I woke up in the middle of the night and I noticed my girl wasn't by my side,

Could have sworn I was dreamin,

For her I was feenin,

So I had to take a little ride,

Back tracking ova these few years,

Tryin' to figure out what I do to make it go bad,

'Cause ever since my girl left me,

My whole left life came crashin'

I'm so lonely

-Akon

Nathan Scott lay across his bed drearily. He didn't know what to do or how to act. It seemed like no matter what happened that made his world darker, the sun came up the next day. And that made absolutely no sense.

He threw his basketball up into the air and caught it without thinking. Life really sucked for Nathan Scott. From the outside looking in, you would see the campus playboy with everything going for him; but what you see and what you feel when your living it are two completely different things. Seeing the guy that led Duke to four consecutive NCAA championships is one thing, but seeing the way his eyes fell when they played Stanford was a completely different thing. He played horribly the entire first half, and then he was benched for the rest of the game after the coach saw how horrible he was playing. She hadn't been there, but seeing the blue and gray of the team's jerseys made him feel sick to his stomach.

The thought of her made him sick to his stomach. It was a shame that almost everything he owned, and everyone he knew reminded him of her. Lucas reminded him of her. Brooke reminded him of her. He felt resentment towards Brooke and Lucas' relationship. They had lasted eight years, and he couldn't even make it a year and a half. They hadn't spoken since Christmas of freshman year. That was when he realized that it was over. That was when their whole relationship had changed. He hadn't accepted her calls, deleted any e-mails, ignored text-messages, and fell silent when Brooke or Lucas spoke about her. She eventually gave up, and when that happened, it hurt more than he thought it would.

The sound of a knocking on his dorm door broke him from his cathartic thoughts, and turned his attention to his half-brother. Lucas was leaning against his door-frame with the trademark Scott smirk plastered across his lips. He smiled when he saw that he had his brother's attention, and entered the room without talking, sitting on the second bed in the room, and taking the ball from Nathan's raised arms.

"Did you take the offer?" Lucas asked seriously, never taking his eyes off of the distressed leather of the basketball.

Nathan sighed and nodded his head in an affirmative, snatching his ball back, and continuing with his earlier game of throwing it up and catching it before it hit his chest.

"What's wrong with you Nate? You were a top five pick. No, you weren't just a top five pick, you were second in the entire draft, and you took two weeks to get back to the Knicks to sign your contract. That's not something that you would usually do." Nathan just rolled his eyes at his brothers concern, and didn't break his eye contact with the orange ball that kept flying above his head.

Lucas stole the ball again, this time in anger and set it in his own lap, his face set in an angry scowl, his lips nothing more than a small line. "Nathan. Get out of whatever funk you're in again, and get out of bed. We're leaving for New York in two days, and I expect you to be packed, your bags in your car, and following the car that Brooke and I will be in. You're done wallowing. Get your ass up, and out of this room before I get Bryan and Mark in here and we force you up." He stood from the bed, and bounced the ball onto the carpeted floor angrily, not even taking notice of the pitiful belly flop it did as he stepped over it and exited the room, slamming the door behind him with a reverberating BANG.

Nathan didn't move from his spot on his bed, staring at the popcorn-ed surface of the ceiling, his head playing a mental montage of memories he thought he had left behind years ago.

Nathan threw his last pair of basketball shorts into his suitcase, just as there was a light tapping on his dorm room door. He looked up into the dark brown eyes that reminded him so much of her. Hers were lighter though. Not as cold. Heather reminded him a lot of her; if she were five inches taller, a busty blonde, and had the IQ of a rat. At first, he had been dead-set on finding someone just like her, but after realizing how painful that would be for him, he decided to find someone the opposite of her. And so far that goal had worked well for him. He had stuck to mindless encounters with the opposite sex that left them both satisfied, and hoping to never see the other again.

Heather smiled dumbly, not even bothering to care what he was thinking about, and stepped up to him, running her hands up his chest in a move that would usually intrigue and arouse him. But at that time, he just took her wrists and moved her hands from his body. He had met Heather at a party thrown by one of the thousands of fraternities on campus, and for the past three days, they had had fun, but Nathan was to his time limit. He never let his "relationships" last more than a week. And the fact that he was leaving to go approximately 1,000 miles away, he had the perfect excuse to break this 'thing' that he had with this girl.

Heather pouted as Nathan's larger hands released her wrists, placing her arms to her sides. "Look, Heather, we need to talk." She just rolled her eyes and slumped her shoulders, knowing exactly what was coming. "We had fun, but I'm leaving for New York today, and we both know that we'll never see each other again." The voice that he used was so condescending; he almost wanted to punch himself. He hated when people spoke to him like he were lesser than them, but he seemed to have been doing it to every girlfriend he had since he had come to Duke. "You still have a few semesters at RCC, and I know that we both know that this relationship wasn't going anywhere."

Heather just shrugged her shoulders and tilted her head to the side in a way she probably thought was alluring, but in all actuality made him want to roll his eyes. She looked like she was trying to crack her neck, and no matter what way you phrase that, it wasn't appealing.

"I didn't know we had a 'relationship'. I thought we just had good sex." And before Nathan could say anything else, and before he could even manage a smirk, she had disappeared back through his dorm room door, and out of his life.

He shook his head and picked up his last gym bag, slinging it over his shoulder as he walked out of his room, kicking the door shut behind him, not even looking back as he headed towards his fresh start. This was his fresh start. No memories of her would follow him anymore. Nothing could touch him anymore. He didn't have anything to associate with her but the chain around his neck. He had thrown out anything that reminded him of her. He buried pictures in his rarely-used text books, and broken everything else. He ghost wouldn't stalk him anymore. He wouldn't allow it.

"Nathan Scott, could you hurry your ass up? I want to get out of here!" Brooke Davis yelled up the dormitory steps as soon as she spotted her boyfriends half brother. She had never been a patient one, Nathan consoled himself, rolling his eyes as he kept the same pace he had been keeping previously.

"It's nice to see you too Brooke. How are you today? I'm good." He quipped sarcastically, opening the back passenger door of his large black SUV that sat at the curb.

"Don't give me that crap Boy Toy. I saw your little floozy coming down the steps. I'm not going to be late meeting Peyton just because you were getting laid." Brooke stuck out her tongue to show that she was kidding, and flew into the passenger side seat of Lucas SUV, settling herself in for a long journey, and making a silent statement to hurry up.

"I guess we better hit the road." Lucas finally spoke, pounding fists with his brother before heading over to his drivers side door.

"Whipped!" Nathan called after him, smiling as he opened his own door.

"I know!" Lucas called back, not a bit ashamed of the way his relationship worked with Brooke. If he was in love with her, then he was willing to do what she asked of him if it made her happy. Nathan had known that too awhile ago; and with the scheming that he knew Brooke to be doing; he would again.

A.N: I had one reviewer say that she felt sorry for Jason because Haley was dragging him along, but, come on! Do you think I would actually give Haley a good guy? Hell no! I want her back with Nathan as much as you guys do, and I plan on having them back together by the end of June. I'm going to try and do this story at a faster pace, but it really depends on how my life goes, and the way I've been having writers block, I'm not going to promise anything.

Please review! It really does make me write faster!

-Keira

P.S. It looks like I'll be going out of town for a few days starting on Tuesday, but I will probably be around a computer if I can wrangle my mom into letting me use her laptop, so I shouldn't be out of service, but I most likely won't be updating, because I have my plans and everything written on this computer. Thanks for understanding and waiting so long for this update! I love you readers and reviewers!