Jane and Bob Carter faced the four tired and strained faces in front of them. They grasped hands with each other and Jane looked at Bob, "I don't even know where to begin."

Howie smiled a little at her, "We find that the beginning is a great place."

Jane nodded and tried to smile, but failed. She looked older to them all, like she had aged ten years since the moment she set foot in Nick's room. "It all fell apart when Nick needed some papers for his passport. It had been ten years since he had gotten his last one and it was time for it to be renewed. I was on the road with Aaron and Bob had flown out to visit for a week with the kids, for their spring break. He knows where all the family papers are and didn't think anything of going to get what he needed. He didn't know what he would need besides his birth certificate and pulled out the folder with his name and started going through it too see if there was something else he should bring with him.

Nick took a shaky breath, "I started reading over my birth certificate. You know, name, birth date, where I was born, the time, the county, the city, all the normal stuff. Until....."

He stopped and Katya stroked her hand over his hair, knowing it would calm him, "Until?"

He sniffled a little before continuing, "In the space where the names of the mother and father was.....it wasn't Jane Carter.

Howie, Kevin, Brian and AJ all gasped, "What?!"

Jane looked down at her hands, clasping each other tightly. "It gets worse."

Bob stepped in, "The name that was under mother was one he knew. A person he's known all his life. But he knew her as Aunt Shauna. Nick is my sister's child."

Nick sobbed, reliving the moment over again, "The woman who I had only known as my aunt all my life is my mother. And the woman who I had called my mother my whole life is really my aunt and only by marriage!" Bitterness scorched his words, "And my father...."

Bob looked at Brian, considering the question he had asked, "We don't know who Nick's father is. Shauna would never tell who it was. The only thing listed on the birth certificate is "Unknown". We begged her to at least give us the name in an envelope, so if, god forbid, something happened to Nick, we would have some way of tracing him down as a donor or for genetic history. She refused. To this day she still won't tell us."

Nick's face twisted in grief for all he had known that had crashed down around him, "It was like she couldn't even be bothered to at least take a guess at who my father was. And my brother and sisters? We're cousins. They don't know about all this, but Aaron, who looks so much like me, is nothing more than a cousin. We don't even share one parent in common."

Kevin felt so bad for Nick. Everything he was hearing was blowing his mind, he couldn't imagine being the one going through it. "So how did you end up being the ones to raise him?"

Jane sniffled into her kleenex, "Shauna announced to us as soon as she knew she was pregnant that she was giving it up for adoption. Bob and I were shocked that she was pregnant, but not really surprised, she was a wild child back then. But we couldn't let her give the baby to complete strangers. That baby was a Carter, at least halfway, and Jane and I talked about it. If Shauna couldn't handle raising it, we wanted her to give us the baby. After a lot of convincing, she gave in. We raised him as our own, in every way but biologically he is our firstborn. We were there when he took his first breath and showed the famous Carter lungs off to the doctor. We were there for his first everything. It was part of the deal with Shauna that we never tell Nick she was his mother. Even though it didn't seem right to us, we agreed because we didn't want to see Nick go to strangers when we were perfectly willing to raise him ourselves.

He called us when he found the birth certificate and adoption papers and he was nearly hysterical. He was sobbing so hard we could hardly understand him."

"I asked them why they had kept this from me for so long. Why I was lied to my entire life. Why the woman I called my aunt and now knew was my mother didn't want me. I was so confused and mad. I couldn't let go of the fact that I had been lied to all my life. From the first breath I took it's all been a lie."

Katya watched as seemed to have cried himself out. Her heart ached for him. To have your whole life be nothing but lies and secrets....she shook her head, he deserved so much better than that.

Nick rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, "Katya, I feel so alone. I have no mother, I have no family, no brothers and sisters, no father, nothing. Everything I had has been ripped away from me. I just feel so alone."

Katya watched as a fresh batch of tears pooled in the corners of his eyes and slid down the side of his face, over his temple and burying themselves in his hair. She wrapped her arms back around him and just let him cry for all he'd lost.

The other four Backstreet Boys sat stunned in the hard plastic chairs of the waiting room, still trying to comprehend everything they had heard. Brian was openly crying, "Oh god, poor Nick. How did he keep this to himself all this time? How long has he known?"

Jane looked at the floor, almost too ashamed to look at them. "Six months."

AJ's shoulders were shaking as he turned away from the others, trying to compose himself. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned around to see Howie. Compassion and sympathy shone in his big brown eyes. He knew this was pulling up some powerful emotions that AJ had long buried.

AJ let Howie keep his hand on his shoulder. He looked at Jane and Bob, "I can't even pretend to know fully what he is going through. But I can give you a little insight. He probably feels so alone right now. I know what it's like to have a father who doesn't want you. There is a hole in you that can never be filled in. Like a piece of you is gone and you'll never get it back. But to have the word Unknown as your father.....at least my father has a name, even if that's the only way he'll ever be a father to me, I still know his name. The pain of being unwanted by one parent is enough...but two....my god."

He could empathize with Nick so much, he could almost feel the pain like it was in his own body. "He doesn't know who he is anymore. He may be Nick Carter, Backstreet Boy, but at the end of the day when he steps off the stage? He's got nothing. No family, the people he knew as brothers and sisters are nothing more than cousins, an aunt he's known his whole life is his mother and now he knows every time he looks at her that she never wanted him. That's what he's been living with for the last six months. That would cause anyone to crack under the weight of it all."

Katya held Nick tightly as she watched him fight to stay awake, he was physically and emotionally exhausted. She stroked his hair and the side of his face, calming him. "Go to sleep, Nick. You are so tired. Don't fight it."

Nick sniffled, "I need to tell you....the rest...I went to see her."

Katya put a finger to his lips, "Tomorrow. Right now you rest."

His eyes struggled to remain open, the exhaustion clouding the blueness of his eyes to almost a navy color. "Will you still...."

She stroked the side of his face, "I'll still be here. I'll be right here." She kept stroking his face and hair until he lost the fight and closed his eyes.