for my movie ending but I don't care.

I don't care Troy because I'm sitting here, watching rain fall and hoping that the reason you've come in with the rain is because you're as tired of pretending as I am and that you're ready to tell me everything I need to hear.

I love you, Troy, even if you're fast asleep on my couch and wet from rain.

I hope you're here to tell me what we need to do to get ourselves out of this.

Gabriella


November 2007 – San Francisco, California

"Gabriella?"

The disorientation he felt as he slowly dragged his mind out its sleepy haze was something that irritated him as he struggled to sit up. The couch wasn't exactly comfortable and it didn't offer the support he was used too as his body protested as he sat up.

Closing his eyes tightly, Troy swung his legs over the edge of the couch and had to smile ruefully as a small part of his brain pointed out that he'd known he was going to regret catching a plane out of London as soon as the World Tour Finals had finished and he'd fulfilled all his post-final obligations.

His body, that finely tuned weapon on court, ached all over and, as he opened his eyes to look for the petite brunette he'd rushed from London to see, Troy knew he was going to have to get back on court as soon as possible in order to work out the soreness and the kinks that he had acquired during the marathon match against Thomas Fernando, a Spaniard who's backhand was lethal and temper often got the better of him.

"Brie? Are you here?" He spoke again, opening his eyes and scanning the apartment for the brunette who had looked so shocked when she had opened her door to see his exhausted silhouette.

When all he received was silence, Troy frowned and stood up, knowing he was going to have to go in search of her and feeling uncomfortable at the thought. Still, he hadn't flown all this way to not tell her something he'd been working up the courage to tell her ever since she had left him at Heathrow the year before.

Carefully inching his way around the coffee table, Troy wondered how many rooms there were in her apartment and how many he would have to look through to make sure she was actually in the apartment.

Stepping out of the living room, where the uncomfortable couch was the centerpiece of the room with a desk covered in papers sat in the corner, Troy moved hesitantly down the hallway, away from the front door and wondered how big this apartment actually was as he saw and opening and turned into it.

An ear splitting scream stopped all wondering as he jumped back when he felt someone pound their fist into his shoulder, making him wince slightly due to the strain it had been under twenty-four hours ago.

"Troy Alexander! I'm going to kindly ask you to never do that again!"

Blinking slightly, his heart hammering in his chest, he looked down at the person who was hitting him and met angry ebony eyes that glared up into his own and made him smother a smirk as he realized he'd found his woman.

"Sorry. I woke up and couldn't find you. How was I supposed to know you were in the," he glanced over her head and his eyes swept over a pristine kitchenette, "kitchen?"

"Well, you could have stayed in the living room couldn't you?" She snapped at him, huffing slightly when she realized he was grinning at her and making Troy grin harder.

"Nah. I've never seen your place. It's…small, I think."

She rolled her eyes. "Small, you think? Troy, it's actually pretty big and way more than I can afford."

"So why do you have it?"

She bit her lip slightly at his question, giving him the impression that there was something about this apartment, in an old building – a rarity in San Francisco – that had caught her attention and made her normally sensible attitude towards things like budgets get thrown out of the window.

"Well…come on, I'll show you."

Raising an eyebrow, Troy dutifully followed her down the hallway and into what he could only assume was her bedroom.

It wasn't a small room by any means, with a bed – neatly made – in the center of the room and a dresser pushed up against the wall on one side. His eyes purposefully skipped over the photos on the dresser and focused on the ones on her bedside table, he felt his stomach turn slightly as his eyes found a photo of them together. One that had been taken when his guard had been down and it was easy to hold her tightly against his body.

"This is why I'm renting it."

He quickly dragged his eyes away from the picture and schooled his face to neutral when he was met with two big Bay windows that looked out over the city. Despite the rain hitting the panes with a ferocity he remembered from when he'd run upstairs to her apartment, he could tell that it was a beautiful view that she…she looked out over whenever she could.

He chose not to comment that he knew she looked out of it whenever she was thinking of him, that he knew she sat by it and stared when they finished those conversations where everything was so loaded down with everything they didn't want to say

"Wow. Gabriella, these windows are great." He said, stepping closer to her in order to look out them more clearly.

He felt her body brush against his and heard her quick intake of breath when he leaned over her to see out.

"Yeah, they are great, aren't they?" She spoke quickly, as if in defense of her reaction to him and he leaned back, shoving his hands deep in his pockets as he turned to her.

He met her eyes for a brief moment before letting them wander over her face and noting how tired she looked. It looked much like the exhaustion he'd begun to feel every time he hung up the phone and wanted to bang his head against a brick wall because of all the things he wanted to say to her but couldn't force out of his mouth.

"What are you doing here, Troy?"

Her question caused his eyes to snap away from the shadows under her eyes to meet them. He waited a beat, watching as self-preservation warred with hope in her eyes and then he swallowed and spoke.

"I'm here for you, Gabriella. There are a lot of reasons why I'm here for you." He added, foreseeing her next question and stopping it before she could ask. "I'm here, Gabriella, because I can't hang up the phone every night and wish I'd said more to you. I'm here because you deserve more than a phone call every night filled with random conversation. I'm here, Gabriella, because I'm sick and tired of fighting what we're meant to be just because I'm afraid you won't be able to handle my schedule."

There was more, so much more to what he needed to say to her. He needed to tell her he loved her and that he knew what a horrible person he was for treating her the way he had during those summers she was with him. He needed to tell her he was in it for good now and that he had a ring in his pocket because he didn't know any other way of keeping her.

There was so much more to say and he would have said it if Gabriella hadn't pulled his mouth down to hers in a desperate kiss that spoke of all the things she wanted to say but wouldn't until later.

An arm wrapped tightly around her waist pulling her close as his hand rose and tangled tightly in her hair. He slanted his head and probed her open even as she tugged at his shirt. His hand on her smooth skin, the way she arched into him, dragged his mind out of the shocked haze that had enveloped it when her mouth had pressed frantically to his the moment he'd taken a breath.

"Gabriella, wait." He struggled to hold back a groan when her snaked under his shirt, scraping her nails over his smoothed, defined abdomen as he tried to pull some semblance of order back to the conversation.

She shook her head. "No. Later. You're here and it's time."

He wondered, briefly, what she was talking about and then found he couldn't think at all as she kissed him again and he sank down into her kisses. Believing, perhaps foolishly, that the time to speak would come later when they weren't so occupied with reveling in touching each other and the hope she'd harbored that he would come in with the rain wasn't running so freshly through her mind as they clung to each other.


San Francisco, California – 2009

Later never came, Troy remembered. Later turned into buying a house and a proposal only a month after they had begun to work things out. Later never was the conversation they should have had before he had proposed or she had accepted. Later was never that conversation where he told her all the reasons he needed her and gave her the choice to walk away.

Later turned out to be a fight neither could remember who started and her walking out with a slamming door in her wake.

Later, Troy thought, was all fucked up.

Putting down the second last letter and standing up to pour his second cup of coffee for the morning. Troy leaned against the kitchen counter thoughtfully. He wondered if he had pulled away and put enough distance between them that night, would they have still ended up where they were today. If he had told her what was going through his head and what she needed to know, would that epic fight they'd gone through six months ago still have happened?

Back to what-ifs and maybes, he thought with a sigh. Even though he'd decided a week ago that he wasn't going to think about those again, he couldn't help it when that memory was dragged to the forefront of his mind.

"Troy, my man, you're not sulking!"

Hearing the loud voice of Chad had Troy spitting out the hot coffee he had just taken a sip of and splashing the rest of it out of the cup and over his wrist.

"Jesus, Chad! How the hell did you stay quiet?" Troy snapped at his friend, who stood in his doorway, dressed in old basketball shorts and a basketball jersey, his afro pulled back into a tight bun and a basketball under one arm.

"Um, I don't know?" Chad actually looked confused and Troy couldn't blame him. Chad wasn't exactly known for his ability to be stealth, especially when it came to walking through Troy's mess of a house. Chad hadn't been able to stop himself from tripping over the boxes stacked against the walls ever since he'd started to drop into Troy's house.

"Smart answer. What are you doing here?"

"Well, your dad called and said something about getting you out of the house and 'cause I'm such an upstanding type of guy, I figured why not drag my tennis buddy down to the basketball courts and show him what a real sport is like?" Chad grinned, throwing the basketball at Troy who, having put his coffee down, caught it with a grin.

"Whatever. You know that I'll beat you, right? Just like I beat you at tennis when you were so sure you were going to win that."

Chad scoffed. "Whatever. I was having an off day that day. I know for a fact that I can beat your ass at tennis just like I'm going to beat your ass at basketball."

"Oh yeah?" Troy raised his eyebrows.

"Yeah."

"Alright, I'll do you a deal, if I win both basketball and tennis – two sets, no tie break - will you drive with me to San Jose next week?" Troy asked, his mind working as he tried to figure out a reason to tell Chad why he needed to go to San Jose without even hinting at what he actually wanted to do in San Jose.

"Uh, sure. I think my schedules free. But if I win, you have to come to Vegas with me!" It was the most outrageous, ill thought out term to a bet that Chad knew he was going to regret the minute he'd blurted out the words. Troy never went to Vegas and there was a gleam in Troy's eyes that warned him that he probably shouldn't have agreed to the bet.

"Alright, but if I win, we go to San Jose in your Jag." Troy grinned. Chad's Jaguar was less than three months old and hadn't been taken out of the garage yet, much to Troy's chagrin. He wanted to know exactly what that car could do and he figured that it was a little less conspicuous than showing up in Chad's Lamborghini.

"No! That car - "

"It's either that or we take your Lamborghini." Troy grinned and Chad narrowed his eyes. Troy waited for a moment, watching as Chad attempted to figure out where the bet had come from and why it seemed important so to Troy that he would risk going to Vegas.

"She's in San Jose, isn't she?"

"You know, Chad, you're not as stupid as everyone gives you credit for." Troy grinned and jogged over to him, patting him on the shoulder as he attempted to sidle past his friend and his question.

"Bolton, why are we going to San Jose?" Chad demanded following him as Troy headed towards the stairs.

"Chad, I have a question for you, why do you assume we're going to San Jose when we haven't even begun playing the games?" Troy turned around to narrow his eyes at his friend and was pleased when Chad looked caught.

"Uh…hurry up and get changed dude, we have to claim a court before someone else does."

Troy chose not to smile victoriously as Chad glared at him before turning and heading up the stairs.

He had to wonder, as he began to pull clothes out of a drawer that he hadn't shut properly the night before, if Chad knew that Troy had outsmarted him, a rarity due to Chad's ability to see through most of Troy's schemes before they had been fully lifted off the ground.

The minute Chad had suggested a game of basketball; Troy knew that he needed his best friend with him when he drove down to San Jose. He supposed it would have been easier to ask Chad than tricking him into accepting a bet but Troy wasn't willing to take any chances. He needed Chad with him as much as he needed Chad's Jaguar XF to get them there.

Because he knew that if he pulled up in his car, she was going to know exactly who it was and he didn't think he really wanted to let her know that it was him that had driven to see her because if she did know then there was, in all likelihood, a chance that she would refuse to see him.

Which was why he had started with his first serve, straight down the line, in what he knew was an ace.

He just hoped it worked.

Because he didn't want to think about what would happen if his counter to her serves didn't work, Troy chose to ignore the stack of envelopes sitting on his bedside table and pulled on a pair of basketball shorts and a wife beater.

Grabbing his tennis bag and a pair of trainers, he stepped out of his room, hoping to god he was in shape enough to play basketball.

Even as he stepped out, Troy glanced back at the stack of envelopes and prayed that it worked.

He prayed that the 'later' now wasn't too late at all.


A/N: Ah-ha...and what's Troy going to do now, I wonder? Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. The tournaments Gabriella refers to in her letter is the Davidoff Swiss Indoors Basel, played in Switzerland, the BNP Paribas Masters, played in France and the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, played in England.