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Chapter Fifteen


Kevin

If anyone had told me I’d have been staying at Nick’s place a week or more, I never would’ve believed it. I thought for sure that either Kristin would reconsider and call me or I’d think of some perfect thing to say or do to show my love for her and I’d be back in the house within a day or two. But here it was, going on Day Eight at Fort Carter and I was no closer to my great eureka moment than I’d been when he’d picked me up in front of the Marriott. And it didn’t feel like it’d been a week since I’d been refused entry to my own home, either. Then again, I’m not sure what anything really felt like. I just felt numb. And lost. Like Robinson Crusoe, endlessly floating with the wreckage, waiting for a glimpse of land… I was supposed to be planning a way to get Kristin back, but honestly all I wanted to do was sleep and forget.

I could tell I was starting to overstay my welcome, though.

The morning of the great “aha moment”, I was sitting at the dining room table with Nick and we were eating some eggs I’d scrambled and Lauren was shooting him looks while she tied the laces on her gym sneakers. Nick was leaning down in his chair, his back curved along the seat and back of it, looking green around the gills as he picked at his eggs, actively not meeting Lauren’s eye.

I had a feeling he’d been given the urgent assignment to talk to me.

And I couldn’t blame either of them for feeling like they were - her for wanting me out or him for being uncomfortable about asking - because I’d been there. There’d been a ton of times back in the day when Nick had been a little too drunk and ended up calling me for a ride and smashed on my couch for days at a time and Kris would hiss in my ear that it was time for Nick to go and it would be something I’d been thinking for some time but hadn’t had the balls to say yet. It’d always been nice to have Kristin to blame, though, when I finally brought it up to Nick.

The thought of her stung.

Lauren stood up. “Nick, don’t forget to talk to bring up the new wedding date when you meet with management today… and stuff,” she said pointedly as she headed for the door.

Nick’s already sullen face sank even more. “I won’t forget,” he mumbled like a school boy being forced to greet the teacher good morning.

Lauren left.

When the front door closed, I turned to Nick. “The faster you ask me, the less awkward it’ll be,” I told him.

Nick’s face turned red. He stared down at the eggs, suddenly seemingly enamoured with them, pushing them around with his fork as he spoke, “Lauren just wants to know like how long you’re gonna stay,” he mumbled. He looked up, dropping the fork, a slightly panicked look on his face, and added, “But I mean it’s not like you’re not welcome to stay or nothin’ either, just we was wondering and stuff and… yanno… Just… like… maybe...yanno… a estimate, maybe. Like a… a status update.” He looked miserable.

If I was any more of a bastard, then I would’ve played with him a little bit.

As it was, I was too tired to mess with his head, though.

“I don’t know,” I said. I sighed and put my fork down. “I’m not getting much thinkin’ done,” I admitted. “There’s got to be something I can do to … to fix it. But I don’t know what. And I don’t know what to do until I think of it.” I shook my head at my plate.

“Whenever’s fine man,” Nick practically whispered the words.

“Look, I know it’s important for y’all to have some alone time,” I said. “You’re trying to recover from a really hard blow to the relationship. I’m amazed she’s taken it as well as she has.”

Nick nodded.

“I just wish I had the words to -boom- make my relationship right, too. I wish there was like a magic word. Abracadabra.”

“Dawg, you’re tellin’ me,” Nick whined, suddenly animated. He sat up, “I fucked up last time gettin’ a date settled, yanno, so now she’s like practically acting like if I can’t get a date settled on today then like I’ma run off again or somethin’ and I dunno how Lori’s gonna take that. She’s gonna flip the fuck out. She went through all kinds of circus act shit to get me that first date.” Nick shook his head. “And she’s gonna push the whole prenup thing like way more now. I’m scared. Lauren’s gonna fuckin’ neuter me if I don’t get this worked out, man.”

I was still surprised she hadn’t neutered him anyways for running off. I felt… well, not jealous, but kind of, I guess. I couldn’t believe that Nick and Lauren had managed to weather a storm as large as all that but Kristin and I weren’t even able to try to talk it out. I guess the word was impressed. I hadn’t forseen Nick ever having a relationship that strong.

I guess that’s just another way I still thought of him as a little kid.

“It’s gonna be tough,” Nick was saying, breaking into my thoughts, “Talkin’ to management about all this. You know Jack’s pissed because of the way TMZ is going nuts and then me just dropping off the radar to go to Kentucky? That’s what the meeting’s all about. The second they heard I was back in LA, they pounced. Pretty sure I’m in hot water without trying ot take command and tell ‘em I’m going for round two on the wedding date thing. So… yeah, abracadabra, like you said, I wish I had magic words for that.”

“Hmm,” I mused, rubbing my chin. Taking control of meetings was my specialty after… “Well.. That I just might have some magic words for.”




The management team looked surprised when I walked in with Nick a couple hours later. JSo’s brows knit together and she turned to the papers in front of her, shuffling quickly, “Kevin… this… this isn’t a BSB meeting,” she said, turning to look down the line at Lori, who shook her head.

“I know,” I said, “I’m here to help Nick out.”

Jen looked at him, then back to Lori, then back to me. “Well, I mean, okay. Help him out with what?”

“I, uh, need to talk to y’all about… about re- re-scheduling my wedding,” Nick stammered.

Lori’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re kidding me.”

Nick shook his head.

“Right now, press is a nightmare, y’all should wait ‘til the media calms down over the first mess you made,” intoned Jack.

Nick’s face was slack. He stared at the table.

“They don’t want to wait,” I responded. “What happened at the first wedding was horrible, but it wasn’t because he doesn’t love her and it wasn’t because of anything other than just cold feet with a bad influence there to help him run away.”

“But wasn’t it you that --” Jen started to ask and I nodded, cutting her off.

“Yeah, I’m the bad influence,” I answered.

Nick studied his fingernails.

“When did y’all want to get married?” I asked Nick.

He looked like I’d just stuck a spotlight on him at the worst possible second. “Wheneverisfinebutsoonwithinthemonthortwo,” he said in one breath without looking up.

“Ok, so they’re open within the next two months,” I translated. I looked around at the management team. “He needs one week.”

They instantly started giving me reasons why not. I sat and let them talk. Nick sank lower and lower in his chair the more they talked, Jack practically shouting that the news was gonna eat this shit alive if he did this right now, and Lori yapping like one of them teeny tiny dogs about the timing being even worse now than it’d been before while Jen was listing off BSB events coming up within the next couple months.

Finally I cleared my throat. “I didn’t ask y’all whether he could take a break. I asked y’all to look at your schedules and find a date that best works that you will be working around because he is taking the break for this wedding.” I took a deep breath, “Y’all work for him, not vice versa, and this is not optional. Period.

Nick looked up at me, eyes kind of wide, and then, encouraged by my confidence, he added, “Yeah, it’s … not optional.”

Lori looked pissed, Jack flabbergasted, and Jen… well Jen was kinda used to me taking control like this. She just looked tired.

I’d done it a hundred times.

Harry, Nick’s agent, who’d been quiet until then said, “Okay so let’s make this work. Nick wants a second stab at the wedding guys, so we give it to him. Lori, Jen? Find a date. Jack, any news is at least news. We work for Nick, not vice versa, so… let’s make it work.”




“Fucking hell dude, you’re like, like, like… dude… Kevin, you got balls of steel,” Nick was hooting as we walked from the Starbucks on the street level back to his car. He mimicked punching the air, “Gave’em the ol’ one - two, told’em who’s boss. Literally.” Nick laughed, grinning up at the sky, “Shit, that was fucking awesome man. Fucking awesome.” He shook his head as he got into the car.

I shrugged, “You gotta just stand up to them. That’s all.”

“That is so much easier said than done, though, man,” he said, shaking his head. “I get in there and I dunno I just feel so stupid, like a little kid trying to run a show and they sound so full of authority and stuff, it just feels like there ain’t nothin’ intelligent I could say.”

“You got this, Nick,” I told him, “You’re a man. You gotta take charge like one. You can’t let them walk all over you. You are the commodity. You are the boss. Without you, then they have nothing to represent. Ultimately, if you don’t show up, they’re the ones that are screwed.”

“True,” Nick said quietly.

“Damn straight it’s true,” I said, nodding, “They need to remember that now and then. They work for you. Just like I told’em.”

“Dude, Lauren’s gonna be so happy,” Nick said, turning the car on.

I sighed as I buckled in and Nick pulled away from the curb, “Just wish I could take control of the Kristin situation as easy as I did that,” I commented. I pictured myself just walking into the house and being like no, we are married and we are going to work on this, period, this is not optional. But I’d basically tried that the day we got back from Kentucky and that had definitely not worked out like I’d imagined it would.

Nothing worth having is easy, I thought. Hadn’t Caroline said that, too?

Nick sipped his coffee, “I mean, you will eventually, Kev. You just gotta put your thinkin’ cap on ‘cos eventually you’re gonna find a way back to her heart, and then y’all are gonna be all good.”

“Wait.. wait a second.” A light bulb had flicked on in my head. “Wait. Say that again.”

“...Uh.. y’all are gonna be all good?”

“No the thing before that.”

“Uh… eventually you’re gonna find a way back to her heart?”

“Back to her heart,” I mumbled. “That’s it.”

A long time ago, back during the Lou Pearlman years, when I’d been constantly on the road, constantly broke, constantly running here there and everywhere with no pay off, Kristin and I had a fight about whether Backstreet Boys was worth the bullshit that Lou was putting us through. Kristin was one of the first people to see what a jackass Lou was being towards us, but I was still blind to it. No, I’d tell her, that’s just how the business goes, and she’d argue with me for hours, screaming that I was being used and I was stupid for letting him waste me away the way he was doing. You’re making him rich, Kristin had screamed one day. And when Brian was sick and Lou wasn’t willing to help out, she’d gotten even madder. Like Leighanne, who’d given Brian an ultimatum of get treated or get another girlfriend, Kristin had come to me and made one of similar standards. Make your relationship with Lou right or make a new relationship because she wasn’t gonna stick around to watch everything I’d worked so hard for fall apart because of Lou failing to keep up his end of a fair contract.

We’d had a blowout of unbelievable proportions and I’d been sure that it was over. Not because I wanted it to be over, but because she wouldn’t talk to me. It was a lot like it was now between Kris and I. And out of that wreckage, in the lowest hours, when I’d wanted nothing more than to find a way to fix it, I’d written the song Back to Your Heart with Gary Baker. And when I’d sung it to her, she’d given me a second chance.

And Lord almighty if a second chance wasn’t what I needed right about now.

If music had saved us then, it could save us again.

“What’s it?” Nick asked, confused.

“Nick, I gotta do a ‘Back to Your Heart’ again. I gotta write her a new song.”

“Hey that’s a cool idea,” Nick said, grinning. “Magic words.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled, “Magic words.”




When we got back to Nick’s place, I called all my buddies that were my usual suspects for co-writing, but most of them were busy. It was frustrating a hell, finally knowing what I needed to do, so certain that this song idea was gonna work, and not being able to find anyone who could give me a hand. I mean I could’ve just done it myself, or had Nick help me for that matter, but it was more important than that. I needed a professional, someone who could help me get just the right words out, words that could mend the broken pieces.

“You should call Andrew,” Nick said. “Andrew’s always interested in doin’ stuff. Y’all could even use my home studio in Nashville if you wanted. You could stay there.” Nick said, hewas watching a football game, his feet up on the back of the couch, Mork from Ork style, Nacho asleep across his chest.

It was a pretty ideal offer. Free studio time, free place to stay. Nashville was one of my favorite cities in the world because it felt like home and there were so many good memories within it’s limits. There was a great vibe there. And a great vibe is what I needed.

I nodded, “That could work… that could work…”

So I called Andrew Fromm and the next thing I knew it was all set up for the following Tuesday to meet up in Nashville and get to writing a musical apology that would sew my family back together. I’m not going to lie, I had extremely high expectations and hopes for the song, it had to be completely perfect because I was going to gamble the most important things in my life on it. But I had confidence. If I wrote the words that described the stuff I felt, then there was no way in hell that Kristin could ignore it, no way she wouldn’t understand exactly how I felt and know that we had to give our love a second shot. We had to. Like we owed it to the universe to.

I booked a flight to Kentucky for the next morning, figuring I’d head down home to get out of Nick and Lauren’s way and maybe just stay at my momma’s house for a couple nights then drive down to Nashville. I had promised her I’d come back soon and all.

And yes, part of me kind of hoped that I might bump into Caroline while I was there.

It was because I hadn’t gotten to say bye to her before, I told myself.

But the long of short of it all was that this song idea just had to work.

It had to because I wasn’t sure what else would.