A.N: Another Three Doors Down song to describe this chapter. But it seems like I could describe almost every single one of my chapters of this story with a verse of one of their songs. The song in its entirety has absolutely nothing to do with this chapter (or this story). But that was why I chose this specific verse.

Happy Reading.

And I've bundled up all of these fears inside
And I've bottled up all of this pain
And no one or nothing can take this away
But I won't let it happen again
Never again

-Three Doors Down

Chapter 13: You knew didn't you?

Haley sat atop Lucas' bed for a few minutes, trying to decide what she should do next. She was lost in her thoughts of what she should do, and how she should act, and how she wanted everything to go back to normal.

In the end, she simply sat staring at her hands, simply trying to avoid Lucas' eyes as he tried to search through her thoughts. She knew very well that if he wanted to, he could do it. She had known him long enough, and well enough that he could probably read her as well as both Nathan and Brooke could.

"You know he never meant to hurt you, right?" He started tentatively, trying to search for anything that he could possible say that would make Haley forgive his brother. Nathan hadn't been the same since Haley had told him that she couldn't forgive him that day in the high school cafeteria. No one understood it at the time, and they understood it even less as time had progressed. But now both Lucas and Brooke knew. They hadn't been told, which would have been the preferred way of hearing about what had transpired between their two best friends; but they could figure out why neither Nathan nor Haley particularly felt keen on disclosing what exactly had happened.

The main reason being that neither of them actually knew the whole story.

Haley assumed the worst of the whole entire situation, which, albeit was mostly factual; and Nathan was too busy metaphorically hitting himself over the head to actually have the sense to tell Haley what he had learnt a few weeks later. He didn't want to hurt her more than she had already been hurt.

Lucas remembered the day that Nathan found out about what Taylor had done. He, of course hadn't told Lucas; but he knew that it had something to do with what had happened between him and Haley. He had just seemed too confused and heartbroken to even think properly.

That was the day that Lucas realized that his brother was in love with Haley James.

Lucas stepped into the house of his best friend (and half-brother for the few people that didn't buy into the well-placed lie of him being Keith's offspring), and sighed. He was glad he hadn't been raised in this house. He was there more times than not; but it would have been completely different to have lived there. He'd rather not think about it.

He stepped onto the first step of the large staircase leading to the upper floors, and prepared himself for the absolute wreck that Nathan had been for the past month and a half. Ever since Haley had had the breakdown in the cafeteria, neither of them had acted normally. Usually Nathan would have been at Haley's house at this time of night on a Friday; but he was certain that his brother would be in his room, wallowing in his own self pity right about now.

He approached the door with caution, as though his worst fear lay on the other side. Though a crying Nathan Scott certainly was towards the top of his fear list, and in the mood that he had been in lately, it wasn't being ruled out as a possibility.

He had his hand on the handle far before he would have wanted to. He loved Nathan like a brother (yes, he knows that they are brothers…), but Nathan hadn't been acting like Nathan the past few weeks. He had changed into a completely different, unrecognizable, shell of a person. He went through the motions of going to school, playing basketball and hanging out with his friends (namely Lucas and Jake); but he wasn't the happy and joking person that he had been just a few weeks before, and that scared everyone. No one knew what had happened or how the two 'Most Likely to Become a Couple' couple had gotten so off track. Just, one day, no one could exactly pin-point when, they had seemed to fly apart, moving at completely different directions.

He pushed the door open slowly after knocking three times with no answer. The first thing he saw and heard was a grown man (or he looked like a grown man) jumping up and down on his bed chanting "I WAS DRUGGED! I WAS DRUGGED!" Needless to say, Lucas was beyond confused. He just simply stood and stared at his brother as he jumped, and chanted. Lucas didn't remember the last time he had seen Nathan looking this happy, and he looked joyous now. He was acting as if he had just won a million dollars, and none of it was being taken away for taxes.

"Are you on drugs right now?"

Nathan promptly fell off the bed and onto the floor, cursing as he stood back up, vainly dusting his clothes of imaginary particles, but his large smile was still in place, brightening his navy eyes to a sparkling azure. "I can't help it! I'm so happy! Haley can't be mad at me anymore! I didn't do it a second time! I was drugged! I was drugged!" He was jumping up and down on the carpet now, probably making dust fall from the ceiling in the dining room below, but he didn't care.

"Okay, then what are you waiting for? Go tell her." Lucas said, always the voice of reason in his group of friends. Apparently he was the only one in the room that had thought of actually telling Haley of his findings, because Nathan's face immediately dropped, his eyes darkening as his walls went back into place.

He sat on his bed, shaking his head. He couldn't tell Haley, it would kill her. She'd have to know why, that was the kind of person that's the was. There was a reason for everything, and she would search out a reason as to why in the world her sister would ever want to hurt her like that. He couldn't hurt her like that again. She didn't deserve it, whatever Taylor thought.

"I can't." His voice was nothing more than a whisper, and Lucas would have had to strain to hear it, had there been any other noise in the room, but there wasn't.

"Why the hell not? Set this straight." Lucas wasn't one to get confused very often. He was usually the one explaining confusing things to other people; but this utterly and completely confused him. Why could Nathan not tell Haley whatever had happened (he had already given up on trying to get the actual story form his brother), and get their group back together? Whatever it was that Nathan had done, had ripped apart their group. Never had they been this distant with each other. Never had secrets been kept between them, and never had they ever been separated the way they were right now. "This has changed everything Nathan. If you can set it right, then why the hell wouldn't you?"

"It would hurt her more than I already did." He didn't leave room for argument; he walked away, not looking back for a moment.

Haley locked eyes with Lucas, seeing what he was thinking, just by looking into his eyes. He was trying to tell her something, and she knew it. He was telling her his side of what had happened, and his look of how it had happened. She knew that much. But when he got to one specific part, she couldn't place the feeling. She was confused. Silent story-telling isn't as useful when someone doesn't understand. "Just because he didn't mean to doesn't mean he didn't."

"Haley, he did something… Something unforgivable. But something else he did. Something that you don't know about, just might make you see that he would never intentionally hurt you."

Haley stepped off of the bed, heading for the door. She had a lot to think about, and only a few minutes to figure it out before she would have to do something, for fear of loosing her mind.

When she reached the door, her hand already on the handle, she turned back to her life-long friend and spoke slowly. "Yeah, well, accidents happen." And then she was gone.

Haley knocked on the bedroom door, and waited to be told that she could enter. She had to do this right if it was going to work. She wasn't sure what she should say, or how she should say it, but she knew she had to say or do something. She had to have answers, and this seemed to be as good a time as any to get them.

She heard a deep voice say "come in" and she put her hand on the door handle tentatively. She took a deep breath to fruitlessly calm her nerves, and turned the knob, pushing softly.

She stood just inside the room, leaning against the wall beside the door, her hands clasped behind her back, just watching him watch her. She knew that she would need to speak soon; she was the one that came to his room after all. "I need to talk to you." She said simply. Simple is good. It's the opposite of complicated. Complicated is bad, and this situation is complicated multiplied by ten-thousand.

"About what?" The tone of her voice scared him. She never talked with that little emotion. She was an emotional waterfall. She couldn't conceal her emotions behind a façade for very long, but in the mean time, he didn't know what to do, or how to precieve her new-found nonchalance.

"About Taylor."

He gave an exasperated sigh. He knew about Taylor. She didn't. He'd like to keep it that way, but as the wall to her waterfall of emotions started to crack, he could tell that that option was already out the window. "What about her?"

"The fact that you knew, and didn't tell me." She was biting her bottom lip, like she always did when she was nervous.

"Knew what?" Deny, deny, deny, don't admit it!

"That she was just trying to hurt me." The wall was gone. The pain stretching for miles. "I don't see why you didn't tell me. I hated you, and you tried to protect me. I just don't understand." She was fighting back the tears that always seemed to be so close to the edge. She couldn't conceal the pain anymore. It just hurt too much.

"I guess I didn't want to hurt you more than I already had."

"But you could have hurt me more. I treated you horrible, and you could have thrown this in my face. You could have gotten yourself off the hook, making me feel even worse, and making me even sicker to my stomach with betrayal, and you didn't. After all the of the terrible things I said and did to you, you never made me hate her more; the way I should."

"I guess you do stupid things when you're in love."

Haley's head snapped up from the thread of carpet she had been focusing on. "You can't do that." She said watery, her voice thick with unshed tears.

"Do what? Tell you that I've been in love with you since I was thirteen? Why not? You did it to me, and then just walked away." She could tell that he was hurt, he had been hurting for the past two and a half years, and he rarely let it show in the way he acted, and now his feelings were blowing up in her face. She couldn't blame him for that. She had done worse to him, and she knew it.

"That's different."

"How is it different? Because it's you? What would you do if I walked away right now? How would you feel?" His voice had risen to a dangerous level, but he didn't care much, he hadn't shown her the way he felt, and if this conversation was going the way he thought it was, she deserved to know that he had been hurt too. She wasn't the only one that had felt betrayed and lost. He lost his best friend the same way she did. And he had to live with the guilt that it was entirely his fault. She didn't know anything of that.

"No. Not because it's me. You kissed me, and I got scared. You hurt me Nathan! You hurt me so bad! I don't know if I can ever forgive you for that!" She was yelling too. It was the only thing she could think of that would get all of their feelings out. An argument sometimes makes you say things you don't mean. But more often than not, it makes you say things that you didn't mean to say aloud.

"Haley, don't you think I got hurt? I knew for over two years that I didn't do half of the things you thought, and I carried that around with me every single day, knowing that if I told you that you would probably forgive me! You think that didn't hurt? It hurt like hell!" He had walked so close to her by now, she could smell his minty breath, his nose nearly touching hers. She didn't know what to make of him, or what else to say.

The closeness surprised him. He hadn't meant to approach her, or to get this close. He just looked into her eyes longingly, wishing for things to go back to how they were supposed to be; when them being this close hadn't been a problem; when the fact that they were in this close proximity, was used as a source of amusement for their friends; when they were in love, but denied it constantly, for fear of the others true feelings. At the time, they begged and prayed for a simpler time; but now they prayed for those complicated turns in comparison to the drama and heartache they suffered now.

"I'm never meant to hurt you Hales." The way their voices had softened was surprising, going from such hostile tones, to soft and intimate. Not that either were complaining.

"I know that. But it didn't make it hurt any less." Her breath tickled his chin, the space between them decreasing by the second.

"I'll never hurt you again Hales. And that's a promise." Her eyes fluttered shut, knowing what would happen when she did, and understanding what such a thing would mean. He took her shut eyes as a sign, and ducked down to kiss her.

A.N: Cliffie—But not really… I haven't started the next chapter yet, but I'm about to, and I think it will be the last… maybe… depending on how the writing goes. I'm pretty sure it will be a based on a song and mostly drabbles, with maybe a set up for the sequel. I might not do the sequel set-up though, for people who aren't that interested in it… I haven't decided yet….

I am going to admit something to you guys: the past… three chapters have all been me buying for time/chapters. I'm trying to come up with stuff to try and push Haley and Nathan together, and I think I have it now. Please be patient. I originally had them getting together when Haley let it slip about her being in love with him (chapter 10 I believe), but when I reexamined the context and thought about some of the reviews that I've gotten, saying things like: "I want Naley to get together, but I know Haley's gonna need time to get over this", I rethought that. I think that if I were in Haley's position (and I actually believed in true love) I would want to be certain that I wouldn't get hurt again. I'd need some sort of convincing, and a lot of soul searching to put myself on the line the way love puts you on the line. I believe that love is just a recipe for hurt. But I am also a romantic (when it doesn't come to myself). So I hope you guys liked this chapter.

Please use that lil purple button!

Keira