Chapter One

My legs hurt unbearably as I trudge down the hall with books tucked underneath my arm and it is inevitable that I'm feeling the wrath of preparation for the scouts.

Unfortunately, that's not the only wrath I'm facing.

"Loser," someone shoves me, and strides away just as fast. They hate me because I'm going to have a future, and they're going to rot in Tree Hill for the rest of their lives. Dan thinks it's funny. I think I'm getting there.

I turn around to issue a threatening look to the genius that came up with 'loser' but he is long gone because he doesn't need my look to feel threatened.

The actual recipient of the look is neither afraid nor threatened. She has a concerned look etched into her features, something that's made a permanent home on her face, but I don't want to deal with it, so I turn back around. It wasn't fast enough, but hey, I tried.

"They'd think of something better, but it's the shortest word they can say before they run off scared you'll beat them up," she grins, mocking me as she says 'beat them up' like I'm a teddy bear. I smile in response, but I do not look at her. She still sees it as a breakthrough into my soul or something, so she continues. "They're really angry with you."

"I figured that after about a month of shoving and 'fuck you's," I answer sarcastically. "It was a mixed message, but I'm a smart boy."

"You are. I know it," she nods. "Then why let your dad do this?"

I stop. "Peyton," and my body's turned fully toward her so she knows I'm not joking around, "don't start this. Don't start on Dan. I'm doing this for me 'cause I want to. The team can fucking cry over it all they want. I'm not coming back."

"Think about Whitey, Nathan," Peyton says, her brow furrowing with persuasion tactics and accents to puppy dog eyes. "Think about all he's done for you when Dan was off being Dan and you were on your own. Think about when Haley left, or when she was here for that matter—Nathan, don't walk away."

But I am, because if there's anything I don't want a lecture on more than Dan, it's Haley.

"'Bye, Peyton," I call over my shoulder, and it isn't courtesy. It's for her to get the picture and stay the fuck out of my business.

In class, I delete eight text messages from Haley without reading them, and two voicemail messages without listening to them. She's been begging and pleading with me for second chances and fifth chances, for me to grow a heart and soul, to be the man she fell in love with.

She's demanding an awful lot considering she's the one supposed to be asking for forgiveness now. It's not her place to be negotiating and telling me who to be. I've decided that the best course of action is to ignore the girl, and soon it'll be like I never had a wife, or an ex-wife. Just a brief memory of once going insane, and then getting better.

Of course, Peyton jumps on me every chance she gets for the fact that I won't give Haley a chance. She's giving me the grow-a-heart lecture, too, but if they were all even paying a little bit of attention, they'd see that they have no say in what I do with my heart. I put it out there, and Haley ground it into the floor with her shoe like a cigarette butt. Fuck her, and fuck her friends.

I look across the room, and a brave blonde that isn't trying to get into the basketball team's pants eyes me because she's trying to get into mine. A slow smirk spreads over my face and I picture all the ways I can spread her across a counter or the back seat of a car.

My English class was a good one, and lunch after that in the science lab was a great one, almost living up to the daydreams of my English class. The blonde had a two-part name, all cute southern-like, and a birthmark on the back of her knee. But the best part was Haley's look when she saw us coming out, disheveled, de-lipsticked (or the contrary in my case), and disengaged from the world in a mild post-coital euphoria.

"So my roommate was crying over you last night," she says as she climbs atop the treadmill neighboring mine, and I can appreciate her curves in a small violet sports bra and thin black running pants. Her hair is pulled back into a loose ponytail and her face is strangely free of makeup, but I would fuck her, and so would the rest of the guys in the room if the opportunity presented itself, so she really didn't need to try. "I don't know why. There's only so many repeat performances of asshole you can take before it's just boring."

She isn't looking at me, instead punching in her weight and time settings on the screen, but I knew if she was, she'd be smiling that sarcastic Brooke smile, meant to drive a foot straight up into your balls.

I laugh, and with her I somehow feel more free to be open and be okay with being an asshole than with anyone else. Maybe it's because she's a bitch, and she understands.

"I can't help it if I'm irresistible," I say cockily, and she scrunches up her nose daintily in response, finally throwing me a look.

"Mm hm, to Karen Watson? STD much, Nate, or is that a ship that's sailed?" she responds swiftly, grinning at herself in the large, wall-length mirror in front of the treadmills as I reel from the second verbal kick in the balls.

"I would say look who's talking, and well, I guess—"

"Oh, please, Nate," she rolls her eyes as she really speeds up, and her breasts bounce with every stride to the nowhere destination, "is that the best you can do? Besides, it's not even relevant." At my eyebrow raise, she snorts, "I don't fuck Karen Watson. I'm safe."

"Why is it any of your business, anyway?" I ask, grinning at her audacity. We were never that close. She was always the friend of one of my somethings—girlfriend, wife, whatever.

"I told you," she reiterates like I'm high or something, "my roommate was sobbing about you last night."

I nod, and I'm about to make a remark about the 'sobbing' and how I'm irresistible again, but she licks her lips before a thought.

"It's sickening how you bring her to tears with what you do and you act like you don't care," she declares, breathing hard from the strain, but pressing onward. "I know you're not your fucking father, Nate, and don't give me any of that basketball future horseshit. That has nothing to do with bringing Haley to tears because you practically fucked some slut right in front of her."

"I'm not sorry," I say in a hard voice, so she knows it's futile to continue. But to her, apparently, it doesn't send that message.

"And there you are acting again," she said, looking straight into my eyes as she runs. "Just give her the time of day and talk to her like you're fucking human. At least break it off with decency, not with—Karen Watson."

"You don't know me, Brooke," I slow down, and finally the treadmill beeps conclusively as I step off. She continues running, and I start to leave, thinking I haven't even gotten to her about who I am, not that it was really my goal.

"That's what you'd like to think," she murmurs, but it could've been something else I heard amongst her ragged breathing and rapid inhaling. I leave the gym, and head for my parents' house to search for a folder in my room that I'd stared at for hours at a time before.

I decide that tomorrow I will talk to Haley for the last time.

Later the next day, Brooke is glaring at me from across the quad because most likely, Haley told her about the divorce papers I gave her. I did not lie; we had a talk. The talk ended with me pulling out divorce papers and her eyes tearing uncontrollably—again.

I nod at Brooke once, and she knows that it means I broke it off with decency. Whether she agrees with it or not, I don't hang around to see.

"Where's mom?" I ask, and I know that if I have to ask, the answer can't be pleasing. Dan looks at me, and his expression doesn't retain any of the usual snide, coy, and manipulative undertones, although I have no doubt they're lingering just beneath the surface.

He says that she's left; couldn't take it. He continues on about something to do with living with her and how she couldn't see the gift that he was right in front of her, etcetera, but my mind is blank. I feel like a lost five-year-old in a big, bad scary mall without a friendly hand to hold and thousands of strangers tempting me with forbidden candy.

I've never been without my mother, and I go upstairs in the middle of Dan's sentence, wondering what I've done.

Dan said that it would go back to old times. Of course, I'm not a fucking idiot. I knew it couldn't go back to when we were happy because we didn't know about each of our dirty little secrets. But I didn't think it would drive her to leave.

I ponder that thought as I take a long, hot shower under my father's roof, on my father's schedule, without my mother's disapproving twitch of the lips.

Before the towel hits my supple skin, I decide that I will go visit her, and make everything better again.