Nathan took Peyton by the hand and led her downstairs to sit at the small table in the breakfast nook of the spacious kitchen. "You sit here," he instructed her as he pulled out a chair for her. He walked deliberately to the chair across from her. He needed to put as much distance between them as possible if they were going to have any real chance at a conversation right now. Everything in him was screaming to take her back upstairs, but this was too important to fall back into old habits. Sliding into his seat, he allowed himself the luxury of stretching out across the table to grasp her fingers. "Alright, I want you to tell me what happened that day at the coffee shop with Lucas."

Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, Peyton was nervous to tell Nathan what had really happened when she had run into his brother. No one had ever heard this side of the story. "Lucas showed up in L.A. to surprise me. Things between us had been off and on for awhile, you know that," she told him. "When I ran into him that morning, I knew what I had to do. As much as I hated breaking his heart, I couldn't be with him after we spent that night together. I knew that I was in love with you, and I couldn't give Lucas all of me if the biggest part of my heart was with you."

"But I saw the two of you," he shook his head. It still didn't quite add up. "You looked happy to see him. He kissed you on the forehead."

"Yeah, Nate, I was relieved when Luke showed up because I knew that I would get the chance to tell him in person that we couldn't be together," she retorted, squeezing his hand for emphasis. "I knew that things between him and I couldn't really be over unless I did it person. That day was the last time I saw him for more than a year. We didn't get back together until that summer when I went to visit Brooke in Tree Hill. You and Haley were gone on that long vacation in Italy with Jamie. I thought that you were happy, that you had moved on."

Nathan remembered his time in Italy as two of the least happy weeks of his entire life. It seriously ranked right up there with the endless free throws Dan had imposed on him that summer before eighth grade. "Haley surprised me with the trip for my birthday. We spent the entire time pretending that we were happy when Jamie was awake and fighting while he was asleep."

"I tried to love Lucas, I really did," she promised fruitlessly. "I wanted to make him happy because he deserved that much from me. I know that he gave up two other women who really loved him just at the chance of a future with me. I've always said that everyone leaves. I didn't want to leave him, and honestly, after losing you, I couldn't let him be another person who left me."

He brought her fingertips up to his lips and brushed a gentle kiss over each knuckle. "I never left you, Peyt," he vowed. "Even when I wasn't with you, I never left you."

A crooked smile played on her pert pink lips as her eyes met his. "So that is what happened that day, Nate," she shrugged. "I didn't pretend as if nothing happened. Even after Luke and I got back together, we both knew that something was different. He just didn't know that you were what was different."

"Do you know what happened that day when I got back to Tree Hill?"

Peyton looked down at where their hands were entwined on top of the table. Lucas had finally told her about his one-night stand with Haley about six months ago. She had finally mustered the courage to ask about Nathan, and he had had to admit why they never talked anymore. Lucas had cried for awhile after he told her, both for the best friend and the brother than he had lost. She had tried to console him, but mostly she just thought about how that was their punishment. It was karma getting back at her and Nathan for their own indiscretion. "Luke slept with Haley."

"I was so distraught after I left you. I wandered around the city for awhile until it was time to go to the airport. I wanted a drink so bad on the flight but knew that was probably a good reason why I shouldn't," he remembered. "I had told myself that if I couldn't be with you, I was going to have to make my marriage with Haley work. I wanted to give Jamie that."

"You're a good father, Nate," she assured him. "I don't blame you for wanting that for your son."

He smiled at her gratefully for understanding. It wasn't that he had moved on from Peyton. It was just that he had done what he had to do for his son. "I knew that something was off as soon as I got into the house. There were empty bottle beers and a lipstick-stained shot glass in the kitchen. I literally followed a trail of vodka and whiskey bottles to my bedroom. I figured that Brooke had come over to keep Haley company while I was gone. Instead, I walked in on my brother tangled in my bed with my wife."

She couldn't imagine what it would have been like to walk in on that. "I'm sorry."

"That's what they said," he laughed humorlessly. "I wasn't really mad at them. I hated that I would have to know the truth and Haley never would. I hated Lucas because I thought he had your heart still. I hated Haley for not being you. I hated myself for not having enough courage to say that I wasn't happy. I hated everything about it."

"But you were able to forgive her," she pointed out. "You guys worked through it."

Nathan shook his head sadly. "No, we just stopped fighting about it," he corrected her. "Haley and I don't care enough to fight for each other anymore. Our marriage is over. Both of us are just too afraid to admit it."

"I know the feeling," she commiserated. "Luke and I have been at an impasse for awhile now. I think he loves the idea of me more than he actually loves me, you know. It's like he is trying to make me fit this image of who he thinks I should be. It wasn't good enough that time in Vegas when I asked him to wait. He wanted me to be this perfect little wife now."

There was a certain kind of cruel symmetry to Peyton's situation with Lucas and Nathan's marriage to Haley. "Haley needed me to be a different kind of man for her to fall in love with me. She needed me to be Lucas. She wanted to fall in love with someone like her best friend. A part of me was always waiting for the moment when she would wake up and realize that," he confessed. "I never felt like that with you though, Peyt. I knew that you loved me in spite of and because of who I am. If you could love the guy I was at sixteen, I knew that you really had to love me."

"I did," she agreed before smiling into his deep blue eyes. "I do."

"I do too," he promised as he leaned across the table to meet her in a kiss. She turned her head slightly to deepen the moment before he pulled back and returned to his seat. "So what do we do now?"

"We do what we should have done two years ago," she answered as she slipped from the chair. She came over and knelt in front of Nathan so that they were at eye level. "We're going to tell them the truth. I'm not afraid anymore, Nate. I want this, I want you."

Nathan reached down and pulled her into his lap so that he could just feel the weight of her against him. That feeling, the one that had meant so much that night, was finally back. "We'll tell them the truth," he concurred. "You'll break your engagement. I'll file my divorce. And then…"

Peyton could tell him that they should take it one day at a time. She could talk about how they needed time to figure out what was happening as everything was unfolding so quickly. She should respect his marriage with Haley enough to give him time to be sure that he wanted this. However, she had already wasted two years without him. She wouldn't make that same mistake twice. "I'll move back to Tree Hill. You can't leave Jamie, and I can't leave you," she answered. "This house will be our secret escape."

"Well, that sounds like a pretty good end to our story, but I have a better idea."

"Oh, yeah, and what's that, Nathan Royal Scott?"

"After the breakup and after the divorce, say you'll spend the rest of your life with me," he suggested. "I want you to be my wife. Peyton Elizabeth Sawyer, will you marry me?"