Because of the need to be good hosts to their guests, Haley and Nathan didn't have private time to themselves until the next day, when Dan and Deb left them for their social engagement. Until then, the young couple had to work twice as hard to make things seem normal.

When the front door slid shut the next afternoon and the sound of the car starting and pulling away from the house could be heard, Nathan finally let out a long breath of relief and turned away from the door, his eyes naturally searching for his wife. He found her on the couch in the living room, her legs drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her knees, a worried expression on her face. As absurd as it was, one of the first things he noticed about her in that moment was the flash of bright red on her toes and how suiting it was on her.

"I never realized how hard this would be," Haley said, her voice quiet, as if she were still hiding from Dan's inquisitive ears even though he had left. "I mean, I knew when you called that we would be lying and pretending, but I don't think it fully registered that we would be pretending to have something we had before. It isn't as fake as it sounds, is it? Because the us we want them to see really was us, it's just not anymore."

Nathan sat heavily on the couch, keeping a small amount of distance between them. What could he say to that? She was right. Once they had been as happy as they were trying to look now. It was painful that it was no longer reality. "Why isn't it us anymore?" he asked, trying to keep his voice from dropping in desperation.

Haley's head snapped up and her eyes met his, dark and helpless and confused. "You know why, Nathan…"

"No, I don't," he told her honestly. "I couldn't even tell you when everything got so bad between us. It just… did, and then you were gone."

She took a deep breath, knowing that she should talk to him but wondering if it was even worth it. Was their relationship still fixable, or would laying her feelings out only be asking to get her heart trampled on all over again? "Nathan…"

"No, Haley, tell me," he encouraged her. "We agreed that we would talk about this and I think it's important. What happened to us?"

"That, Nathan. That happened," she finally said, feeling her calm ebbing away as frustration took over. "There's a reason that you don't know what went wrong. It's because you were never here anymore! You started spending all your time at work, from before I woke up until it was almost time to go to bed. You talk about how I tried to escape you when I moved out, but you'd been running from me for months before I left. I almost never saw you and when I did, we fought about stupid things!"

The fact that she thought he had been trying to get away from her shocked him and, quite frankly, stung. "Haley, that was work. It had nothing to do with you."

"Maybe not, but it had everything to do with us," she countered hotly, feeling the juices flowing through her veins now. If he wanted to hear the truth, hear how she'd felt all along, he would. "How was I supposed to stay when you were always gone? Do you have any idea how much the empty house hurt me? I didn't know if you were seeing someone else or—"

"What are you talking about?" he interrupted incredulously. "You know I never cheated on you."

"Then what? Did you just get tired of me?" she demanded, her heart in her throat with fear of his answer. God, if he said that was their problem, she wasn't sure if she'd be able to keep herself from breaking down. This was exactly why she hadn't wanted to let herself get caught up in this whole charade in the first place, but now she found herself unable to stop. She needed to know.

To her surprise, he stared at her with open astonishment. "What the hell are you talking about, Haley? Of course not! My work was for us."

"You work was killing us," she argued, shaking her head.

The pain on his face was so evident that for a moment Haley wished she could take back the words, truthful though they were. Nathan was silent for a moment before he replied, "I worked so much because I wanted us to be able to afford good things. Me working helped give us the lives we know."

"And look how that's worked out, Nathan. We had a nice house and cars and could pay the bills on time, and we were miserable," she said softly, realizing for the first time what he had been doing all along and, she thought, why. In his parents' relationship, money had been a key factor. Deb's father had given Dan the money necessary to start his company, and therefore had been the root of his success. When things went wrong between them, Dan relied on money to right things.

Come to think of it, Haley realized, Dan had done it to Nathan, too. When they were in high school and Dan would be a jerk, he would resort to gift-giving to get back into his son's good graces. Haley remembered the black Mustang convertible that had probably been her favorite of the many 'forget Dan was an asshole' gifts.

But this was different from that, and Nathan needed to understand that. "I never cared about what you could buy me. You being home with me was a thousand times more important than being able to splurge when I went shopping or show off some fancy new toy. I'm not all that interested in expensive things."

Nathan knew that, of course, but still struggled to grasp it. He knew Haley had never been much into material things. She wasn't high-maintenance or snobby or stuck up; she had grown up in a big family that got by fine but wasn't by any means rich, and she was happy with that. That didn't change the fact that he wanted to give her the best life he could. "I wanted to be able to give you what you wanted."

The simple, honest tone in which he spoke made her heart tighten in her chest. "I know. But what I wanted most was you at home with me. Not yelling because you were stressed out from work and not shut up in the study on the phone."

"You worked a lot, too."

She thought about that and then nodded, slowly. "You're right. I worked more when you started to, but before that I probably was still at the office too much. But it wasn't because I wanted to see Randy and not you." That was a bone that needed to be buried; her interest in her editor was and always would be purely academic.

"Cassie's just my secretary, nothing more," he assured her reciprocally. He'd always found her distrust of Cassandra illogical—why would he be looking at her when he had Haley?

There was a long lull in conversation while they both paused to process what had been said. Finally, sounding hurt, Nathan broke the silence. "Can I ask you something?"

Looking at him over her knees, she nodded. "Sure."

"Why do you think I called you when I found out my parents were coming?"

"The bet," she answered simply, "I know it was the bet."

"No," he shook his head, wondering how he had failed to make her see. Well, not anymore. Tonight they were going to get everything out in the open, and what happened would happen. Nathan could only hope that he liked the result. "I panicked because of the bet. I called you because I knew you would help me. No matter what's going on between us, it seems like you always help me, and I appreciate that. I know I can count on you, if no one else. And maybe I didn't always make that clear enough."

Haley smiled then, a slow, surprised smile that eventually lit up her face despite the situation. One of her greatest goals had been to always be there for him. That, at least, she seemed to have succeeded in doing. "Thank you. For telling me that."

"I mean it."

"Maybe that was another part of it," Haley mused thoughtfully. "Maybe we both took each other for granted."

"I'm sorry."

"Me, too." She gave a small smile, a peace offering of sorts, but her mind was already turning in new directions. Okay, so they had acknowledged some of their big problems. That didn't mean that they would just disappear, or, she realized, that they both necessarily wanted them to. They were talking about why things had gone sour, but what did that mean? How did he feel? Hell, she barely knew how she felt.

And it was then that she realized that, though they had made progress, there was still some things that needed to be said, feelings that needed to be expressed, emotions that needed to be explained. What was this for them? A step towards making up or a final reconciliation before they said goodbye?