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Chapter Three


Kevin

Kentucky.

That was the one place they would never find Nick. He could stay there as long as he needed to decompress, and nobody would ever be any the wiser. As far as I knew, there wasn’t a soul in the fandom or the press that knew about my father’s camp. The camp was a place free of the world that we inhabited as Backstreet Boys. It was just as untouched and comfortable and safe as it had been all those years ago, when I’d dreamed of getting away.

Funny how, after you’ve gotten away from a place, all you can dream of is getting back to it.

So I packed up my duffel bag and Nick’s duffel bag while he slept on the other hotel room bed, and I ate my burger and fries when the restaurant delivered it to the door. I booked a flight, called my momma and I told her we’d be coming. “You’re going to go to the camp?” she sounded surprised. And who could blame her. In all the years I’d been gone I hadn’t set foot on the camp property since I’d run away from it with Kristin twenty-two years ago. I’d bought my momma a ranch house downtown, and I’d paid for her to hire caregivers so the camp didn’t shut down, but I didn’t have to stay there. And I didn’t bother visiting either. There were too many memories in those hills. Whether the emotions they evoked were sadness or guilt, I didn’t dare face the demons.

Until now.

Because I knew it was exactly the sort of place Nick needed.

And no, the irony of my last experience at the camp, running away from Caroline, was not lost on me.

It was the first time I’d allowed myself to think much of Caroline, and as I sat watching TV, waiting for Nick to wake up so I could tell him the plans I’d made, I wondered what had become of her, if she’d gotten married to someone more deserving than I’d been. But thinking of her too much hurt, I realized, and I pushed the image of her out of my mind almost as quick as it had come.

“You’re bringin’ me -- where?” Nick asked, incredulous, when I told him my plan when he woke up an hour later.

“To Irvine, Kentucky,” I answered. “It’s where I grew up. Nobody would ever look for you there. It’ll give you some time to recover from all this without the paparazzi being all up your ass.”

“Yeah, but it’s Kentucky,” Nick said, a puzzled look on his face, “What do you do in Kentucky?”

“You heal,” I answered.




Nick’s main defense against stress is to sleep. And sleep he did. I mean it was like three in the morning by the time we landed in Kentucky, but I’m pretty sure it was stress making him sleep just the same. Especially since he’d slept for probably seven or eight hours already at the hotel, plus he’d slept on the flight from Los Angeles to Louisville. Though he tried to stay awake on the drive, the highway was too much for him and he was asleep before we’d reached the road that would take us most of the way southeast into Irvine. Nick’s head rested against the window, his eyes moving in REM patterns as I drove.

It was just as well, I had concerns of my own to think on.

I’d texted Kristin the night before to tell her the change of plans, that I’d left the hotel in LA I’d been staying at and gone home to Kentucky with Nick to hide from the press. She hadn’t answered. Now if she really had gone to her mother’s place, like I’d told everyone, I’d have assumed she was just busy with her mother or the boys, but she wasn’t really gone to visit her mother. She’d kicked me out of the house after an especially colossal argument the week before and it had been only our southern roots in manners that had brought us to Nick’s wedding together.

“We’ll call a truce,” she’d suggested, “In the name of Nick’s wedding.”

“Truce,” I’d agreed.

But the truce had ended and I hadn’t heard from her since we’d split up at the wedding. She hadn’t even texted to ask what happened when Nick went AWOL. She’d probably gotten all the information she needed from one of the other Backstreet Wives or, hell, maybe even TMZ.

So I guess the trip to Irvine wasn’t entirely for Nick’s benefit; if I’m being honest it was a little bit for me, too. After all, I couldn’t stay sleeping in a hotel room forever and I couldn’t just apologize for all the things Kristin and I had been fighting about (most of them, I still felt, weren’t my fault) and I was too proud to tell any of the other guys what was going on to ask for help. Going to Irvine gave me an excuse to leave, too, and a place to stay until I could decide what to do about the differences that had recently arisen between Kristin and I.

“Selfish bastard,” I could almost hear Kristin saying in her condescending tone, “Can’t even help your friends without helping yourself.”

But it is helping him, I argued back with the Kristin in my mind. Whether it’s helping me, too, or not is irrelevant, as long as it is helping him.

I took a deep breath, pushing Kristin’s voice out of my head. To be fair, she probably wouldn’t really have said those things. Only the Kristin of my mind, who was a terribly warped version of the woman I’d married, would ever say that stuff to be. I was angry at her, that’s why my mind twisted Kristin’s good heart into a nasty thing of spiteful responses.

Besides, the Kentucky roads were far too beautiful to dwell too long on bad memories, so I turned the radio on low and unrolled the windows and stuck my arm out the window, feeling the wind and watching the sight of the headlights of the rental piercing the night. The road paint illuminated into the miles ahead, dots of stars along pitch black ribbons of fresh pavement.

I’d done a lot of driving listening to old country music when I was a teen back in the day. There wasn’t a problem in the world you couldn’t think out to it’s very ends out here. Two headlights and a Garth Brooks cassette and you were ready to take on anything on the miles that wove through the bluegrass hills. And if a few miles didn’t do it, there was always more to go; there was an unending resource of miles in them backroads. Eventually, the miles would win and the thoughts you had in your head would fade away like the sunlight.

This was one of the many healing properties of Kentucky.

Nick slept beside me as I drove the therapeutic miles. He slept nearly all the way to Irvine, only stirring when we finally got close enough there were street lamps to light his eyes through the windshield. His eyelids fluttered open and he stirred slowly, stretching as he sat up and looked around groggily, “Where we at?” he asked.

“Almost there,” I replied. We were passing my old high school, which sat a few miles out of the town.

Nick watched it go by, blinking at the trees and open fields and farm land that surrounded us sleepily. “What are you listening to?” he asked, his eyes landing on the stereo face, and then his nose scrunched up, “And what the hell is that smell?”

“Local radio,” I replied as Luke Bryan’s latest started playing, “And that smell is farm.”

“It smells like shit,” Nick replied.

“Basically,” I replied, “It’s manure.”

“Cow shit,” Nick translated. He grabbed the neckline of his t-shirt and pulled it up over his nose. “Jesus, does all of Kentucky smell like that?” he asked through the shirt.

“Not all of it,” I answered, “Only the finer parts.”

Nick was squeezing his shirt over his nose like it was an oxygen mask. I was willing to bet that the air smelled worse under his shirt than it did out of the shirt. “Does da camb sbell lide dis?” Nick asked. He sounded funny because he wasn’t breathing through his nose.

“No, the camp smells like pine trees,” I answered.

“Dank gob,” Nick mumbled.

He kept his shirt over his face like that long after we were out of the farm country. We rolled into town in the early morning hours, not too long before the sun would rise and awaken everybody in Irvine on a new day. We passed the greasy spoons and the strip mall and I put my blinker on to turn away from downtown to my momma’s house so we could get the key to the camp, which was still a couple miles out of town. Nick watched all the businesses go by.

“There’s more here than I expected,” he admitted.

“Well, that’s all of it basically,” I replied.

“Oh,” he said.

I had a feeling maybe there was exactly what he expected after all.

The headlights lit up the mailbox and I turned up momma’s driveway. Nick leaned forward to look at the house over the dashboard. The lights were dark from the bottom to the top of the place. “What if she’s asleep?” he asked.

“She knows we’re coming,” I answered.

The tires crunched on the gravel as I rolled to a stop right behind my momma’s car and cut the engine. Nick looked over at me as I undid my seat buckle, then undid his own. “We’ll get the keys and head over to the camp,” I said.

Nick nodded.

The light in the foyer lit up and momma pulled the door open as our sneakers hit the top step of the porch. Nick looked impressed that I’d known she’d been waiting for us. “Kevy-Kev!” momma shouted and she pushed her way out onto the porch and wrapped her arms tight around me, giving me a good squeeze. I hugged her back, but more gentle than she’d done me. An alarming phenomenon had begun happening: every time that I saw my mother she looked older than she had the last time I’d seen her. It scared me, and somehow I had it in my mind that she was fragile and I could break her and I felt like maybe I’d broken her enough all those years ago when I didn’t stay.

“I saw those vultures on the TV,” she said to Nick as she released me. “Like you ain’t going through enough without them crawling all over your lawn like that.” Her tone was disapproving. “I don’t know how you all can stand it, I wouldn’t be able to stand that. I’d be out there with a shotgun gettin’ them off the property if I had to.”

Nick shrugged.

“We wouldn’t ever trust Nick with no shotgun, momma,” I said, playfully punching Nick on the shoulder, “He’d probably shoot himself in the damn foot by accident.”

Nick turned red. “I ain’t a bad shot,” he argued, “I went to a clay target range with Lauren once and --” he stopped mid-sentence. “I just ain’t a bad shot is all,” he finished. He stared down at his feet.

“I can’t believe what that hussy’s done to you,” Momma injected roughly.

Nick looked up in surprise, “She didn’t do nothin’,” he said defensively, “I’m the one that ran away, not her.”

My mother’s face registered surprise. She looked at me, then back to Nick. “Oh,” she said. She looked confused. “Oh. Well then.” She didn’t quite know what to do with that, though she probably should’ve. She’d had plenty of practice, after all. “Well. Why don’t you come inside, it’s chilly out here.” She turned and led the way into the house.

Nick looked at me like he was wondering if it was still safe to go inside. I waved him in, but he looked nervous as he ducked through the doorway.

It was obvious my mother had spent the greater part of the last twelve hours preparing for us to arrive. She’d cleaned and baked cookies, making the whole house smell like a combination of Febreeze, Pinesol and chocolate chips. She waved us to the dining room table while she went into the kitchen, “Do you all want some sweet tea?” she called out, “Cookies and milk?”

Nick looked interested in the offer of cookies. “Sounds good, ma,” I called back as we settled into the chairs. Nick sat carefully, back straight and hands in his lap, like he was afraid to slouch. I raised an eyebrow at him, “Relax, buddy.”

“She looked pissed that I was the one that left,” he hissed.

“You’re fine,” I answered.

“Your mom doesn’t hate me, right?” he asked.

“She doesn’t hate you.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive.”

Nick didn’t look like he believed me. My mother came back out a moment later with a plate of cookies, three mugs hooked onto her fingers and a half gallon of milk. Nick sat up straight again. “Thank you ma’am,” he said when my mother put a mug down in front of him. She gave him a funny look, but put the other two mugs and the plate down, then filled all the mugs with the milk and took a seat next to me.

“So how long are you staying at the camp?” my mother asked.

I shrugged, “I’m not sure just yet. However long it takes.” I pulled one of the cookies from the plate and tore it in two, dunking one side and putting the other on the table beside my cup.

My mother thoughtfully ripped her own cookie, studying the pattern of the chips for a moment, then she said, slowly, “The caretaker will be staying on the property, too, just so you know in case y’all run into each other.”

“That’s fine,” I replied. “I’m sure it won’t be a big deal.” I picked up my cookie and dunked it. Nick had reached up gingerly for a cookie and nibbled at it like he was a rabbit or something. It was kind of amusing how nervous he was acting. Normally Nick would’ve Cookie-Monstered about ten of those things by now, especially since Lauren wasn’t there to keep him in check. Now he was going out of his way to make sure he didn’t get any crumbs on his t-shirt. This from the guy who I’d seen go a week without taking a shower on tour. I smirked.

My mother made small talk - mostly about the trip and if we had any plans to start recording any new music soon and how Mason and Max were - then she got up to go get the keys to the camp while Nick finished the second half of his cookie (and two more) in a couple of quick, more Nick-like chomps. When she came back, she handed me the key reverently. It was still on my father’s old keyring, a god-awful thing made of old fishing lures that I’d made for him when I was twelve. He’d been so damn proud of that stupid thing, and he’d always kept it on the loop with all the keys for the camp. I ran it between my fingers, the rubber lure wiggling in my palm. “Thanks,” I said, and I slid the keys into my pocket, my throat tight at the thought of my father.

“You boys stay safe up there,” my momma said. She followed Nick and I toward the front door, “And give me a call if you need anything at all.” She paused at the door as Nick stepped onto the porch. “There’s no food up there to speak of, make sure you get some food. You could use some fattening up. Especially you,” she said, pointing at Nick.

“I ate cookies,” Nick said quickly.

“Good,” she replied. She moved fast, wrapping her arms around me. “I’ll come visit you later,” she added.

“Okay. Thanks ma.”

The sun was coming up over the trees as Nick and I got in the rental and I backed down the driveway. The green digital clock built into the dash glowed out that it was after six in the morning. I was feeling a bit like a zombie. I couldn’t wait to get to the cabin so I could collapse on the bed and fall asleep at last.

Nick glanced over at me, “Your mom’s nice,” he said.

“Maybe next time you can act like a human being around her,” I chided him.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

I drove through the downtown again and Nick looked around, seemingly less impressed with the business district now that the sun was illuminating it a bit better. Then I pulled off the main road and the car began the ascent up a long, winding backroad that curled around the mountain that Irvine sat at the base of. Round and round the mountain we went, slowly climbing ‘til our ears popped a little and Nick muttered, “Shit how far up is this place?” Then the car broke through the trees and there was the weathered wood sign, welcoming us to the camp, the paint fresh on each of the letters.

“Looks like momma’s caregiver’s really taking care of the place,” I commented. “Even my father hadn’t painted that sign in years.”

“So like is it weird to you that some dude you dunno is livin’ here?” Nick asked, “Like what if he’s some kinda like Dexter type person, tries to take us out while we’re sleepin’?”

I laughed. Only Nick would think Dexter was the caretaker of my momma’s property in the mountains of Kentucky. “I’m sure we’ll be just fine,” I said. “Probably we won’t hardly even see the caretaker,” I added. “He’ll be out, you know, caretaking.”

Nick didn’t look so sure.

I had a feeling he’d read a few too many Stephen King novels.

I pulled up the last stretch of the driveway and the house came into view, the barn off to the left and away in the distance, over the first line of trees, I could see the steeple of the chapel peeking at us. Cabins loomed off to the right, tucked into the woods a little ways. The sun was just coming over the crest of the mountain behind us, giving the property a soft glow as the fog that was settled in the field behind the barn slowly lifted in the sun.

There was an orange Kia Soul parked by the front of the main house and I pulled up beside it and turned off the car. “Here we are,” I announced, kicking the door open. Nick followed suit and we pulled our duffel bags out of the backseat, foisting them over our shoulders.

Nick was staring off toward the barn. “What lives in there?”

“Couple horses,” I answered.

Nick made a face. He wasn’t a huge fan of horses.

We climbed the steps to the main house and I pulled the keys out of my pocket and Nick waited behind me, looking around as I unlocked the door. Inside, it was dark, but I could tell without even turning on the light that not a whole lot had changed since the last time I’d been in the house. It smelled a little different - a scent that was familiar, but not quite the same as it’d been, a change in the air I couldn’t quite put my finger on. “You coming in?” I asked Nick from just inside.

“Dude,” Nick said, “I thought your mom said the caretaker was a guy?”

“Huh?” I asked, turning around. Nick was staring off at the barn still. He pointed. I leaned out the door and looked over.

My stomach did several somersaults.

She was back-to, standing in the yardway, leading a mare the color of chocolate around the loop of the fence. Her hair was still curly, still thick, pulled back into a ponytail on her mid-back. She wore jeans and an old flannel shirt and western-style boots.

There was no way I could question who it was.

She turned around.

It was Caroline.

“Oh shit.”

Quickly, I ducked into the house.

“Kev?” Nick looked at me as I threw myself through the door, “Kev… you a’ight?”

“Did she see me?” I hissed. As though she could hear me from there.

“I dunno,” Nick replied. “Maybe. I think she’s coming over.”