"Hey Ma, I am back. Do you think that it would be okay if I talk to Haley for a little bit?"
"Yeah, I am going to go check on Brooke, but when I come back I think that we should all go to sleep, it has been a really long day."
"Hey, Buddy," Lucas said as he sat down in the chair that his mom had previously vacated. He just looked at her, there were so many more images that he was not going to be able to erase from his mind. But it was just going to be a reminder to him that he never wanted Haley to be like that again, and if he had the reminder then it was his power that was going to stop her from feeling like that once more.
"How do I look?" Haley joked.
"You look sick, Haley."
"I am sick, Luke, sick in love with some who doesn't love me back."
Speaking of Nathan struck a cord with Lucas, "I am so sorry, Hales."
"For what Lucas? You did not pull him out of love; you did not pull him away from me. So what are you apologizing for?"
"I was supposed to protect you; I was supposed to protect you from everything bad that this world had to offer. I was supposed to protect you from the bad boys, and the pain, and the world. But I failed you, I let you go, and you got hurt."
"Lucas, the vow that you made when we were eight was not going to last forever, and we both knew it. It was a valiant effort, but you cannot protect me forever. And this time I was able to feel the pain, and I knew it was real. But I have never felt it like this before, and that is because of you. There are not a lot of people out there that get their own protectors, and I got one for 10 years. So thank you Lucas, but I do not want an apology."
"I let you go because I believed that your husband would take over, I never knew that he would be the one that you needed protection from. I would have never had left you go if I known otherwise."
"Yeah, okay, so what would you do with it if you could see the future? At the rate I was going with Nathan, I do not think that anything or anyone could have pulled me apart from him. Luckily, you cannot see the future, which would ruin a lot of things. We have got to live this life for ourselves, we cannot have someone see into the future for us and tell us how is goes. We have got to make mistakes, we have got to get our hearts broken, and we have got to move on. We cannot dwell on any of these things forever. If we did there would be no future to picture, because it would never change. We would already know the outcome."
"You have got to let go of him, I know that you love him, but what he is doing to you, that is not love."
"You know what Lucas? I had to live to know that. I have been dwelling for some time now and nothing was changing, it is time for change."
"It is his loss."
"I could have shown him forever."
"You did…for a while."
"Then I left."
"And you broke his heart."
"What about my dreams?"
"They were yours for the chasing. Do you regret it?"
"Am I selfish if I say no?"
"You are never selfish for chasing your dreams."
"I do not regret chasing my dreams, but I regret the way that I left."
"You didn't even say goodbye."
"I know, I know, but I never thought that I really was going to go. I mean he told me if I go to not come back. He left and I did not know what to do other then cry my eyes out. Then by some will, I have yet to figure out whose, my feet got me to the bus station. And another will got me onto that bus. I left my husband, I left my best friend. But I followed my dreams. I had the time of my life, but there was something missing. My husband, my best friend. I mean every night there were thousands of people chanting my name, my name, but there were some voices that I was not hearing. Then Nathan had his accident, and I knew that it would have never had happened if I had been there. So I had to come home, I had to be there for him, but he told me he did not want me to come home. What do I do now? I mean my heart is telling me to go home and then my husband is telling to stay away. I mean apparently he does not want me there, I ruined what we had. After another week, I couldn't take it anymore. I had to go home and see if there was anything left, anything left fighting for."
"Did you find it?"
"I lost it, Luke, I lost it all."
"You didn't lose me."
"And that is one of the reasons that I do not regret coming back. If I can have you in my life again, I am not going to give that up."
"I am sorry that I was not the friend that you needed when you came back. I was tangled in my own demons."
"Lucas, you cannot always go saving me. It was time for me to fight alone for a little while, that is what I needed, to see if I could do it."
"And your fighting alone ended you up in a hospital bed; I do not think that you did a very good job."
"Is that really your place to say, Luke?"
"Why can't it be?"
"You fought your own battle after Keith died, you did not let anyone in."
"Keith died, Haley, Nathan did not die."
"So you are going to compare the two now. Maybe Nathan did not die, but I lost him, Lucas, and loss can be experienced the same way. It all hurts the same."
"Okay. But I am always going to be protective of you; you are like my little sister. You never want to see family hurting."
"What about Nathan though, he is your family too?"
"It is hard, Hales. It is really hard. I mean he is my brother, but we have never been close. Well until a force of nature in the form of you brought us together. But he tore you apart, and I cannot let that happen. I had to make the decision to which I had to stand by, and I chose you."
"I really wish that I was not the cause of tearing two brothers apart."
"You brought us together though, and we never had that, I cherished that time. And it is not to say that some day, we can like each other again, but we are always going to be brothers, Hales. Whether we like it or not we are always going to be connected through Dan."
"Urgh, please do not talk about that man."
"I am sorry, he isn't very nice to you, and I apologize for him."
"Lucas, you have no control over Dan, his words, or his actions."
"I am always going to be his son."
"But that doesn't define you."
"I suppose that you are right."
"Lucas, I am Tutor girl, of course I am right. So how is that girl that gave me my namesake?"
Lucas faced changed again, "I don't know, I haven't seen her. And I do not even think that she would want to see me. I messed things up with her, more then one time. I do not know where to go from here."
"Whatever has happened in the past, it is over, the past is done. You have got to live in the present, so that the two of you can have a future. Isn't that what you want?"
"It is all that I want. But I held her heart and I did not even know it."
"Then maybe you weren't ready then."
"I do not think that she is going to trust me again."
"You don't know that. I mean right now, you might be right. But that has more to do with the fact that all these emotions that she has never felt before are surfacing. With you she was trying something new; she was trying to be herself, someone that no one else had ever seen. And her heart broke; she was tired and resorted back to the only self that she had ever known. She is trying to be herself once more. She has felt pain for the first time, it has always been there, but she just never cared enough to feel it. She does now, and she is a new person. So right now she might not be ready to give her heart away, it has a little to do with her scar tissue and a little to do with the inexperience she is feeling. Give her time, that is what she needs, that is what we all need."
"Can I really change the past?"
"You can never change the past, Lucas, but you can change the future. The future has yet to be written. The past is done. Live in the now."
"Are you going to be okay?"
"No one really knows if we are going to be okay, Luke. But you cannot stop trying for that fact. You have got to live and learn, it is the only way. It is going to take a little time for me to get used to being alone and not in a forever kind of love, but I am going to be okay. I am going to see how it feels to do it differently. I have just got to mend the heart that is in a million different pieces. I just wish that Nathan could put the pieces back together again. Because I liked my heart a whole lot more together."
"As did I."
"It really is over, isn't it?"
"It is not really over as it is just the beginning."
"Nathan?"
"What about him?"
She pointed behind Lucas, "Nathan, are you really here?"
"Am I too late?"
