Bethany Joy Lenz Shares Her Favorite Haley and Nathan Moment from One Tree Hill (It's a Steamy One!)

For Bethany Joy Lenz, there is no Haley without Nathan.

While chatting with Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper this week on her latest podcast episode, Lenz, 43, looked back on her days on One Tree Hill and her favorite memory of her character, Haley James Scott.

"Most iconic Haley moment? It's hard because so many of them were with James Lafferty," she said of her costar, who played her longtime love interest Nathan Scott on the series.

"You know, that kiss in the rain when Nathan and Haley first get together, and they just have that kiss in the rain," she said, adding of the off-camera reality, "and that hose with holes in it and freezing cold water ... pouring down on us. It was so fun."

She noted that at the time, "James and I had never kissed before and he was 17 and I was cradle-robbing at that point. And it was just awkward — you're smashing teeth, and trying ... you're young kids, just like, how do we kiss each other on camera?"

Fans ate it up, however, coining the couples' name "Naley" as the pair navigated ups and downs throughout the series, which ran from 2003 to 2012.

Elsewhere in the podcast, Lenz said she initially wasn't even on the show.

"They shot the pilot without me," she shared. "It was called Ravens at the time. I really wanted to just focus on film, I'd just got off of a soap opera in New York and I wanted to try something different."

But fate seemingly had other plans.

"It came back around, they said they're recasting, they're shooting in two weeks and will you please go screen test for this role?" she recalled of a chat with her team. "And so I did."

Lenz has been talking lots about life and One Tree Hill lately as she promotes her new memoir,  Dinner for Vampires Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!).

In the book — and a sit-down about it with PEOPLE — Lenz opens up about leading a double life while filming the hit teen series. At the same time, she was also deeply devoted to a small, ultra-Christian group led by a shady pastor in Idaho, who controlled her career, life choices and, eventually, her bank account.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

By the time she got out a decade later, she had to start over with hardly anything to show for the nearly nine years she spent on the series — and a feeling of regret and shame for not realizing she was in a cult.

"I don't think of it as brave," she says, of why she's finally opening up. "I think of it as important. Living silently in the suffering I experienced, I don't know if that helps anyone." She hopes her book will empower others in similar situations: "I think of this more as the right thing to do." 

Dinner for Vampires Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!) is out Oct. 22.