You’ve heard the term, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” right? Well, it turns out that’s not entirely true. We were in Las Vegas the second weekend in August. We arrived on a Friday morning and had our concert Friday night, then had all day Saturday to kick back and enjoy ourselves before heading to the next city on Sunday afternoon and performing again on Monday night. Yeah, we enjoyed ourselves alright. Well, the rest of them did, anyway. I spent most of Saturday night talking on the phone with Joey and woke up to the sound of a door slamming and yelling in the suite beside mine.

“You did what?!” Kevin’s voice bellowed through the wall.

 “Kevin chill out!” That was Nick. Then there was some barely distinguishable sobbing. Was that...Chrissy? I jumped out of bed and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, then started jogging down the hallway towards the door. As I passed my Mel’s room, a bleary-eyed Howie stuck his mussed-up head out the door.

 “What’s going on?” he croaked.

 “I don’t know, but I’m about to find out!” I told him as I rushed out the door and started banging on the door next to ours.

 “Oh thank God. Reinforcement!” Brian exclaimed over the shouting as he swung the door open. “I think Kevin’s going to kill him!” He led me down the hallway and into a bedroom where I found Kevin and Nick standing, glaring in each other’s red faces, and screaming.

 “You’re eighteen freaking years old!” Kevin spat at Nick.

 “Exactly!” Nick countered. “I’m an adult and I’m allowed to make my own decisions. I love her, and I married her!”

 I stood there dumbfounded and glanced over to Christina, who sat on the bed with her knees pulled up to her chest and tears streaming down her face. “Kevin! Nick!” I shouted at them. “Stop it! Can’t you see how much you’re upsetting her!” They both shot glances over at me then twirled around to face Chrissy.

 “Oh, Tina,” Nick lamented, using the pet name that only he and Christina’s little brother used. He dropped to his knees on the floor in front of her and put his hands on top of her feet. “Don’t cry. This is supposed to be our honeymoon.” He grinned.

 She laughed while wiping tears away. “Some honeymoon,” she scoffed.

 “That’s not what you said last night,” he replied suggestively.

 “Nick!” She blushed furiously and slapped him playfully.

 “Sorry. Seriously, though, one of these days we’ll get a break and I’ll take you on the greatest honeymoon ever, okay?” He grabbed one of her hands and kissed the top of it lovingly as she beamed back at him. While I thought the two of them were crazy, I felt a little guilty for peeking in on such an intimate moment between the two of them.

 “Nicky, listen.” Kevin interrupted gently. “What are you going to do when the fans find out? This could be career suicide for you.”

 He shrugged. “We’ve decided not to tell the fans, actually.” He kept looking at Chrissy.

 “And you’re going along with that?” I interjected at Chrissy.

 “Actually, yes, for now. I mean, you’re getting tons of hate mail and you’re only dating Joey. Can you imagine what might happen if they find out I’m married to Nick Carter?” She had a point there.

 “You’re getting hate mail?” Kevin turned to me with concern on his face.

 “It’s not a big deal, Kevin.” I shrugged. “Comes with the territory.”

 Kevin closed his eyes and massaged his temples. “I’m too hung over to be dealing with this,” he sighed and walked over to Nick, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You know we’re still going to have to tell management, right? I’m sure they’ll be happy to go along with this little plan of yours, but in case something gets leaked, they’re going to have to know how to handle it.” He reached his cell phone out to him. “Let’s call Johnny.”

 Nick nodded. “This isn’t going to be pretty.” He patted Chrissy on the knee. “You should probably get out of here. I don’t want you getting caught in the crossfire.” She nodded and stood up, and I led her out of the room.

 “I can’t believe you married him!” I whispered to her as we walked out of Nick and Brian’s suite and into our own. “How did Kevin end up finding out?” It just seemed odd to me that Kevin would be the first person they told the “good news” to.

 She sat down on the couch in the living area of our suite and hugged a throw pillow. “You remember the first episode of ‘Dharma and Greg’ where they’re in the hotel room the morning after they got married and Greg’s in the shower, and his phone rings, then Dharma answers and says ‘Greg’s pants.’?”

 “Um, yeah....I think so.” I sat down in the chair across the room from her.

 “Well, I did that.” She blushed and squeezed the pillow tighter. “Well, I didn’t say ‘Greg’s pants,’ I said ‘Nick’s pants.’ I figured it was going to be one of the guys or one of you looking for me, since I didn’t exactly tell anyone what I was doing, and I’m not one to spend the night with Nick. Well, I wasn’t. Anyway, it turned out to be his mom.”

 “Oh. Ouch! I guess it’s safe to say she wasn’t happy?”

 “She yelled at him for about half an hour, then apparently she called Kevin.”

 “Oh,” I mouthed. “I still can’t believe you two got married!” I scolded. “Why in the world would you two get married in Vegas at your age?”

 Chrissy bit the side of her lip as she thought about what she was going to say to me. “Well, you know how I always said I wouldn’t have sex until I got married?”

 “What?! Chrissy, this was about sex?” I couldn’t believe the reasoning of my usually very bright friend.

 “No! Not entirely. We were making out in his bedroom and things were getting pretty hot and heavy, and in the heat of the moment, he said ‘marry me.’ Of course I told him he was nuts and I wasn’t going to marry him just so we could consummate the relationship. But then, he got really serious and really sweet. The truth is, we really love each other. I’ve never felt like this before, Em. I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life with anyone else.”

 “Chris, you’re just so young, and you’re planning on hiding it. This is going to be really hard, you know.” We silenced ourselves at the sound of a bedroom door opening. The five of us were in a four-bedroom suite, and Chrissy and Cassie were supposed to be sharing a room. Of course, Chrissy hadn’t been there. Cassie came out into the living area yawning and stretching. She took one look at Chrissy’s tear-stained face and my tense demeanor and asked what was going on.

 Chrissy started fumbling with the seam of the throw pillow she was holding. “Nick and I kind of, um, got married last night.”

 Cassie’s eyes widened in surprise. “You did what?!”

 “My thoughts exactly,” I mumbled under my breath.

 Cassie approached Chrissy and sat down on the couch. “So that’s why you were coming into the suite with Nick at 2 AM! I thought that seemed pretty out of character for you.”

 I furrowed my brows and looked back and forth between the two of them before landing my eyes on Cassie. “Why were you in Nick and Brian’s suite at 2 o’clock in the morning?”

 “Yeah!” Chrissy said, happy to take the heat off of herself for a minute. “I wanted to ask, but I was um, a little busy.”

 “She and Nick were all over each other,” Cassie said to me. “Guess it’s no secret what happened in Nick’s room last night!” she giggled.

 “Did anything happen on the couch?” Chrissy asked her accusingly.

 Cassie sighed. “Brian and I fell asleep watching a movie. Leighanne called just a little bit after you and Nick came in because he hadn’t called her. Needless to say, Brian and I won’t be spending any more time together,” she said with an eye roll.

 “Why is that?” I asked. “It’s not like you were doing anything wrong. You just fell asleep.”

 Cassie nodded. “I know, but for reasons I’ll never understand, she’s very jealous of me. I mean, look at her and then look at me. I’m pretty sure I’m not much of a threat.”

 “You know, Cass, you don’t give yourself enough credit,” Chrissy told her. There was a knock at the door and I jumped up to answer it. A visibly shaken Nick walked in and announced that there would be a group meeting for all ten of us at 1:00 PM, which was only about an hour and a half away and two hours before we were scheduled to hit the road.

 “How’d it go?” Chrissy asked him as she jumped up and wrapped her arms around his waist.

 “About like you’d expect,” he sighed as he hugged her back and bent over to kiss her. They were really a sight standing next to each other-- him over 6 feet tall and probably pushing 200 pounds while she was only about 5’2” and probably no more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. “Listen, guys, I just want to apologize for anything he says. It’s all my fault.”

 “Not just yours,” Chrissy murmured into his t-shirt. “Mine too.”

 “No, Tina,” he insisted, pulling away to look down at her. “This is all on me, okay? I won’t let him bad-mouth you.” In that moment, I was so impressed by the maturity of Nick Carter and started to believe that maybe the two of them would make it after all.