A/N Hey it's Kenya! I hope you are enjoying the story, thank you othlover4ever for reviewing! I hope to get more reviews on this chapter! This chapter describes how Hunter fits into the Scott clan! Enjoy!

Hunter

It is summer in Louisiana, and the sun is beating down on both of our faces as Lailin and I lounge on my parents' lawn. She has Popsicle juice all over her face, but I haven't told her yet—it's cute, and somehow it makes her eyes look darker. Her hair, done up in pigtails, is strewn with grass. I know my mother has told me that I'm entirely too young to be in love—she says I have to be fifteen before I can date, and that is a whole four years away—but the light is hitting her just right and I want to kiss her, something I have never wanted to do before. I don't know when I went from girls having cooties to this. It just happened, and with my best friend of people. And now that it finally has, I have to tell her something that will ruin our relationship forever.

"Lailin?"

"Yeah?"

God, she's so pretty. I swallow hard to get rid of the lump in my throat. It doesn't work. "I uh….have to tell you something."

She turns over on her side and rests her head on her arm. "Well, are you gonna wait all day before you do?"

Normally I would laugh, but today my stomach is twisted in little knots and I don't know if I can. "The thing is, I…..my family is moving to New York. And they won't let me stay here by myself. So I have to go with them."

She is silent for a long moment, so long that I think she might not reply. Then—"Dang, are you serious? That really sucks. I'm going to miss you."

My heart jumps. "I know." I take her hand experimentally, and she winds her fingers through mine after a moment's pause. They're sticky, but I don't mind. "Can I tell you something else?"

"Is it more bad news?"

"No."

"Then go ahead."

I take a deep breath. "I think I'm in love with you."

She laughs. "Yeah, right."

"I'm serious. I know we're young, but it's true. You're beautiful—I think about you all the time."

"Well, Hunter," she says, "my mom won't let me date yet, so you're going to have to wait a while. But thank you. I like you, too. You know that."

I do, but it's still nice to hear. She leans closer to me and smiles. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"Do you really think I'm pretty?"

I don't know how I know what to do—I just do. I press my lips on hers and leave them there for just a minute. When we pull away, the suctioning sound makes us both cringe. "The prettiest."

She sighs. "I don't know what I'm going to do when you move, Hunter."

I try to imagine life without her and fail. There is no home without Lailin—her smile is my sun, her eyes my stars, her laugh my moon. I feel sort of like a black hole is closing in around me. "Me either," I say, and my voice is lined with the burden of premature love.

I take a deep breath and finish the walk to her front 's sunny here, and I am brought back to that day that everything changed. I can almost feel the grass under my back, the texture of juice-stained fingers through mine. It takes a full five minutes and lots of deep breathing before I am able to knock.

She opens the door, her face inquisitive, and in the second before she recognizes me I am able to see that she's just as beautiful as she was, if not more. Her long, dark hair, her eyes, her flawless tan skin—it's all the same, and my heart skips a beat. "Hey, Lailin."

"Hunter." She leans against the doorframe, her posture stiff. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

I gulp. It has been—she just doesn't know why. But it's not time to tell her. Not yet. "Yeah, sorry about that. I just….I've been….busy," I finish lamely. Crap. Her eyes are stormy, and I find myself suddenly terrified for the state of my health. Nathan is going to kill me if he has to pay another medical bill.

"I see," she says, her nostrils flaring. She looks madder than I have ever seen her before, like a bull corned by an arrogant matador. There is a moment of silence before she seizes a vase next to the door and chunks it at my head.

I duck, but not quite fast enough—a shard grazes my forehead. I think it's bleeding, but I don't care. Straightening back up, I hold my hands up as if in surrender. "Lailin, wait….."

"You bastard." She continues to throw things at me, anything she can get her hands on—knick knacks, the doorstop, a brass candlestick. "Do you have any idea how long I've waited for you to call me? To stop by? You've been here for five years, Hunter; the least you could have done is let me know you still remembered I existed!"

I duck again as a cat that I strongly suspect isn't stuffed flies across the room. "I know, and I'm sorry. But if you just knew the whole story…."

"The whole story?! I know all I need to know! You were my best friend, and after you moved, you never called me again. I didn't hear from you. You betrayed me."

I am trying to stay calm, I really am, but I can feel my temper rushing in my blood like the angry tide of the Hudson. My hands clench at my sides. "Look, I know I was wrong, but you don't know half of what's happened to me in the past five years. Did you ever stop to wrap your thick head around the possibility that maybe things have been going on that you don't understand?"

When her fist crunches the bones in my nose, I am surprised to find that I'm not surprised in the least. Lailin and have known each other for a long time—it's been a while, but I still know exactly how far I can push her before she cracks (quite literally, in this case). I want to tell her that I understand what I've done wrong, apologize for pushing her buttons. But instead all that comes out of my mouth is "Shit!"

She starts at the word—we can both count the number of times I have cursed in my life on two hands. She takes a moment to look down at her bloody knuckles, up at the blood streaming from between my closed hands, and down at the slowly expanding red stain on her carpet before her eyes soften. "Well, crap," she says. "We've made one heck of a mess."

"I'm sorry about your carpet." I am perched on the end of her bed like a bird preparing for flight, ready to leap at a moment's notice. She is not usually the kind of girl to kick someone with a broken nose and an ocean of blood on their clothes out onto the curb, but in my case, I honestly can't tell what she will do next. I'm surprised I'm even still here.

She shrugs. "It's just a stain. It's not exactly your fault." She presses a cold rag into my hands and looks away. "Here. Put this on your nose."

I oblige, applying pressure and trying not to wince. "It is, though. My fault, I mean. I shouldn't have done what I did. I'm so sorry."

"Why did you?" Her voice cracks. "You have no idea how much I needed you. Mom was so sick—and then when she died, I was all by myself. I still am. I thought you cared about me."

My heart breaks. That is the only way to describe it. I look at the expression on her face and I can feel it splitting in two, cells and tissues dividing and streaming from the hole her pain has created in my chest. It hurts more than I ever thought it could and I can't breathe. "When we moved to New York," I start, "I was planning on calling you every day. I couldn't while I was in the air, though, so I turned my phone on the minute we got in the car to go to the apartment. I got your voicemail. Well, you remember how terrible my phone etiquette used to be—I had no idea what to say. I asked my parents if they would help me." I swallow. "Mom was laughing at me and trying to come up with something to say when the stop sign came up. She didn't see the truck—none of us did. He didn't see us, either. When it hit us, Dad threw himself into the backseat to cover me, but Mom didn't have time. She died on impact."

She gasps, a sharp intake of breath. She had been close to my mother. "Hunter…."

"Dad and I moved everything into the new house after the funeral," I continue in a dead sort of voice. "We lived there for a year, but he had changed—he was distant, sad. He would leave early in the morning and not come back until late at night. I had to learn to fend for myself. And then, three weeks after my twelfth birthday, I walked into the kitchen to find him dead over the sink. Overdose, they told me. I knew he loved my mom, but I couldn't stop myself from being mad at him. Even now, I don't know if I am or not. He left me a note explaining every lie my parents had ever told me in my life. Turns out he wasn't my real father at all—Mom got pregnant from this guy named Dan right before freshman year of college, but he dumped her and knocked up a woman named Deb that fall. He had gotten a girl named Karen pregnant, too, in their senior year of high school. So he, my real father, is the reason I have three half-siblings and no parents. He's the most irresponsible and hateful man I've ever met, Lailin. I put up with him for five years before Nathan, Izzi, and I couldn't take it anymore and got emancipated. Just easier that way, you know?"

"Yeah," she whispers, holding her chest. I wonder if she's trying to sew her heart back together with her fingers, a technique I have tried a million times. Sadly, I can't tell her it will work. "I do."

"Well, anyway, there was a plane ticket to Tree Hill with the letter. Dan and Deb were supposed to be expecting me. So I went. I met some really nice people, like Nathan and Lucas and Izzi and a really cool group of people, and I met some really awful people, like Dan. I wrote a few songs and kept up a 3.8 GPA. But mostly, I missed you. I thought about you. I wanted nothing more than to fly back to Louisiana and be with you again, even if it meant being stuck in Breaux Bridge. I didn't, though, because I didn't deserve it."

Her eyebrows furrow. "How do you figure that?"

I swallow the tears in my throat and steel myself. "I'm the reason for my mother's death, Lailin. And don't tell me I'm not—" she opens her mouth and closes it again "—because it's true. I don't deserve something as good as you. I told myself that I would lead a normal life and maybe even be somewhat happy, but I also promised myself that I would never let myself contact you again, if only so I wouldn't give myself that pleasure. You were all I wanted, so that was my own personal punishment for what I had done. It was stupid and selfish and I had no right, but I kept it going until I found an old picture of the two of us in my old house a few days ago and I couldn't do it anymore. I broke. It's stereotypical and cliché and everything I know your writer's soul hates me for, but I need you in my life, Lailin. And maybe I've royally screwed that up for myself, but it's true. I need you, I need you, I need you."

I haven't cried since my first night in Tree Hill five years ago, but when she puts her arms around me and tucks her face into my neck, I am that little twelve-year-old boy again, lost in a world that just seems too big and cruel to be true.

Hope y'all enjoyed it, if I get 2 reviews( you don't need an account) I will update tomorrow!

-Kenya