So I sat down to write the next chapter of 'What Are You Afraid Of' and this is what I ended up with. Just something that I've been thinking about lately, and decided to finally type it up. Feedback is appreciated!

And as always, I own nothing OTH related.

Haley Scott walked out of the airport breathing in the fresh Carolina air. She hadn't stepped foot in Tree Hill for nearly eight years; not since her divorce. She had been afraid; afraid to see him again, afraid to be vulnerable again.

But she had to do this; she had to be there for her friend. Lucas was dying and his last wish was to be reunited with everyone again. Haley knew he would most likely be there, and again, she was afraid.

Their marriage had been one that you only see in a young girl's fairytales. The kind filled with knights in shining armor, and godmothers who help the young lady find her true love. That fairytale was made legal at only seventeen, when they were not even seniors in high school. But their lives were filled with bliss; anyone could see how happy they were. It was Nathan's parents who tried to break them apart. They did anything they could to make the marriage miserable, but in the end, even they could see just how in love they were.

And then one day, she was gone, disappeared from everyone's life. No one knew where she had gone to; even she didn't know where she was going. But she couldn't stay there anymore, she couldn't ruin his dream. All that time, she felt she was just holding him back, keeping him from greatness. And she didn't want him to grow old with regret, she loved him too much.

She hailed a cab to take her back to her old life. "Where to miss," the balding driver asked her to which she simply replied, "home." Home was 212 Chestnut Street. It was where the aroma of apple pie could be smelled and where family got together to watch the big game. It was where she lived for the first seventeen years of her life, until she met him.

The ride was short, but staring out the window, so many memories were relived.

"My mom said you'd be out here," Nathan said as he walked onto the basketball court by the river. This court had become such a monumental piece in all their lives; it was the one place where everything was always perfect and at peace. "Something about a grade?"

"Yeah, you cannot be here right now," she protested. This was not happening. First of all, she was totally flunking P.E. and needed to be able to shoot a free throw to bring up her grade and now her boyfriend came to watch. Yeah, this wasn't helping.

"Why not?"

"Because I look stupid," she said placing her hand on her hip. Why shouldn't she feel stupid? Nathan scored forty points some games, while she nearly drowned in the balls at Chuck E. Cheese. Being athletic and coordinated was not a James family trait.

"You realize I've seen you in that crocheted poncho thing you wear, right," he joked.

"Come on this is embarrassing! I want you to think I'm… not embarrassing," she whined. It was a constant issue she had with herself. She saw all the girls throwing themselves at him in school, she wasn't naïve enough to believe otherwise. Her insecurity always took over; she was afraid she would lose him. If only she had realized the irony of that then.

"You don't embarrass me Haley."

"Oh really," she scoffed preparing herself to shoot the ball. She sent him a look before sending it flying through the air and watching it go nowhere near the basket. Instead, it went straight into Nathan's hands.

"Okay, I take that back."

"I can't do it."

"Yes you can," he encouraged, standing next to her. "Alright, square your shoulders, to the basket. And you've got to bring the ball up right past your nose like this, okay?" He handed her the ball and walked to stand behind her. "Now bend your knees a little, relax your hips," he directed, placing his hands on her sides. Leaning in, he gently said, "And just shoot." Doing as she told, the ball was much closer to the basket, but didn't go in. Feeling discouraged, she looked down and started playing with her hands. If her boyfriend, the leading scorer for his high school basketball team, couldn't teach her how to shoot a ball, she deemed it hopeless.

"Okay, so that wasn't perfect," Nathan said, seeing the disappointed look on her face. "But it definitely wasn't embarrassing. It was actually kind of sexy," he winked going to retrieve the ball, chuckling to himself upon seeing her face light up at such a simple comment.

But that was then, back when the biggest problem in their lives was worrying about the grade they got on their French test or making sure they were home by curfew. It seemed so trivial now, when such a horrible obstacle faced them all: death.

As they drove by the pier, Haley could see that they had added renovated the area where she had spent so much time. It's where she went to relax, where she went to hang out with friends, where she first tutored the boy who was flunking math and english.

She had been waiting for over twenty minutes, where was he? She knew she shouldn't have taken a chance on him. And if Lucas found out that she was tutoring his hated half-brother, all hell would break loose for sure.

"Breakfast of champions," Nathan announced cheerfully as he set coffee and crackerjacks on the table. "Want some?"

"You're late," was all she said. She was going to take this seriously, just because the great Nathan Scott got away with everything else in school, didn't mean she was going to let him walk all over her either.

Sighing, he took off his backpack and sat down. He grabbed a box of crackerjacks opening it quickly. Taking out a small package he said, "Please let this be a cheat sheet." But he found that the prize inside was a tacky, plastic, twenty-five cent bracelet. "It's for you," he gave a lopsided smile.

"Stop it," she ordered. They were going to get some studying done whether he liked it or not.

"Come on," he tried again, putting the bracelet on her. Looking her square in the eye he said in a husky voice, "Don't say I never gave you anything."

Haley shivered in her seat even though it was a warm fall day. His deep blue eyes were the window to his soul. She felt as if she could really see the person he was, but his reputation got in the way of that. Shaking her head, Haley picked up the book they were supposed to be studying from. "Do you see this book? Because this book is me, I am math."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It's supposed to mean that you can work your whole "I'm Nathan Scott, Mr. Big Shot, scoring my touchdowns" on somebody else, because I don't—"

"I don't even play football," he interrupted. Was she serious? This girl was crazy, he concluded. With her strange sense of style, right down to the people she hung out with, namely his half-brother Lucas.

"Whatever. Look, the point is at the end of the day, all your bluster and BS don't mean anything to math because math don't care, and neither do I," she finished.

"Well, does English care? 'Cause I really suck at that, too," he joked. Usually his Scott charm guided him to victory, especially when it came to women, but it wasn't working on her. And he was fascinated by this.

"Please don't waste my time. I am already taking a huge chance on you because my instincts are screaming that you're full of shit." She knew what would happen if Lucas found out; their friendship would be over. But she was doing this to help him. Lucas wanted to be a part of the basketball team so badly, so she made a deal with the devil. She tutored Nathan and he got the guys on the team to leave Lucas alone. Simple as that.

That's where it all started, where the rest of their lives began. Neither of them knew it at the time, but it was like their future had just been laid down in front of them and they both jumped at the chance to take it.

Soon they were passing by the apartment complex that she had once lived in, Haley could swear a few tears might have fallen from her eyes. That building held fourteen months of love, trust, and secrets kept from the world. That building had experienced a couple that gave everyone such faith in their own lives.

"Now since I couldn't get you the fancy honeymoon suite," Nathan said pushing the apartment door open. "I figured I could, you know, at least carry you across our one bedroom threshold." He placed his wife back down on the ground to reveal a room filled with candles and white rose petals scattered sporadically.

"Oh my God," she gasped speechless.

"I wanted everything to be perfect. I know you didn't get your dream wedding, or your dream honeymoon," he said, stuffing his hands in his pocket. He wanted to give her the world, but he couldn't; so he did the best he could, with what little he had.

"I got my dream guy," she smiled up at him. They were simply two crazy high school kids in love, out to prove to the world that age didn't matter.

"Well yeah, you did get that," he chuckled. She stood up on her toes to kiss him before wrapping her arms around his waist. They were happy.

It was the beginning of something new. Something they had never experienced before. There were people who disapproved, there were people who were jealous, and there were people who longed for that kind of love. And they enjoyed it all.

Arriving to her childhood home, Haley took a deep breath before entering through the front door. This was it, the moment everything would change. The moment that erased all her hard work over the last eight years. The moment that took her back to the beginning. "Mom, Dad, anyone home?" She got no response; the house was silent. She picked up her bags again and headed upstairs to her old bedroom. Pushing open the door, she found that it was the same as she had left it the night she moved to Nathan's apartment. How she missed her room, her own place of utopia, but even her sacred place to hide held its share of memories too.

Pacing back and forth, Haley finally got the courage to dial his number only to get his voicemail. "Hey, its me," she said into the phone. "Um, I guess I'm just worried about you. I really hate the way we ended things." It had been a tough week on everyone to say the least.

"So do I," a drained Nathan said standing in the doorway. Seeing her questioning gaze he answered with, "Nobody answered the door."

"They're gone for the weekend," she said, her gaze not breaking from his. Setting the phone down she asked, "How are you?" It hurt her to see him like this.

"Not so good, can I—" his sentence went unfinished as they hugged. Both on the verge of bittersweet tears they held onto each other like they had nothing else to hold onto. They had both been emotionally torn down and needed the other to build themselves back up.

"I made a lot of mistakes Haley," he admitted finally pulling away from the embrace. "Sometimes because of my dad, sometimes by choice." He wasn't proud to say it aloud, but he had to. He had to come clean with himself and with the person who cared about him most. Walking over to her bed, he sat down, taking her hand and pulling her to sit with him. "I just can't do it anymore."

A few tears spilled down her cheeks. "It's okay," she tried to comfort him even when she knew it wasn't.

"No. No, it's not okay. I'm not okay. I lived for tonight. I was so scared. I'm still terrified," he revealed. It scared him to see how his obsession with basketball had begun to ruin his relationships with everyone he loved. "Then I saw you. I promised myself that if I could just get up, and walk over to you, and tell you how much I need you, and how much I want you, that nothing else matters," he said breathlessly. That was the moment he knew he had fallen in love with her.

It was times like those that Haley appreciated the most. She was able to take a broken boy and change him into a good man. Leaving him was the hardest thing she ever had to do in her life. To this day, she still wonders what could have been if she had stayed.

Setting her bags down, Haley flopped onto her bed staring at the ceiling. She wasn't ready to face reality; she wanted to go back to being five years old again and playing with her Barbie dolls.

And as much as she didn't want to face her ex-husband, she wasn't sure she could stand to see her longtime best friend for the last time either.

After she left Tree Hill, the only person Haley kept in touch with other than her parents was Peyton. That was how she learned that Lucas had HCM, a genetic heart defect. And it had moved into its final stages giving Lucas merely weeks to live.

"Haley you have to come home," Peyton pleaded with her over the phone. "He's your best friend and he wants to see you again."

"I can't do it Peyton, I can't go back there. You know what I've been through," she argued.

"Yes I do know what you've been through, and let me tell you, it sucks. But so does this, Lucas is dying Haley," she emphasized. "What's it going to take for you to set aside your pride and come say good-bye to your oldest friend?"

"This isn't about pride; I just can't face the brothers who brought me down. I've already cut one from my life and now the other is being taken away from me," she cried. "It's not fair."

"Life isn't fair," Peyton said softly. "You of all people should know that. But Lucas wants to see you, and I think you could grant him one last wish."

The next day Haley bought a plane ticket to Tree Hill, North Carolina, a place that had become so unfamiliar. She was so scared to be there, she didn't know if she could face everyone again. Turning her back on the small town, she left everyone behind, not just her husband. It was surprising to her that Lucas would even speak to her, after she ran away from over ten years of friendship.

Haley and Lucas had been seated next to each other on the first day of third grade; they were inseparable ever since. Everyone always thought they were dating when they got to high school, but never once did their relationship take that leap. "That would be like some sort of hideous Joey loves Dawson scenario and totally creep me out," she would always ramble.

But then that day came when Lucas found out about the tutoring; their friendship took a turn for the worse. Over time and after many explanations, Lucas was able to accept it and the two went back to being the great friends they were. And although he had difficulty seeing them together at first, he was finally able to put his feelings aside and just be there for his friend.

"Uh, okay, you're not gonna like this. In fact… you're gonna hate this. But I feel that I should tell you in the interest of full friendship disclosure," Haley said rushing into Lucas' bedroom. She had rehearsed her speech in front of the mirror and was prepared for any sort of insult that may come her way.

"Yeah right, what could be worse than you tutoring Nathan," he chuckled but stopped upon seeing the look on her face. Realizing what she had come to talk about he said, "you like him."

"Luke, do not freak out on me, okay? I can't help it any more then you can."

"I don't like him," he shouted back. Nathan was the enemy; the two brothers had been poisoned against each other by their ass of a father, Dan Scott.

"I'm talking about you and Peyton. We don't decide who we like. We just-it happens," she argued. Week after week, she had been subjected to many conversations about how much Lucas like Peyton, but she couldn't do the same?

"Do you know what you're getting yourself into?"

"I-I'm not getting myself into anything. I am thinking about maybe getting into something that is never gonna happen anyway," she shrugged. There was no way a guy like Nathan Scott would ever go for someone plain like her.

"But what could you possibly like in the guy, huh?" As far as he could tell, Nathan was a complete jerk.

"Different stuff. We connect. Yes, he can be a total ass sometimes, but I'm telling you, it's just a defense mechanism. He really opens up with me, Lucas," she pleaded. She wouldn't be able to juggle the two guys and she wasn't about to choose between them either; she needed them to get along.

"You know how I feel about him," he said through clenched teeth.

" And I'm sorry for that. I am," she tried to convince him.

"But I get it, all right? I understand," he sighed. And he did. He knew what it was like to just run into that one person you know you're going to be with and sometimes you just have to let life run its course.

Now it was Haley's turn to be there for him, and if that meant having to see her estranged ex-husband, then so be it.