Thank you very much for your kind words and for all the feedback. We're approaching the end of this story but there are still some things that need to happen first. I've tried my best not to rush the Nathan/Haley reunion and hopefully you'll think it was done the right way.

On another note, this that I'll talk about now is a very important issue, so I'd like to ask for your attention. One of my favourite and most talented writers of the NH fandom was recently object of a disgusting and shameful acts because of her amazing talent. It seems that some people got jealous that she didn't belong to more fandoms and for some insane reason that no healthy person seems to understand, the people responsible for these acts thought it was okay to insult the author constantly and disdain her work. For envy. Now what I ask you is that if you see people doing this, report it to (although apparently they don't really do much) and, above all, support the targeted writer and give them support. It's crutial that we are all united against these deplorable and childish behaviours. Support our writers and stand up for them! Thank you! Now on to the next chapter.

When the need for air became an issue, Nathan and Haley drew apart, resting their foreheads against each other. The feelings that they were currently experiencing were just too good to be true. A feeling of newness but also familiarity. Lust and love. Desire and passion. But at the same time, there was a feeling that surprised them both: sadness. They both knew it had been their fault they got here, to the point where kissing felt like something not normal for two people who were married. A feeling that they couldn't make out why it was there when everything else was consuming them. It was only when they reluctantly opened their eyes and looked at each other that they figured out why, the true reason why they were also sad. It was because they could have been doing this for a much longer time if none of them had made stupid mistakes.

Haley started laughing and her grip on his face became stronger. Nathan was somewhat relieved that she seemed more than happy with the kiss. He knew she had wanted it but to actually see her smile like that again stirred something inside of him. He did the same and soon there was a smile shaping his lips. His strong thumb started caressing her soft skin and she closed her eyes at the gesture. It was only when she felt his intense gaze on her that she opened them up again and saw how his eyes were clouded with a dark shade and the way he was staring at her almost made her moan. That was the look she loved, the look where she could clearly see how much he loved and wanted her, like she was everything in the world to him.

"I've missed you so much, Haley." he finally let out, still caressing her cheek.

"I've missed you too." Without a second thought, Nathan leaned in and their lips crashed once again. Now that he knew she was ready to kiss him, he would make up for the lost time. A few minutes later the kiss ended and Haley started giggling.

"What?" Nathan asked. Haley took her eyes away from him and looked outside where the rain was still falling hard and fast.

"It's the rain, huh?" she asked softly, her eyes still glued to the window.

"I told you I'd be praying for rain..." Haley looked at him once again and when she saw the grin on his face she let her head fall back and let out a sigh before grabbing his face in her hands.

"C'mere." she said before starting to kiss him again. He moaned at her eagerness and couldn't help but plunge his tongue in her mouth. He just couldn't get enough of her. His hands started roaming down her body, always conscious not to cross any boundaries, bringing her body closer to hers. They only stopped when Nathan felt the car's handbrake poking on his ribs. When he drew away from her, she opened her eyes and realized what had been bothering him.

"Let's go to the backseat", she suggested, all of a sudden, with her eyebrows slightly wiggled. Nathan wasted no time in jumping to the backseat and when he was already comfortable, he pulled Haley to him, careful not to hurt her in the process. "Better?" Haley asked when she rested her body on top of his. This way they could sleep a lot better, having more space to stretch their bodies.

"Definitely." he replied before grabbing her face once again and lavishing her mouth with kisses. It all felt so right that none of them ever wanted to pull away. They were perfecty aware they looked like a couple of teenagers but they weren't worried at all. They craved each other and after being emotionally and physically detached from one another for so long, this was everything they'd wished for. They were having a steamy make out session that didn't end until they both needed to breathe again. That was becoming an habit that night. After they managed to control their heavy breaths, Nathan let out a satisfied groan, making Haley laugh and nuzzle her nose into his chest. "Should we talk about this, Hales?" he popped up the question after a few minutes of silence. Haley started moving her body until she moved away from him to a sitting position and he did the same.

"Okay." she nodded. "I love you, Nathan-"

"I love you too."

"I know you do." Haley smiled. "And I know we are going to be just fine, sooner or later. What do you think got us to this point?"

"My accident and how I treated you and Jamie after that." Nathan answered, a little anxious about where the conversation was going.

"I'm not talking about specific things but the reason why they happened and what will we have to improve from now on so we can prevent them to happen again. Your accident and how we both reacted to it caused this but what could we have avoided? How could we have fixed it?"

They both paused for a second to think about what Haley had just said.

"I told you: I shut off myself from you because I felt like you deserved better, more than a guy on a wheelchair who couldn't do anything. But it was only when you left that I realized I couldn't live without you. That's why I started fighting again, I had to have you back. And Jamie."

"If I were in a wheelchair, would you feel like you and our son would deserve better?"

"Of course not." He didn't even want to think about that.

"Then why do you think that about yourself?" Haley's question got Nathan thinking. He wasn't sure about it. Before the accident he had been a king, a basketball star. He had had it all: the girl, the basketball, the family, the money... He had been happy and fulfilled. "Talk to me, Nathan. I need you to let me in. I don't want you to lie to me to protect me or to treat me badly because you feel like you don't deserve me. Just tell me everything that's going on in your mind, how you feel." she paused for a second, biting her bottom lip and pushing her little dark brown bob to the side. "I think that's where all our problems lied on. We weren't communicating which lead us to not know what we were thinking and feeling and this made us do things we didn't want or needed to do. This is what we really need to work on, Nathan. Don't shut me off again. I will always be there for you and I will always help you but to do that I need to know what you're feeling."

"You're right." he nodded, looking down and embarrassed. "I'm so sorry, Hales. I just..."

"Tell me. Why did you think you weren't worthy of me and Jamie? It's okay." she pushed her body against his and started caressing his cheek, letting him know she was right there. "You trust me, right?"

"Of course I do."

"Then that's all that matters. After that, you can tell me anything."

"I guess a part of me thought that I wouldn't be anything more than a disappointment to you. You loved to see me playing, on the court... And Jamie looked up to me because his dad was a star basketball player. When all of that ended, I lost myself. And I know you and Jamie don't love me because I play basketball but I just felt like I was such a mess that you just deserved someone in a better state of mind and that wasn't a disappointment. I now know how stupid I was being, Haley but I just wasn't thinking straight at that time." Haley was looking at him intently and he noticed how her eyes were shining with the tears that had begun to form.

"I'm just worried that I did something to make you think that." had she? She had been by his side all the time, she had guarenteed him her son and her loved him, no matter what.

"No, you didn't!" Nathan shook his head. "Haley, I've grown up around Dan Scott..." When Nathan paused, Haley intensified her caresses on his cheek.

"Go on. That's exactly what I want you to do." she smiled.

"All my life he made me believe I was never good enough and basketball was the only thing that made me believe I was good, that I could be better than him. And that feeling that I was great was lost along with basketball." his voice had sounded so broken that Haley couldn't help but look compassionately at him.

"So this is about Dan?"

"It's not about Dan but more how he always made me feel. That has always been something haunting me."

"I know. I just thought you already knew you are nothing like him or like the person he made you believe you were. You have always told me he didn't have an effect on you, not anymore."

"That's what I try to tell myself but sometimes, when I'm feeling insecure, it's like his face is right there and he's telling me how I suck and how I'll never be good enough. And I hate it, Haley. Because I know I'm good enough but I feel like this is something I'll always live with." It felt good letting all that out. He didn't know why he hadn't tell Haley this before but now that he let it all out, he felt better. Lighter. "All I know is that ever since I have you, those ghosts only appear in stages of my life where I'm feeling insecure, like the accident. And sometimes I let that consume me."

"Nathan, it doesn't matter what you do. You will always be good enough. I will always want you to be my husband and the father of my child. You will always be better than Dan. I just hate that sometimes you beat yourself up when you have no reason to do it. Dan isn't right, you know that, don't you?" she now grabbed his face in both her hands and looked straigh at him in the eyes. She needed to know he believed in himself.

"I do. Because of you." Haley didn't waste any time in hugging him as he placed his arms around her waist. She had taught him how to believe in himself and believing that he was good enough and worthy of everything he had. He knew that but sometimes his insecure side would emerge and prevail. Nothing that wasn't human, we all had our weak moments but the important was that he knew that he was valuable and loved by his family and friends.

"Don't you feel better?" she asked softly, still with her head resting on his chest.

"I do." he agreed. "I've been thinking about it and I'll talk to Jet Streamer when we get back."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I need to know what he has to say." Nathan paused. "And I'd like you to come with me. Will you?" Haley raised her head so she could look at his face.

"Of course I will", she assured him with a smile.

"Thank you." he said, to which Haley responded with a soft kiss on the lips. "We're getting there, aren't we, Hales? Please tell me you think the same.", of course she thought the same. She knew for a while now that they were going to be okay rather sooner than later. What they had just shared was a sign of it, they had communicated and understood the reason of their actions. That's where it all started. The major problem was figured out and they were both determined to work on it.

"We are", she smiled. "Actually there's something I've been thinking about and I wanted to tell you when we got back but now that we're talking... I was thinking that it could do us some good, individually and as a couple, if we started having therapy sessions. What do you think?" she asked expectantly. The idea had come to her mind a long time ago but with Nathan's recovery there never seemed to be a right time to do it. "It would be something temporary, just until we fully got back on track."

Nathan was surprised, he wasn't expecting that. Honestly, it seemed like something that could help them. "Sure. I'll do anything for us to be the couple we used to be. There's nothing I want more." This time it was his turn to kiss her lips and unlike the last time, he deepened the kiss instead of pulling away instantly. When they were finally breathless, they broke the kiss but their foreheads never stopped touching. "In fact, I want to ask you a really important question to make you..." he said in the most charming voice he could.

"Hmm and what would that be?" she used the same teasing tone. Nathan straightened up and took her hands in his.

"Haley James, do you want to go out on a date with me?" as soon as the words left his mouth, Haley started giggling, not believing what she had just heard.

"What?" she asked between laughter.

"You said you wanted to take things slow and I think that's what we need. So what about start from the very beginning?" when she realized he was actually not kidding, her expression immediately got serious.

"Do you really want to do this?" she asked him with a reluctant smile on her face.

"I told you, Hales. I want to do everything to help our marriage, us."

"I want that too" she nodded.

"Okay, then I'll ask again. Haley James, do you want to go out on a date with me?"

"Yes, I do. Very much." Not able to resist what the moment asked for, they kissed one again. This time more slowly and languid. "You know, we should really get some sleep now." Haley advised in between laughs when they broke up the kiss.

"Yeah, we have a long day tomorrow." They fixed themselves on the backseat. Nathan lied down on the seat and Haley lied on top of him, her head using his strong chest as pillow. "I love you." he said a while after they had closed their eyes.

"I love you too." and it was after hearing her words and feeling her soft fingers caressing the hair on the nape of his neck that Nathan fell asleep.

"Nathan! Haley!" Lucas, Peyton and Brooke's shouts didn't seem to have any response. When everyone had woken up, Nathan and Haley's absense was immediately noticed and while the others stayed at the chalet, the three were currently looking through the camp hoping to find their friends.

"They must be somewhere together." Peyton muttered.

"Mouth and Fergie slept on their tent, right? So they must have found out some other place to sleep in." Brooke stated.

"Well, they're obviously not here and they also weren't in the chalet... Where could they be?"

"They couldn't go too far."

"Let's just focus and keep looking, shall we?" Lucas suggested, interrupting the two girl's conversation.

After another 5 minutes looking around, they finally made it to the black SUV and they opened one of the back doors the sight left them rather surprised: Nathan and Haley were completely clinging to each other while sleeping.

"So, will you ever tell me what happened between you and Nathan last night?" a smile crept on her lips as soon as she heard Lucas's voice. The entire gang was finishing having lunch and Lucas caught the opportunity of Jamie dragging Nathan to play with him to ask his best friend what had happened between them last night. Nathan and Haley both seemed different. They had been together all the time and they were always giggling and what had seemed to him, even flirting. They obviously had a glow they didn't have before and after finding them completely glued to each other in the car, he knew something must have had happened.

Haley couldn't help the blush that start showing on her face and she closed her eyes while smiling, trying to make it go away. But this was Lucas, her best friend and her brother in-law. There was no use in trying to hide it, he'd see through her.

"We kissed", she stated happily.

"Wow. That's great, Hales!" he showed is enthusiasm for the news. It was about time, if you asked him.

"And we had a serious conversation about our marriage."

"And?"

"And we both know why all of this happened, we've identified the problems and we're working on correcting them."

"That's great. You know, he really has made up for what he did. I'm really happy for the both of you."

"Thanks, Luke." In the instant after, Josh came into the room with a what looked like a transparent ball in his hands.

"So, are you ready for the last challenge?"

Apparently, their last challenge included water. They were all by the lake and the first group reaching the other side of the lake would be the winner. The problem was that they wouldn't swimming... All the elements of each group were going to be put inside a giant air ball designed to stay afloat and they needed to find ways to get to the other side. Nathan though something like this would be piece of cake. Boy, was he wrong! Every time any of them moved, the ball would roll over and they'd all end up falling. But after a lot of laughter and fun, Nathan, Haley and Peyton finally made it and they were declared the winners.

"I swear I never had so much fun in my life!" Lucas stated ecstasically.

"That damn thing was always turning around!" Brooke joined in the laughter. Everyone seemed to be in a daze after that little adventure, especially Jamie who just wanted to go for another round.

"So according to my tables, the Yellow Group is the winner with 6 points!" Josh announced as Nathan, Haley and Peyton stepped forward as everyone clapped. Haley and Nathan picked Jamie up and gave him their plastic gold medals, leaving the boy radiant." Congratulations. "You have just won... a canoe ride!" They'd all be lying if they said they weren't expecting something different, because they were. But a canoe ride seemed pretty nice.

Later that day, Peyton had offered Nathan and Haley the canoe ride, insisting they needed to have fun together and since she was a never a fan of water or canoes, she had no problem giving up her prize. Josh had prepared the canoe for them and they had been riding the canoe for about fifteen minutes. They were sure they were not too far from the campground.

"It's so beautiful out here." Haley stated when they finally stoped, amazed at the view of the green mountains overall, with the sunset yellow/orange light turning it into an even more stunning landscape.

"Yeah, hell of a view." What Haley didn't know was that Nathan had said those words staring at her and not at the landscape before them. His wife had always been sexy but the way those short jeans fit her legs and that yellow top embraced her figure was driving him insane. When Haley finally turned her head, she saw Nathan staring at her and realized they hadnt been talking about the same thing.

"Nathan!" She boggled her eyes and swatted him on the shoulder.

"What? It's not my fault that you're sexy..." his husky tone didn't go unnoticed by her and she blushed, finding her feet suddenly too interesting. "I'm serious, Haley. You're the sexiest and hottest woman I've ever seen." he grabbed her hands and pulled her body to his.

"You're not so bad yourself." she replied using the same tone. This was something they more than familiar with them, flirting had always been a constant in their lives. He captured her lips and they both couldn't resist the want for one another. It had been like this all day. When no one was looking, Nathan had pulled Haley behind a tree or into bathrooms and had stolen her some kisses. "You do realize we look like two teenagers, don't you?" Haley asked in between giggles.

"I don't care. I can't get enough of you." he told her, kissing her again, this time more forcefully. When he finally let go, he looked intently at her and suddenly a smile appeared on his face. "You know what I was thinking?"

"What?"

"We could go for a swim." he told her with a grin on his face. Haley laughed, not disliking the idea at all. In fact, it had been so hot today that it didn't even look like just yesterday there was a raging storm.

"But we don't even have our swimsuits." Haley pointed out.

"It doesn't matter. We'll go in just like this." he said, opening his eyes.

"We could get sick."

"Haley, we're fifteen minutes away from the campground and have you realized how hot it is? Come on!" he pleaded. "Let's just do something wild."

Haley thought about it for a moment. The truth is that the water seemed like it was calling for her and the idea of them just having fun and forget about the rest of the world for a moment was amazingly appealing to her.

"Besides, there's something I want to show you." Nathan capted her attention once again and before she realized it, he was taking off his shirt. The sight of his chiseled and musculed bare chest left her speechless, like it always did and she immediately felt the heat start rising. His eyes were still glued to her and she wasn't getting what he was saying.

"Are you trying to seduce me, Scott?" she teasingly asked, not really understanding what Nathan was doing. He laughed and bit his bottom lip.

"It's not that", he said. Before Haley could say anything, he turned his right arm to her and that's when he noticed it. Three black letters were stamped at the top of his arm: HJS. Haley's mouth opened forming an "O" and she gulped, while looking surprised at him. Had he made a tattoo with her initials? When had this happened? Just the fact that he marked his body with something to do with her made her heart pound rapidly in her chest. She now understood why Nathan got so turned on whenever he'd see her 23 tattoo. She was feeling the exact same way right now. There were no words to describe it. After her initial shock, she couldn't help but smile which just releaved Nathan. "Do you like it? I thought this was the best because at the same time it can mean "Haley James Scott", it can also be "Haley and Jamie Scott"." Haley never took her eyes out of his tattoo and when she travelled her eyes up to his, she threw herself into her arms, kissing him deeply. She tried to part his lips with her tongue, asking for permission that he quickly conceded and soon they started making out heavily.

"I can't believe you did this for me." she finally let out when they drew apart. She still couldn't believe it.

"Do you like it?" he asked once again although he already knew the answer.

"I love it." she kissed him softly once again. "When did you do this?"

"It was after you left. Whitey's niece made it to me."

"Whitey's niece does tattoos?" she asked, quite shocked.

"She does, although Whitey doesn't like it very much". they both laughed, imagining the coach's reaction to something like that. "Do you remember that time when you came over and helped me getting dressed?" Of course she did. She still had dreams about that day and how flushed she had been when his body had reacted to her.

"I do."

"Remember the patch I had on my shoulder?"

"Yes, you said Whitey had taken you to the hospital to make analysis..." as soon as Haley said that, she realized that the patch had been for the tattoo, it was in the exact same spot.

"He had taken me but the patch was for the tattoo. I didn't want to show you before it was completely ready." Haley laughed again, she hadn't even suspected of anything and the truth is that she really had no reasons to because she hadn't seen him shirtless ever since then.

"I can't stop looking at it", she muttered, this time passing his fingers through his bicep. Nathan felt the jolt of electricity and his entire body shivered at her touch. Nathan grabbed her hand and took it to her lips. Then Haley was attacking his mouth again. Nathan quickly put his arms around her waist, bringing her closer to him and before she knew it, he was lifting her up and pulling them to the water. Haley's screams were interrupted by the splash of the water and soon enough they both came to surface, with Haley throwing water at Nathan. "You could've at least warn me!" she shouted but laughed at the same time. Nathan caught her arms before she could throw anymore water and put his own around her. The movement made his tattoo come into view and Haley didn't think twice before kissing his bicep, right where her initials were. His whole body trembled and his instincts got the best of him and he started kissing her neck. She moaned at his touch and straightened her head so he would stop the ministrations. It still wasn't the time for that. She looked sadly into his eyes, telling him everything that she hoped he had caught.

"I'm sorry, Haley. I wasn't thinking." he apologized and she shut him up with a fierce kiss.

"One step at a time." she whispered before crashing his lips again, ready to get lost herself in him.