Author's Note: Firstly, I'm so sorry about this chapter being up late! First it got delayed by a computer problem and once I had that fixed I got stuck with the middle and then when I posted it on other sites I couldn't upload it to But, it's here now and I hope you all enjoy it! Thank you to everyone who reviewed, and many thanks to Christina who beta'd this chapter for me (and also Miranda who beta'd the other two chapters). This is the final one! - it's been fun and I hope you like this last chapter. :) The quotation used in this chapter is from the Vanessa Carlton song that gave this story its name.

Part Three

In twenty minutes Nathan and Haley had finished choosing all the things they wanted, and somewhere along the way the awkwardness that had plagued them earlier seemed to have disappeared. They hadn't talked about anything significant, but from the way she was talking and joking with him, Nathan could tell Haley was becoming more comfortable with him. He liked that.

Once they had paid for their items, split half-ways on Haley's insistence, they walked out of the supermarket, each carrying a bag.

"So, have you decided where we're going yet?" Haley wondered.

"Actually, I had two ideas," Nathan admitted as he led Haley in a direction, which took them further away from the junior prom.

"Does that mean I get to have final pick?"

"If you like," Nathan told her, smiling at the way she walked like she had a spring in her step.

"Ooh; so what are your ideas?"

"Well…" Nathan paused as he headed further down the road until he reached the turn off to go right. Once Haley had caught up with him, he pointed at the far away buildings that were now in sight. "You see those houses there?"

"Yep."

"One of them is my Dad's beach house."

"Really? Oh, of course," Haley realised, having been there once before. "I forgot because when I went there with Lucas to that party we drove from the other way."

"Yeah, that's the way closer to school."

"You're not having a big after-prom party there?" Haley inquired.

"Nah; Brooke would be pretty pissed if I held a party at the same time she had one planned."

Haley laughed. "Yeah, she's been going on about her party for ages. I have no idea how she managed to plan that and prom."

"I don't think the after-party would have required much planning. Get a kegger, tell a few people and that's pretty much it."

"I'm sure you speak from personal knowledge," Haley commented.

"Just a little. So, we could go there," Nathan suggested, getting back on topic.

"Or?"

"Or we could just eat on the beach," he stated, gesturing to it.

Haley pondered for a moment, looking over at the beach house, before returning her gaze to the sandy shore and ocean waves that lay below them. "Is it alright if we eat on the beach?" she said finally.

"Of course," he agreed. "Come on, the path's this way."

Nathan walked down the steps to the beach first, Haley following him slowly as she did her best to balance as she descended the steep steps in heels. She jumped off the last one by putting her hand on Nathan's shoulder for support, but when her heels dug into the sand and she started to fall backwards, he had to put his hand on her waist to keep her upright.

"Maybe I should lose the shoes," she said.

"It might be a good idea," Nathan affirmed.

Haley passed him her shopping bag to carry before she bent down to remove the heels. However, doing so on unsteady ground didn't help her balance any and without looking she put one hand out, trying to grab onto Nathan's shoulder once more. She caught something but soon realised it was his left hand that he had offered her, having transferred both bags to his right. Haley then proceeded to do her best to remove her shoes and ignore the voice in her head that kept exclaiming, "Nathan's holding my hand!"

When she had taken them both off, Haley stood upright holding both the shoes in her left hand unsure whether she should remove her right from Nathan's grip or not. "Thanks, I can take the bag now," she told him.

"No, it's okay; they're not heavy and you're carrying your shoes anyway," he said, and proceeded to lead her further down the beach without letting go of her hand.

Haley's eyes were fixed on the sight of her small hand encased in his larger one rather than where they were going so she was surprised to find that it seemed to be getting brighter. Looking up, she found the source. "Oh! I didn't notice that bonfire over there."

"I thought if we sat closer to it we might be able to actually see what we're eating. But if you want to sit somewhere else-"

"No, here is fine," she informed him as they came to a stop.

"Aright then," Nathan replied, bending to set the bags down and in doing so had to reluctantly let go of her hand.

Haley moved to sit down cross-legged, but then realising she was wearing a dress, stretched her legs out in front of her instead. As she stretched her dress to its full length just over bottom of her knees, Haley felt a sprouting hair on the back of her leg, and soon grew concerned that there might be more on the front of her legs that she hadn't noticed. She squinted, trying to see if it was noticeable in the soft light, but the action drew Nathan's attention.

"Are you okay?"

"What? Yeah, I'm fine," Haley said jerkily.

"Okay. Here's your soda," he told her as he passed her the drink.

"Thanks." A moment later, she observed, "You know I've never had a picnic at night before."

"I've never had a picnic at all."

"Really? Why not?"

Nathan shrugged as he continued to take the food out of the bags. "It just wasn't my dad's idea of fun."

"Well, I think picnic's are loads of fun!" Haley enthused. "When I was younger we used to have them all the time."

"But not anymore?" Nathan observed.

"My sisters and brothers are all over the country, and a lot of them have families of their own," Haley explained. "Last year we had just one, and Vivian couldn't make it then because my nephew Mickey was having his tonsils removed. But, you don't want to know about all that," she added.

"No, that's alright. I like hearing about…your family," Nathan mumbled, unsure of how to phrase himself.

"It's not really very interesting."

"It is to me. You're a pretty interesting person, Haley James."

Nathan expected her to blush, but instead she simply rolled her eyes and took another swig of her soda. "Very funny, Nathan Scott. Now hand over those crisps."

He had been about to pass them anyway, but his hand stalled at her comment. "Why don't you think I'm serious?"

"Because! You're Nathan Scott."

Nathan raised his eyebrows. "What does that mean? You think I lie all the time?"

"No, no, of course not," Haley said quickly. "But, I bet you use lines like that on all the girls."

"When was the last time you saw me with a girl other than you?"

"Well, I-" Haley stopped abruptly, when it hit her that she couldn't answer. Not because she couldn't remember, but because she actually hadn't seen him with anyone. "Um…well, it's not like I see you every hour of every day!" she sputtered.

Nathan kept looking at her, so intently that Haley almost dropped his gaze, but he seemed as if he had something to say and the curious part of her made her stare back. When he said, "Here are your crisps," and passed the packet over to her she felt a sting of disappointment, even though she wasn't really sure what she was expecting.

"Thanks," she muttered, before ripping open the packet and starting to munch on the crisps.

Haley kept her eyes on her crisp packet as she continued to eat them; slowly realising she couldn't hear Nathan doing the same.

Before she could remind him that he'd been the one to say he was hungry in the first place, she heard him begin, "Do you think…Do you want to…Maybe we could do something like this again?"

"Yeah," Haley said, looking back over at him and smiling. "It would be nice to hang out again," she added, but then noticed him visibly frown at that. "What?"

"I meant…not that we would hang out, but for us to go out."

"But we are out," Haley mentioned, even more confused.

Nathan shook his head. "Not go outside –"

"But what other go out – oh!" Haley exclaimed, it suddenly dawning. "You mean not go out, but go out! Like on a date?"

"Yeah," Nathan stated.

Haley, however, was still reeling from his earlier statement. "You want to go out on a date with me?" she wondered aloud, only she said it so fast all the words meshed together.

"Yeah, I do," he said hesitantly, a little worried that his spur of the moment decision to just come out with it, finally, had been a bad one.

"I-you-but-" she stuttered, but then all of a sudden shook her head and said simply, "Yes."

"Yes?"

"Yes," she repeated, before meeting his gaze again, a small smile gracing her features. "I would love to."

"Oh," Nathan almost whispered, a wide grin forming on his face.

Haley grinned at the pleased look on his face, but she suddenly felt even more nervous than she had before. It was her turn to say something, but she didn't know what! Her brain was too busy jumping up and down to function properly.

She decided to wait and let Nathan say something, but instead of speaking he simply reached out and tucked that bit of her hair that was always getting in the way of her eyes behind her ear. Haley's face warmed at the feeling of his fingertips on his skin, and she looked down trying to hide her blush, but even then she could still tell Nathan was all of a sudden moving a lot closer to her. Like, invading her personal space close.

"What are you doing?" she blurted out, which had the effect of stopping him.

"I, uh, was going to kiss you."

"But we haven't even been on a date yet?"

"Um…so we can't kiss until we've been on a proper date?" Nathan wondered, his forehead wrinkling as he frowned.

"I don't know!" Haley whined, internally cursing her lack of knowledge on important things. "I thought that was the rule!"

At that comment, Nathan chuckled, and his hand that was in her hair came round to cup the side of her face, making her meet his gaze. As he slowly brought his head down towards hers, he didn't close his eyes so Haley kept hers open as well, until, all of a sudden, his face was mere centimetres from hers and she screwed her eyes shut and closed her mouth tightly, rolling up her lips so that, if he had tried, all Nathan would have got was skin.

She thought she heard him laugh, but given the situation, Haley decided he was allowed that.

"Haley?" he prompted, humour in his tone.

Opening her mouth, but keeping her eyes closed, she replied, "Yes?"

"What's wrong?"

"I was eating salt and vinegar crisps!" she whined. "My breath must be terrible!"

Nathan chuckled loudly at that. Haley opened her eyes and pouted at him. "It's not funny, Nathan."

"I'm sorry," he apologised and kissed the top of her head lightly.

The gesture was so sweet she decided she couldn't be angry with him. Instead, she nuzzled her cheek into the side of his jacket and took a deep breath of his nice, warm Nathan smell.

"Hey?"

Turning her head up to reply, Haley said, "Yeah?"

Without giving her time to react Nathan swooped in and kissed her on the lips. Taken off guard by the action, she instinctively moved to break away, so Nathan brought his hand up to her hair, keeping her in place as his lips pressed more insistently against hers until she finally relaxed in his arms and timidly kissed him back. It only lasted a few seconds more, but when Nathan finally moved back, Haley could still feel the kiss lingering against her lips.

Breathing slowly, she began, "That was…" before opening her eyes and accusing him, "That was sneaky!"

Nathan smirked at her. "But you liked it though." The way he said it as a statement rather than a question should have aggravated her, but it wasn't as if she could disagree.

"That's not the point!"

"It is a little, Hales," Nathan pointed out, still smirking.

Haley opened her mouth to disagree, but then closed it. "Fine. But no more until I brush my teeth!"

Nathan almost burst out laughing at that, but the warning look on Haley's face sobered him. "Whatever you say, baby."

Her expression didn't change as she looked at him, but when she moved to nuzzle against his shoulder again, Nathan was sure he saw her smile.

He was adjusting the way he was sitting so he could hold her better, when he heard a crackling noise.

"What was that?"

This time it was Haley's turn to laugh. "You're sitting on my crisps!"

"Have you guys seen Haley yet?" Standing just inside the car park, Lucas did a full circle trying to see is he could spot her anywhere.

"She told you she was coming, didn't she? She'll be here! Stop worrying and start trying to think of ways you can convince your mum to let you come to the party!" Brooke told him.

"I already told you, Brooke. After the tattoo she said no parties indefinitely. She wasn't going to let me come to prom until you somehow managed to convince her."

"But I thought when she said you could come, it meant both prom and the party, not just prom," Brooke whined.

"Brooke, I was there at the café when you hounded Karen until she agreed! She expressly said it was only the prom," Peyton reminded her, from where she was standing to the left of them, rolling her eyes at the scene.

Jake, who had been standing next to Peyton but ignoring Brooke's outbursts, piped up when he noticed someone walking towards them from the car park entrance, "Hey, is that Haley?"

"Yes! Finally," Lucas muttered.

"Hey guys!" she grinned, waving at them all as she approached. "Sorry if I kept you waiting."

"We haven't been here long," Brooke informed her, "Lucas was just moaning."

Peyton and Jake shared a look as if to say Brooke had been doing most of them moaning, but when Peyton opened her mouth to chip in she suddenly noticed Haley's clothes looked different. As Haley drew nearer Peyton realised, she was still wearing the same dress, it was just that she was wearing a jacket over it. Only it was way too big for her. Like a guy's jacket…

Peyton's eyes widened as she remembered the only explanation Haley had given over the phone for disappearing halfway through prom was that she had wanted to go for a walk. She had assumed Haley had meant on her own and that was why she hadn't asked any of them to come with her, but now Peyton didn't think that at all, and, looking over at Lucas, she could tell Lucas didn't either.

"So how was prom?" Haley asked as if nothing was wrong.

"Pretty good. Lucas and I were prom king and queen," Brooke said proudly.

"Really? Congratulations."

"Thanks, Tutor girl. Now, do you think you could convince Lucas to come to this party of mine?"

"Not if he doesn't want to get in even more trouble with Karen!"

Rolling her eyes, Brooke set off to where Lucas had parked his car and began to ramble on about prom, informing Haley about all she had missed. Normally, Haley would have ignored her, but anxious to get away from Lucas and Peyton's curious gazes about her attire, she kept up with Brooke as they walked in front of the others and pretended to be enthralled by her detailed description of prom.

Haley knew she probably should have taken the jacket off and given it back to Nathan, but he had told her to keep it and, well, she had wanted to. The rest of their evening had been absolutely perfect; she had thought no picnic could top the James Family picnic of '99 but she had never been so happy to have been proven wrong.

And, okay, Lucas was not going to be happy when she told him about it. But, as Nathan had pointed out to her when she had mentioned it, she was happy, and that was good enough. More than good enough.

They stopped once they reached Brooke's car, as they were going to take Lucas and Haley back to Karen's Café, before she, Peyton and Jake went to her house for the party. Haley stood back letting the others get in the car first, still ignoring her friends' looks.

Instead, she looked out to the car park entrance. There was a boy waiting by the entrance, his white shirt standing out against the dark night sky. Haley hugged her jacket tighter around her and grinned at him. He was too far away for her to be certain, but Haley was pretty sure he winked at her.

"Stand up, boy.

I shine so bright when you're around."