Chapter Three: Maybe I'm Amazed


Author's note: This is my favourite of the chapters so far, and also calls back to the whole "I've been your girl since I was seven" line of the first chapter. And I'd like to thank you all for the reviews. One more thing. I've been asked a lot about a sequel to AWR. I'm considering it. I'm not sure when, but it's a definite possibility. If I can think of enough plotlines before I have to write it, I'll do it. Thanks for your support.


December 3rd 2020, Tree Hill High School, Tree Hill, North Carolina

She hovered awkwardly, waiting for the prompt that did not come. He raised his eyebrows.

"What are you doing here?" he asked again.

"I didn't think I needed a reason." She took several hesitant steps in to the office. "You left the house this morning before I was awake."

"Had places to be," said Nathan.

"Where? Here, teaching high school kids? That's all your life is. It should be more, Nathan," she said.

"Don't talk about things you don't understand."

She stared at him for a second, shocked in to silence.

"I want to understand. Tell me something. Anything. Please. I came too late, I missed all of it. Everyone understands but me. I was in love in high school but I got over it," she begged.

"There's nothing to tell."

He rose and walked to the window. Their eye contact broke and he stared out at the courtyard, at students milling around, standing close together to ward off the chill that was beginning to surround them.

"I always thought you'd get past it. I never thought you'd be the type to live your life in the past," she said sadly. He turned to face her.

"I'm not."

"You are. You know you are. Tell me the past. Let it out. Let me help you," she said.

Nathan bit back the comment that came to his lips, that he didn't want her help. Instead he wandered back to his desk and wondered how to tell her where it had all begun.


May 8th, 1994, Tree Hill, North Carolina

It was her song that alerted him of her presence.

Slowly he became aware of an intruder in his special place, his secret hideout. He glanced around him surruptiteously and grabbed a rock, telling himself he was prepared to defend himself.

"Who's there?" he asked, his childish voice high and nervous. Her singing stopped, and he found himself missing it.

"Just me," she called back. Her voice was shakey.

"Who are you?"

Behind him, he heard a small thud on the hard packed dirt. He turned around quickly and eyed the figure that had fallen obviously out of the tall tree beside her.

She was significantly smaller than him, but her face and eyes placed her to be about his age. Her hair was messily loose around her shoulders, and light brown in colour. She was wearing denim overalls and a red and white striped shirt. He glanced back up at her face and was struck by her eyes. Usually eyes didn't register with him, but her big, brown soulful eyes left an impression that he would never fully recover from.

She stared back almost challengingly, at his muddy blue jeans and the hodded sweatshirt he wore, his own blue eyes and the hard look on his face.

"Who are you?" she asked, her voice firmer.

"I asked you first."

She glared at him for a moment, her hands on her hips.

"Haley Elise James," she said finally. He stepped forward cautiously.

"Nathan Scott. What are you doing here?"

Haley glanced around, at the flowing river sligthly below them, the muddy bank beside it, and the ring of trees around them that gave them a sense of being inclosed.

"Free country."

"This is my place. I've been coming here for two years," he said, as if challenging her.

She narrowed her eyes. She'd only just escaped from the frenzy of her home, and now someone was telling her that she couldn't be here, the only place she could find to be alone?

"So what? Now it's my place, so you'd better back off," she said.

"Will not."

"Will too."

"Maybe we could make a system. Like..." he surged on despite her scowl. "I could come here tomorrow, and then you can have it the day after."

She cocked her head to one side, contemplating this.

"Fine. Deal."


December 3rd 2020, Tree Hill High School, Tree Hill North Carolina

Nathan glanced up in irritation when he realized he'd been interrupted.

"So you became friends?" she asked, almost smiling. He shook his head.

"No. We've never been friends."


May 10th 1994, Tree Hill, North Carolina

As Haley heard a twig snap, she jumped up in alarm. Nathan noted immediately that she was covered in mud and her hair was covered under a baseball cap.

"What are you doing here? You were supposed to be here yesterday," she reminded him.

"I forgot," he said, lying unconvincingly.

Rolling her eyes, she dropped back down to the ground and immersed herself once again in the book she was carrying. He leaned against the tree and began to throw a tennis ball up into the air and catching it, again and again as the afternoon wore on.

Haley left as the sun began to set, at around six. She glanced around her shoulder to see him still there, staring down into the river. She wondered what was keeping him from going home, but she didn't dare ask.

She was there the next day. And the next, and every day for the next year. Slowly, without many words passing between them, they grew to know each other. They never spoke a word to each other at school, or anywhere else, but by themselves, in their secret place, they grew together.

Suddenly it stopped. At the beginning of sixth grade, more than a year after their initial meeting, she abruptly stopped coming. She began to hang around the new boy, Lucas Scott. Slowly he began to realize that she'd learned a new side of him, one she found much more distasteful.

By the time seventh grade started, they were no longer a part of each other's lives.

He remembered the first time he'd seen her in seventh grade. He hadn't seen her all summer, and in all honesty had barely thought of her since then. It was the first day of junior high and he was walking through the halls, glad to have found a new, more elevated social scene to dominate.

And he'd seen her.

It had just been for the barest instant. He'd come to the end of the hall, looking for a classroom and had all but collided with her, coming out of the tutoring centre.

He hadn't registered her for a second. For a moment she was just another new girl. Then he glanced into her eyes, and remembered. And realized suddenly that over the summer, she'd... developed. Through her cotton shirt he could see the beginnings of woman-like curves. Her face had changed, becoming less round. He remembered the fascination they'd once shared and never spoken aloud.

"Haley," he said, trying out the unfamiliar name on his tongue.

"Nathan." Her voice was steadier. She wasn't alarmed by him, even if he did rule the school. She was stronger than she'd been.

They stared at each other for a moment, as if amazed that somehow their almost relationship had come back to them.

"Haley!" Haley's eyes instantly darkened in guilt when she saw Lucas running down the hall toward her. She manufactered a smile for him.

Nathan and Lucas met eyes and looked away instantly.

After Nathan had darted back down the hall to avoid them, he stopped and peered around a corner to watch their interaction. Lucas looked suprised and upset, but Haley barely looked disturbed. Which, as Nathan forced himself to be reminded of, was the case. They'd been sort of friends for a year, years ago. Obviously she'd forgotten it.

He didn't know what drew him to the river that evening. To their special place in the valley below the town. Somehow his feet drew him there after school. Somehow he knew she'd be there as well. Somehow, incredibly, she was.

He stared at her until she glanced down at her shoes and unconcsiously tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She looked up at him once again to catch his slowly blossoming smile.

"You came back," he said eventually. For an instant she felt like she'd never lef the indescribable haven they'd silently made for each other.

"Everything's been so crazy, with junior high starting. I guess I couldn't handle it. I needed to escape for a bit," she explained, glancing around.

"Yeah. I know what you mean. I haven't been here in years."

She looked up at him and smirked, knowing it was a lie.

"But I guess I though you'd want to escape with Lucas?" he asked. She looked at him and noticed that they'd gravitated toward each other and were only inches apart. She craned her neck up. He was very tall.

"Nathan," she began. He smiled at the sound of her saying his name, at the joy it gave him that he could not understand. "I don't want to talk about Lucas."

His smile turned into a grin, and his blue eyes sparkled. He opened his mouth to say something.

Gathering her courage, she leaned up and pressed a kiss to his startled lips. As his shocked eyes met hers, she realized the implications of what she'd done, and took off.

Nathan gingerly touched his fingers to his mouth. She tasted sweet, like cherries. And she gave him a different feeling, one he couldn't begin to describe.


December 3rd 2020, Tree Hill High School, Tree Hill, North Carolina

Nathan stopped talking for a second, realizing he'd been interrupted.

"So you got together?" she asked, looking less happy now, and more resigned.

"No. But everything changed."


October 14th 1994-1995, Tree Hill Junior High School, Tree Hill, North Carolina

Nathan couldn't explain it.

Somehow everything was different, but the words would never come to him. Every time she was around, he could sense her. Every time they met eyes, something would go through him. Every time he remembered her lips on his, he couldn't help but smile.

He kissed other girls. Many of them. No one was the same. These rushed, wet kisses often involving tongue didn't even measure up to the warm kiss she'd given him the last day she'd spoken to him.

It was as if his entire state of being changed. As if suddenly he woke up in the morning with purpose, and suddenly knew precisely how to live his life. In short it was that day, in their valley, with a few words and a quick touch, that their lives changed forever.

Every time he'd see her walking down the halls with Lucas, she'd give him the same look. The look that told him that she loved him better, or at least liked him better. The look that told him that she'd give up Lucas in a second for him, to continue their relationship of sorts. Or whatever it was.

Whenever Lucas and Nathan would pass each other in the hallways, they'd scowl as they never before. Every day Lucas realized to the full extent of how thoroughly he'd lost Haley to him. He needed Haley. He loved Haley. He knew it, and Nathan did not.

And so grade seven passed in to grade eight.

Nathan was running. Running like he'd never done before, but he didn't know why. The force pulling him was too strong, and he had to give in to it.

Haley looked up at him in surprise when he arrived, through her long eyelashes. She'd grown out of her overalls. She was dressed like she should. Better than that.

She slid her hand in to his as he approached, and they both smiled. She opened her mouth to say the only words that applied.

"You came back."


December 3rd 2020, Tree Hill High School, Tree Hill, North Carolina

"And then they got together," said Nathan with a note of finality.

"Why aren't they together still?" she asked.

Nathan sighed and shifted his gaze to the desk. She nodded, understanding that she wasn't about to get more information. Knowing that this was more than she'd managed to obtain in years. Knowing that underneath it all, he really didn't want to tell her anything. She was intruding. She would forever be an outsider.

Nathan waited for her to ask the obvious question.

"Do you still love her?"