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Chapter Ninety-Two
Point of View: Narrator


Desi hadn't given up on his suicide plot. He'd just decided he needed to wait until he knew everything had been taken care of. He was sitting on the sidewalk out front of a homeless shelter in the heart of the city, his gun tucked safely into the inside of his coat's liner, where he'd ripped a hole to stuff it into. He looked around and smoked the butt of a cigarette that he'd picked up out of the gutter. He was unshaven and his eyes had sunk in. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket.

He pulled it out and stared at the number on the LCD. He didn't know who it was, so he didn't answer it. Instead, he sent it to voicemail. He waited until the phone had alerted him, then called to check who it was. If it was worth his time, he'd call back.

"You have one new message. First message."

"Hey Desi. My name is Brian; Brian Littrell. I don't know that we met, I'm guessing not. I'm a friend of Nick Carter and Krystal Armaletto. I need to talk to you, if that's possible, about Krystal. It's important. If you could give me a call back, that'd be great - my number is..." Desi listened, uninterested, as Brian rattled off his cell phone number and rolled his eyes. "I'll try calling again later. Hope all is well." Brian hung up.

Desi hit the command to erase the message.



AJ ran his palms along his lab, trying to dry the clamminess off them onto his jeans. Kayla had been staring out the window since they'd left the house, and they'd been silent other than an intensely short conversation they'd held during which AJ had commented on the weather twice, and Kayla had agreed that it was nice out once, then said she was worried about Nick the second time.

"So..." AJ murmured after a few minutes. He felt like he couldn't think of anything to say, anything to ask. He felt awful for leaving Nick behind ,and he wished he could undo having taken Kayla for the search.

"So..." Kayla mimicked him.

"What do you do?" AJ asked.

"Sing, act, dance..." Kayla answered.

AJ looked up, "You sing?"

Kayla nodded.

"What do you sing?"

"Songs," Kayla replied.

"Duh," AJ laughed. She didn't laugh back. He paused. Finally, he said, "Can I hear you sing?"

Kayla hesitated. "What do you want me to sing? I don't know what to sing." Her face flushed bright red the way Nick liked, and she touched her cheeks, thinking of how he enjoyed making her blush and felt worse for having left him at the house. Granted, it wasn't her fault he couldn't come along to find Desi. But that's exactly why she'd had to come along with AJ... to help get Desi located and free Nick from his prison.

"Sing Taylor Swift," AJ said.

"Okay." Kayla hesitated, cleared her throat, then sang, " Corey finds another way to be the highlight of my day... Taking pictures in my mind so I can save them for a rainy day. It's hard to make a conversation when he's taking my breath away... I should say... Hey, by the way... You're beautiful every little piece now.. Don't you know you're really gonna be someone? Ask anyone! And when you find everything you looked for, I hope your life leads you back to my door... oh, but if it don't... Stay beautiful. If you and I are a story that never gets to be told... and if you are just a day dream that I never get to hold... Oh, at least you'll know.. You're beautiful..."

She stopped and sighed, looking at the window again.

"Nice," AJ said.

"That song reminds me of him," she whispered.

"Nick?" AJ asked. Kayla nodded. AJ swallowed the ball that had swelled up in his throat. "Nick's a good guy," he said finally, after a long time.

"He's a great guy," Kayla whispered, "I don't deserve him."

AJ shook his head, "That ain't true."

Kayla looked at AJ, "Why do you say that?"

"You seem great too, that's all. And Nick's just human."

"Nick's way more than human," Kayla argued.

AJ laughed, "Trust me, until you spend hours and days and months and years around the guy on a tour bus you'll never realize how human or just Nick is. He pulls down his pants to shit and he usually forgets to brush his teeth. Trust me. Nick's just a guy."

Kayla laughed. "I don't want to know why you know this stuff."

"I've seen it all."

Kayla bit her lips. "He's had such beautiful girlfriends before," she whispered, "I'm afraid I won't be able to live up to them."

AJ shook his head, "Don't worry about that. You're fucking gorgeous." The words came out of his mouth before he could stop them.

They both flushed.

"Thank you," Kayla whispered.

"It's true," AJ said.

Kayla looked out the window as AJ pulled the truck up to the curb outside of the third shelter they'd stopped at so far. AJ cut the ignition and Kayla studied the yellow-painted brick building, two pots with dying plants sat on either side of the door, and a bench. Beside the bench, on the ground, leaning against the wall, was...

"Desi."

AJ looked up, "What?"

Kayla opened the truck door and jumped out, rushing toward the guy sitting on the ground. AJ hopped out of the truck, too, and followed Kayla. She was kneeling down on the sidewalk. "Desi?"

Desi blinked his eyes opened. He'd been asleep. The sun was high in the sky, filtering into his eyes through her hair, around the silhouette of her head. She had a hand on his shoulder. Desi stared up at her, surprised to see her. "...Kayla?" he muttered.

"Yeah," she said.

AJ hovered a couple feet away.

Desi laughed, "You're too late."

"Too late?" she asked.

He smiled. "Yeah. Too late."

"Too late for what?" AJ asked.

Desi laughed.