Hey Everyone! Luce is officially back, with the Hannah/Bright ship sailing after the GG one sunk into the bottom of the fic ocean after the show - which preceded it - so, along with MahiaLily, Angel Grace, rubykate, and many other great GG writers, I seem to have found some solace in Hannah and Bright. Let's face it, they're superb characters, and leave plenty to the imagination.

So, The Secret Diaries. Short Summary: Hannah and Bright reach out tentatively towards each other, little warm currents, but they've got a long way to go; short episode in summer, but what will happen when she gets back to Everwood? Tension, sexual and otherwise seeps in as the year starts off with a bang; Topherwon't give up, Amy is falling into another depression, Bright's ex-girlfriend is determined to make her life a living hell, and the encounters with Bright are always an exercise in compromise. But he hasn't got it that easy either; for Bright, it's a frustrating battle to become a better person and to ease Hannah into her first relationship.

The story's done in separate POV's with Third person thrown in when necessary. I wanted to get inside their heads. Bright is nota squeaky clean character; he's got some fairly dark stuff going on. And Hannah's not all naive and sweet either - she has a strong side, and stands up for herself. Hope you like it :- I live for your feedback...so drop me a note...suggestions welcome.

Chapter One: The First Letter

Hannah

I could have written him.

I'm a great writer, after all. Well, maybe a really good writer. Or just good. But all self-doubt and dithering aside, I know I could have written one heck of a letter.

But I didn't. Even somebody as inexperienced as me, The Holy Virgin Hannah, would know intuitively that there were two things that could potentially go wrong.

I wrote them in my diary, like I write every stupid thing that lodges itself into my brain.

He might like the idea. But he's not a good writer, because he's a guy and because he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so he'd feel weird about writing back. Like, afraid the letter would sound stupid.

He'll be creeped out. Who writes letters when you have e-mail? How sentimental and cloying is that? Besides, he's not even my boyfriend. I think.

So, I did what normal people did. I sent him a little e-card with a dancing cow and a lake on it that said "Greetings from Minnesota, Land o' Lakes." Inside I wrote two brief lines, something chatty that a regular girl might say, a girl who would be cruising around town with her friends, getting a tan at the lake on the pier, eating cones at Dairy Queen. Kind of like the girls at my old school.

Then, after I pressed send, I felt stupid. I got itchy. What if he thought it was dorky, or if he didn't write back? I thought about cutting my hair, getting a tan, getting back together with Topher. Guys want what they can't have. Guys want girls who are bitches. All these bits of stupid Seventeen style advice floating around in my head like bumper cars, knocking into each other, jarring my nerves.

Then I went outside. The air was cool, but humid, the way it got sometimes late at night; to the left, the woods stretched out, purple and endless. The flickers of the fireflies were dying out. I walked on the gravel driveway, towards the wide, empty street. One lone streetlight buzzed there, blinding, shutting out all the stars. Everyone in our house hated that stupid streetlight; it came in through the blinds at night, killing our sleep, ruining our cool winter skies when the constellations seemed to be pressing down on us.

"One day," everyone had said at one point or another, "I'm going to take out that streetlight."

Inside, I checked my mail. It was a dumb thing to do; it'd only been an hour or so since I'd sent the card. He probably hadn't even seen it yet.

But I checked anyway. Inside my mailbox, there was only one new letter.

And it was from him.

I printed it out and put it in my diary. It went something like this.

Hannah

Greetings from the land of pine trees. It's been a week so I thought that maybe you'd forgot about me but you haven't, which is good. I hope there are no guys in Minnesota hitting on you because if they are I will have to come there and kick their ass and take you back to Colorado. I broke into the community pool last night w. a friend and security came which was alright because he was that guy in the class below mine, don't know if you know him Mike Hargrave the really huge kid with the goatee. And we chilled and had a beer which i know you don't approve of and broke the diving board accidentally when we were trying to see who could jump the highest and Mike just cracked the thing down like a ton of bricks.

I hope you come home soon so you can come lay on my couch, like tell me you missed me because that would be really nice. And then I could tell you some stuff like that too.

Bright

It was my first love letter.

Gad, even I sound like a moron to myself. But I don't care. I started reading and I was so happy I was shivery, and laughing. And then when I read the last lines I wasn't either of those things anymore. I was disturbed. In a good way.

Sweaty. Or spicy.

It was like an ice cube down my back. All the blood tingled in my body. I printed it and signed off and went to my room, to my bed, where I read it over and over.

And it never got stale. Everytime I saw the last line I closed my eyes and saw myself in a dark room on a couch, laying out, and my whole body slow and weak. And I saw him sitting on the other end of that couch, looking at me, and BAM, like a hammer to my stomach, or lower, aching, a good, good ache.

So that's what it means, I kept thinking over and over, mindless repetition. To get turned on. To get hot. Whatever they call it. There it is.

He couldn't write. But he didn't think it was creepy or stupid, me writing him.

And he was going to write back.

There was a third thing I hadn't thought about.

The fact that I was scared of what he would write me. That I didn't know how to answer.

I laid there, trying to fall asleep. I couldn't. I tossed and turned and my body felt strange to me all over. The walls were painted orange from that stupid streetlight. I wanted darkness, and I wanted sleep, and I wanted not to think about me anymore. I felt brave and stupid and there was fire all inside me.

So I did something fairly stupid. I padded silently down the stairs, and took down the shotgun leaning against the desk full of papers in the office, the shotgun every person in the Minnesota woods has. It was smooth and cool, long as my arm. I went to the end of the drive, and the gravel crunched softly under my bare feet, skin tingling, feeling more alive then I'd ever felt.

I put it to my shoulder and pressed the trigger. Above me, in an explosion of sound and light, the streetlight shattered into a billion pieces, raining like fairy dust down onto the asphalt. It twinkled and chimed on the cement, and deep darkness fell around me. I could see Orion above me, winking, cold and far away in the warm summer night.

I knew the answer then.

"I'll be brave," I whispered, to nobody. "I'll lay on your couch and tell you what you want to hear. Then you'll...tell me some things too."

The screen door banged behind me like a quiet amen.