“Okay…..could you tell me what you’re thinking about?”

Brian shook from his thoughts. “Huh?”

“You’ve been staring at nothing for about ten minutes after Nicky fell asleep and I was just about ready to check to see if you’re still breathing.”

Sitting up, the Kentuckian stretched his arms above his head. “I know we’ve talked about this before with Kev, but us spending time with Nick I don’t see why we can’t…”

AJ waited for Brian to finish his thoughts, after a few moments had passed, the rebel spat out, ”We can’t what?!”

Brian raked a hand through his hair. “Why we can’t take care of Nick ourselves. He’s pretty easy to take care of and besides I think he does pretty well when he’s with us.”

“That is what I’ve been trying to get through to all of you guys since day one!”

“Well, it would have been a little harder to take care of him six months ago. All we have to do is convince Nick’s parents to let us take care of him, I mean I’m sure they would after we talk to them.”

AJ snorted. ”Jane Carter?”

“Both of them,” Brian corrected.

“I know that, dumbass. Jane is so into herself that I really doubt she’d want to be saddled down with Nick. Why do you think he’s been in SunValley this long?”

“True…so there shouldn’t be an issue about letting us take care of Nick then, right?”

“Probably not,” AJ agreed. “But we’d have to convince Kevin and Howie that this is a good thing for Nick.”

“Forget about Kevin, I’ll ask to be Nick’s caregiver,” Brian decided as he tucked the blankets around the young blonde. Nick stirred, opening his eyes.

“Sorry….I didn’t mean to wake you up, go back to sleep,” Brian whispered.

Nick rubbed his eyes with his fists. “W-what time is it?”

“Time for you to be sleeping,” AJ said softly.

Nick shook his head, leaning up on his elbows. “What were you talking about?”

“Nothing important,” Brian replied.

The young man flipped the blankets off his body. “Lets do something, I can’t sleep.”

AJ grinned. “What did you have in mind kiddo?”

“I dunno, did you bring the PS2?”

Brian and AJ stared at each other, mouths agape.

“What did you say Kaos?”

“The PS2…did you bring it with you?” Nick asked as he started to look through the dresser drawers.

Brian shook his head in disbelief as he watched Nick rummage through the bags that they had brought with them to the hotel.

“We sang songs and played board games, I didn’t think that you’d be up to playing any video games. Do you want to play video games?”

“Yeah cause I always kick your asses,” Nick replied.

“I think a trip to Wal-mart to get a gaming system is our next stop,” AJ grinned.

“This late?” Brian said as he glanced at his watch.

“Jesus gramps, it’s only 9:15. Live a little.”

“Yeah, c’mon I want to totally kick your ass!”

Brian looked at AJ and Nick standing by the door, letting out a sigh. “Okay, I guess we go to Wal-mart.”