Chapter 1

Nick Carter stared out of the window of the plane, his fingers tightly gripping the armrests of his first-class seat. "What the hell is taking so long?" he muttered under his breath through gritted teeth.

"Calm down, Nick," Brian Littrell replied, annoyed, from the seat directly in back of Nick’s. "The plane’s gonna land soon. We’ve done this flight what, 75 times before? Calm down."

"I am calm," Nick snapped back.

"Both of you, shut up! I’m trying to sleep!" interrupted AJ McLean from the seat next to Nick. Tensions were running high amid the members of the Backstreet Boys and the workers on their Into the Millennium tour. They had just wrapped a 40-city tour in New York City and were on the plane home to Orlando. As soon as they touched ground, their badly needed three-week vacation would begin. But for the remaining 45 minutes of the flight, they were all getting on each other’s nerves.

Irritated, Nick put on his headphones and turned on the radio provided by the airline. He flipped through the stations for a minute, then found the perfect song. As he listened to his girlfriend Kirsten’s newest single, "Just a Phase," he closed his eyes and sunk deeply into a daydream. In less than an hour, he would be home in Tampa in the arms of Kirsten Corsi. He couldn’t wait. The two of them had been dating for a year and a half now, but he saw her very rarely. Between his career with the Backstreet Boys and her career as the newest darling pop princess of the music industry, they usually only saw each other at industry gigs and on holidays. But now, for the first time, their vacations came at the same time. Nick smiled contentedly as he envisioned the next three weeks with Kirsten. They would go to the mall, go to the beach and Disney World, sleep late, go to the movies. They could just be a normal pair of 19-year-olds in love, except for the fact that both were famous and filthy rich. But that just made things even sweeter.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Brian scowled at the back of the seat in front of him. He felt bad for snapping at Nick, but they were all on edge and pushing each other’s buttons. Bored, he began to look around the plane. Next to him, Kevin was using one of the special in-flight phones to talk to his girlfriend, Kristen. Howie was watching the in-flight movie and AJ was dozing. Nick was listening to the radio. Across the aisle, Mindi and Tommy, two of their band members, were playing poker. Guy, Dennis, and Louis were having a loud conversation, heavily influenced by the drinks that each had consumed early into the flight, about who was hotter: Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera. One of their back-up dancers, Amy, was painting her toenails while Nessa dozed, Christina watched the movie, and Nikki and Steph flirted with two male flight attendants. Each of the male back-up dancers was watching the movie, Real Genius. As for their bodyguards, Marcus was playing with Nick’s old Gameboy; Mike was reading Sports Illustrated; Dre was flirting with two stewardesses; Tom was trying to get his new laptop to work; Marc was getting a tour of the cockpit (he had lost a bet to Kevin the previous day); Q and Todd were asleep; and Bundy was on the phone with his girlfriend. Except for one or two businessmen, the Backstreet Boys and their entourage took up the entire first class section of the plane.

He sighed again, reaching for his headphones and plugging them in to listen to the airline radio. It was horrible, as usual; mostly jazz, elevator music, and bad 1980s pop acts like New Kids and Tiffany. His mood didn’t become any better when he heard "Just a Phase," by Kirsten Corsi, play. Kirsten was Nick’s annoying, blonde, bubblegum girlfriend who sounded like a chipmunk whenever she sang, and "Just a Phase," her latest hit, was just as bed as the rest of them. But, sadly, it was the best thing on; he settled down and listened to her squeak her way through the song.

"They call it just a phase
My love for you
Like all the other boys
That I outgrew
But if it’s just a phase
My heart can’t see
Because a phase like this
Feels like it’s meant to be.

I always play by the rules
In live and expectations
Too scared too commit, too scared of isolation
But with one glance at you
The rules just flew
Because your eyes told me
You might feel the same way too

They call it just a phase
My love for you
Like all the other boys
That I outgrew
But if it’s just a phase
My heart can’t see
Because a phase like this
Feels like it’s meant to be.

Phases come and phases go
Like platform shoes and Day-glo

But my love for you’s the real thing, babe
This phase is gonna last me
The rest of my days

They call it just a phase
Something I’ll regret
A bad decision, a poor intent
But they don’t know my love
And they don’t know you.
This phase of mine
Will last throughout time

They call it just a phase
My love for you
Like all the other boys
That I outgrew
But if it’s just a pahse
My heart can’t see
Because a phase like this
Feels like it’s meant to be

They call it just a phase
My love for you
But you’re no boy
For me to outgrew
Because if this is a phase,
The real thing don’t occur
Because no other feeling
Could be this sure

Besides having annoying music, she had a generally annoying personality. Whenever Nick was around, she clung to him and played the innocent-little-girl act. It always made him feel like a strong man to have this petite, thin blonde girl looking to him with big blue eyes for protection. But whenever he was gone, she became, as AJ put it, a raging psycho hose beast. She flipped out on her assistants, screamed when she broke a nail, and used her back-up dancers as punching bags. All of the Backstreet Boys and the rest of their tour despised her with a passion, because she was such a Dr. Jekel and Mr. Hyde. But Nick doted on her, so they had to put up with her.

What bugged Brian most of all was how blind Nick was. He honestly had no clue that Kirsten was using him for publicity. The two had met at Grad Night at Disney World – Kirsten had just graduated from high school, and Nick had been performing with the rest of the Backstreet Boys. After the Boys’ performance, Nick had donned a costume and headed cautiously into the theme park – many of his friends were in attendance, because they were all graduating from high school themselves, and he wanted to spend time with them. There was an odd number of people in Nick’s group, so he ended up sitting next to a stranger on the ride – and that stranger was Kirsten. She had been terrified during the ride, and she was pretty, so Nick began to comfort her. After that, she tagged along with Nick and his friends for the rest of the night. The rest was history; they had been dating ever since, to the great annoyance of Nick’s Tampa and Orlando friends. Many of them had gone to high school with Kirsten, and they knew what she was like, but Nick refused to listen to a bad word about her.

After she found out that he was a Backstreet Boy, she became even more interested in him. She began to give him her demo tapes in hopes that he would use his influence to get her a record deal. Nick was already falling for her hard, so he began to pass the tapes around to record execs and other influential people he knew. Eventually, Hollywood Records gave her a record deal, based on Nick’s word that she would be an instant hit. He was right, and Hollywood Records was eternally grateful to him. He had, essentially, given his girlfriend her career. But Nick always insisted that Kirsten had worked hard for it, and she said the exact same thing in interviews. Whether or not Kirsten actually believed it, though, was something Brian didn’t know and didn’t want to know.

When her song ended, "Give It to You" by Jordan Knight came on. Brian turned off his headphones, disgusted, and settled down to nap for the rest of the flight home.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When the plane touched down in Orlando, the Backstreet Boys had to be the last ones let off of the plane, because of the crowd of girls waiting to see them. The airline people wanted the rest of the passengers to disembark and be out of the way before the girls could pounce on their idols. The five men and their bodyguards – the rest of the tour people had been allowed to leave with everyone else – waited anxiously to be allowed off of the plane. Finally, a flight attendant came by and told them that it was their turn to depart.

"Thank God!" AJ groaned. He grabbed his carry-on bag and practically flew off the plane. The rest of the guys, all grinning, followed him into the terminal. Throngs of teenage girls, pressed up against barricades and screaming greeted them. Their cameras flashed continuously, and the Boys instantly pasted smiles on their faces. They waved to the fans and signed a few autographs before their bodyguards hurried them to the Authorized Personnel Only room, where family and friends were waiting to pick them up.

AJ was the first to enter the room, and he instantly spotted his friend Andy and his girlfriend Amanda waiting for him. He instantly kissed Amanda, grabbed her hand, and yelled a quick, "See you guys in 3 weeks!" over his shoulder before departing with Andy and Amanda. And then there were four.

Brian walked in and began looking around, but he didn’t spot the familiar blonde head he was looking for. Feeling a little disappointed, he began to sit down. Then he felt hands cover his eyes and a voice whisper into his ear, "Guess who." He didn’t reply, but instead turned around to give his girlfriend Leighanne a kiss. After they pulled their lips apart, he hugged her tightly.

"I missed you," he said into the top of her head.

"Me too," she replied.

"Come on, I wanna go home. I miss my nice smelly house with my cheap waterbed a noisy water heater." He smiled, and Leighanne rolled her eyes.

"You’re the only millionaire I know who shops at Cosco."

"Hey, when I see a bargain, I take a bargain!" He laughed again. "See you guys later," he said in the general direction of the room. They departed for home before anyone could answer.

Howie hugged his older sister, Pollyanna, and hung around for a few minutes to talk with their bodyguard Mike. Howie gave Kevin and Nick both hugs good-bye, and then went with Polly to meet up with some friends of theirs at a party.

Kevin was next to leave; his friend Trey was supposed to pick him up, but at the last minute Trey called Kevin’s cell phone to tell him that a meeting with producers had run late and he wouldn’t be able to show. So Kevin spent his first few minutes home in Orlando calling up friends of his, begging for a ride home. He would have driven himself home, but he didn’t have a car at the airport and if he went to car rental or on the bus, he would be mobbed. So finally his friend John showed up and, giving him a major guilt trip, gave him a ride home.

Half an hour after their plane touched down, Nick was still waiting in the Authorized Personnel Only room. Most of the bodyguards had gone home; only Q was left. And he was getting annoyed about having to hang around and wait for Nick. Nick looked anxious. For the first ten minutes, he had just hung out, thinking that Kirsten was caught in traffic or something. But then he got nervous and began to call her. He called her house, but no one answered. Her cell phone wasn’t turned on, and either her friends were lying or they didn’t know where she was. So he sat there, playing with his cell phone and shooting apologetic glances Q’s way.

"You can go, you know," he said, feeling guilty.

"It’s okay," Q said curtly, glancing at his watch. "I don’t have to be anywhere until 6 tonight, to see my girlfriend."

Nick winced at the phrase "girlfriend." "I wish I knew where mine was," he said.

Q gave him a sympathetic smile. "Don’t worry about it, Little Man. She’ll show up." Nick laughed a little at the nickname Little Man. Kevin had given it to him six years ago, when the Boys first formed, and now everyone on tour was apt to call him that from time to time.

"I’m not that little!" he protested. "I’m only three inches shorter than you!"

Q flexed a muscle. "Yeah, but can you bench press 200 pounds?"

"No," Nick admitted. Q grinned triumphantly. Nick was about to reply when his cell phone rang. "Finally!" he said, ecstatic. "Hello?"

"Hey Nick? It’s Kirsten."

"Kirsten, baby, where are you? I was so worried when you didn’t show up!" He was relieved to hear the familiar sound of his girlfriend’s high-pitched voice.

"I can’t come, Nick, I’m sorry."

"What’s wrong?"

"I can’t go out with you anymore. Sorry."

It took a minute for her words to register in Nick’s brain. "Huh?"

"Listen, I can’t talk right now, but we aren’t working out. You know that, right?" Nick was silent. "Oh, you thought we still had a good relationship? That’s so sweet! I’m going to call you tomorrow, I promise, and then I’ll tell you the full story, but I’ve got a date in a few minutes, okay?"

"Um, ‘kay." Nick’s shock had reduced him to talking in monosyllables.

"Thanks, Nick. It was a lot of fun." With that, she hung up. Nick slowly took the phone away from his head and starred at it.

"Did she just do what I think she did?" he muttered to the phone.

"What do you think she did?" At first he thought the phone was talking to him, but then he realized that it was Q. Suddenly, his rage boiled over.

"She fucking dumped me!" he yelled. Q looked taken aback.

"What?"

"She dumped me!" he exclaimed in disbelief. Nick couldn’t believe it. "She – dumped – me."

"Whoa, man, I’m really sorry," Q said, unsure of what to say. "Um . . . are you okay?"

Nick pulled himself together, trying to look gruff. "Yeah, I’ll be fine. You can head out. I’ll just call someone else to get a ride home or something, okay?"

Q looked uneasy. "I don’t know, Nick. Management would shoot me if I left you at an airport full of teenyboppers by yourself."

"But Q!" Nick whined. "I just wanna be alone!"

Q sighed. "Tell you what. I’ll just give you a ride home-" He stopped talking. "No, wait, I’m sorry, I can’t. You live in Tampa, right? That’s the opposite way of where I’m going."

"Well . . . can you just drop me off at my friend David’s house? He lives here in Orlando."

Q looked a little skeptical, but he was also desperate to get out of the airport and back home. "Okay, that works. I’ll be right back – I need to pick up my car. I’ll come get you in a few minutes, okay?"

"Okay." Q swiftly exited the room to get his car. The second the door closed, Nick felt tears fall out of his eyes. He couldn’t believe it. No more Kirsten to sing with, to go to the movies with, to kiss. For the past year, she had been his saving grace, and now she was gone.

After a few minutes, he stopped crying and became angry. Who did she think she was? He balled his hands into fists and gruffly wiped away the remains of his tears. I gave her a career, and all she can do is break up with me on the phone! Damn her! As time went on, he became even more bitter, thinking about all of the times that he had defended her to his friends. All the times that he had pleaded with record companies to give her a chance, and all the times that he had put his own neck on the line for her. All that wasted time and energy for a girl who could only say, ‘It was a lot of fun.’ By the time Q returned, Nick had a new resolve: to end the career of Kirsten Corsi once and for all.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Q dropped Nick off at David’s house, and Nick slowly walked up to the front step of Dave’s house. He knocked on the door, a bit nervous: he hadn’t talked to Dave in months and the last time he saw him was almost 2 years ago; he didn’t even know if Dave would be home. He was fairly sure that Dan was home for Christmas break, but he wasn’t positive. He stood awkwardly on the door step for a few minutes until the door flung open.

"Hi, can I help you?" a middle aged woman said.

"Mrs. Harvey? It’s Nick Carter. Is Dave in?" he asked nervously. Dave’s mother squinted at him.

"Nick? Little Nicky Carter? Come on in!" she said enthusiastically, holding the door open for him. "I haven’t seen you in the longest time, dear! What brings you to Orlando?"

Nick ducked into the house. "I was visiting with some friends and I decided to stop by." Mrs. Harvey beamed.

"That’s wonderful! Wait one second, Dave and some friends of his are upstairs. I’ll be right back." She hurried off to find Dave, leaving Nick waiting in the foyer. Moments later, Nick heard the familiar sound of feet stamping down the stairs. Dave led a pack of half a dozen college boys and stopped right in front of Nick.

"Hey, guys, the Backdoor Boy’s back for a visit!" Dave said, giving Nick a gruff hug. "What brings the King of the Teenyboppers back to visit his friends?" He grinned, and Nick smiled back; he had no reason to be worried. His friends still accepted him.

"Yeah, shouldn’t you be screwing that hottie Kirsten Corsi?" someone else chimed in. After a moment of thought, Nick remembered him to be Eric O’Reilly, Dave’s friend. The rest of Dave’s friends, whom Nick didn’t know, looked confused, but grinned at hearing Kirsten’s name. Nick’s face, however, darkened slightly as Eric mentioned his ex.

"Nah, we aren’t seeing each other anymore," he muttered.

"What?" Dave said, shocked. "You broke up with her? Do you have any clue how hot that thing is?" Eric whistled in agreement, and the rest of the guys began to talk about Kirsten’s finer attributes.

Nick shrugged, trying to act casual. "Wasn’t working out. What’s the use of dating a hot girl if you never see ‘er?"

Eric laughed. "Good point. And you’ve got all those girls throwing themselves at your feet, right?"

Nick shrugged again. "Some of ‘em are cute, but most of them are too young – wouldn’t be legal!" he laughed. Everyone else followed suit, and then they stood around uncomfortably for a moment.

"Oh, guys, this is Nick," Dave said to everyone. "Nick, you know Eric. This is Sean, Dix, Chris, and Jay. They’re friends of mine from FSU."

"Hey," Nick said, flashing them a smile.

"You look really familiar," one of them – Nick thought it was Dix – said. Before Nick could answer, Dave chimed in.

"He’s a Backdoor Boy." Nick elbowed him in the stomach. "What?" Dave asked innocently.

"It’s nice to know who my friends are."

"You’re a Backstreet Boy?" Dix said, hiding a smile.

"Yeah," Nick shrugged. Dave’s college friends exchanged glances.

"I thought you guys were-" Sean started to say, but then blushed and stopped talking. Nick knew what he was trying to say.

"Gay? Listen, guys, you may not like my group, but who else here has slept with Kirsten Corsi?" Once again, the group exchanged glances. Everyone except for Chris raised their hands, and Nick blushed again. "Oh yeah, I forgot that she’s from here . . ."

"And the fact that she’s a complete and total slut," Jay added. "If you were a guy and went to any Orlando high school – hell, nearly any Florida high school – as long as you were a guy and you weren’t impotent, Kirsten would fuck you."

"Actually," Eric said thoughtfully, "there were some rumors about her and girls . . . and remember Andrew Sanchez? The guy who couldn’t get it up? I heard he-"

"Eric!" Dave interrupted him. Eric seemed surprised, and Dave gave him a look that said to shut up. Then he turned back to Nick. "So why’re you here? I thought you’d be on tour or something?"

"Tour ended last night, and our plane landed in Orlando. I was gonna go back to Tampa, but I decided to hang out here for a while. That okay?" he asked.

"Sure," Dave said. "We were gonna go out tonight, wanna come? You can sleep here tonight if you want."

"Sure," Nick said enthusiastically. "Where’re you going?"

Dix answered for him. "This new club that just opened up, Club Egypt. It sounds pretty cool."

"That didn’t just open up," Nick said, a little surprised. "It opened back in . . . August, I think. We played the opening." Once again, Dave’s friends exchanged looks.

"Really? I heard that opening was really exclusive," said Sean. Nick became uncomfortable again.

"Sean, you dumbass, he just said that they played the opening," Jay snapped. Sean looked guilty.

"Oh, cool. So you can, like, get us in if there’s a long line or something?" Sean said hopefully. Nick shrugged.

"Maybe. I haven’t been there in a while, so I don’t know if they’ll remember, but I’ll give it a shot."

"Hey, you’re in Orlando’s number 2 boy band, of course they’ll remember you!" Dave said.

"Thanks – hey, wait, who’s number 1?" Nick asked suspiciously.

"’N Sync, of course!"

"Screw you!" Nick laughed. "Just because you have a crush on Lance does not mean-"

"Shut up! Come on, we’re gonna go get some food and then head on out, okay? Or do you want to go prance in front of the mirror and put your makeup on? We can just pick you up after we eat," Dave teased him.

"We only wear make-up on TV appearances!" Nick protested. Dave’s jaw dropped open in surprise.

"God, I didn’t think you really wore make-up!" Nick blushed.

"Can we just get going before I dig myself into a deeper hole?"

"Nick, in the 8 years that we’ve been friends, I don’t think you’ve ever stopped digging yourself into a hole. That’s why I hang out with you: you’re so blonde that you make me look smart."

"Thanks, Dave, it’s nice to know you care."

"Any time. Me and Dix are driving."

"Shot gun with Dave!"

"Dave!"

"Dave!"

"Dave!"

"Oh man, guys, I don’t wanna ride with Dix! He’s been in five fender benders in the past month!"

"Screw you, Sean!"

"You know it’s true, Dix! Can’t I just sit on Jay’s lap or something?"

"Only if you pay me."

"Why should I pay you when you give it to Eric for free?" The guys continued to squabble as they walked out to the cars. Nick grinned. This was much more fun than hanging out with Kirsten. Wasn’t it?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~