Saturday February 17th, 2001

Brianna’s plane landed early in the morning, so she wasn’t really surprised to find Billy waiting for her at the airport. “Nick still sleeping?” She laughed.

“Yup. I tried to wake him, but he was dead to the world.” Billy knew this visit was going to be crazy. The fans had been outrageous on this tour. He was a little concerned as to how they were going to react seeing Brianna, even if she was just a friend as both Nick and Bree insisted.

“Don’t worry about it. He’ll wake up later.” She wasn’t worried about it. In fact she was still a little tired from her own early wake up and was looking forward to getting a bit more sleep. That is exactly what she did. Billy let her into Nick’s room and warned her to ‘check’ before she got into the bed with him. When she turned crimson he let out a loud laugh before closing the door.

She swallowed hard and cautiously lifted the covers. The first thing the saw was a bare chest. Nick, you BETTER have clothes on! She thought to herself. Or else I’m not getting in there. Slowly looking a little more she was relieved to find that he had sweat shorts on. Thank you. Giving a sigh of relief she crawled under the covers right up to Nick’s side, put her arm around his waist, and her head on his chest. Nick lifted his arm to wrap around her, kissed the top of her head and settled back into sleep. Actually, he hadn’t even really woke up completely, he had just sensed that she was there. It took only a minute before Brianna was sleeping comfortably, too.

**ring** **ring** **ring** **ring**

Nick reached over and fumbled with the phone before managing to bring it to his ear. “Mmm, hello?” His voice was raspy with sleep.

“Hey, you two gonna sleep all day or what?”

Nick groaned. It was Howie. “D, why you gonna call and wake me up so early? What time is it? Bree just got here.” He rubbed his eyes trying to focus on the small clock sitting on the nightstand. He gave up.

“Nicky, it’s 11:30. You don’t get up you two aren’t gonna be able to spend any time together before sound check. Besides, the rest of us would like to see her too, ya know.”

“D, how many times do I have to tell you, don’t call me Nicky. We’ll be up in a bit. How ‘bout lunch at 1:00?”

Howie laughed knowing Nick was grumpy when he woke up, and that was why he was scolding him for the nickname. No matter how old Nick got, to Howie he was always going to be Nicky. Usually Howie was the only one left in the group who could get away with calling him that. "One o’clock’s fine. We’ll all see you down stairs. Hey, you know what time AJ got in?”

“He came back with me at 2:30, but he brought some people with him, so I don’t know what happened then. Later.” Nick didn’t even wait for Howie to reply before hanging up.

Brianna’s head was resting in the crook of his neck; he didn’t even really remember her getting here. He just lay there thinking about her and wondering what had been going on in her life. She just seemed to be changing so much, and it worried Nick. Tony and even Billy told him he was just being over protective and to let her live. But the last time he had talked to her she had quit the swimming team and gave the reason that she was just too busy to keep up with it. And after her arrest in November it seemed to Nick that she told him less and less about what was going on in her life, like she was trying to hide something. Rubbing his eyes he gave up. “Maybe I am being over protective and reading into things that aren’t really there.”

<~ Chapter 8 or Chapter 10 ~>

In the End

Karina 2003