"Something wrong?"
Her wide eyes, which were darting from one corner of the room to another, quickly settled on him upon hearing his question. She smiled and shook her head, her pale face suddenly filled with colour as she blushed. "Oh no Mr. Kevin, this room is too beautiful, you really don't have to give me such a place. I'll do fine in a smaller room."
"This is the least we can do for you. Kristin decorated it all by herself, we're really looking forward to having you here."
"I feel so indebted to you and Mrs. Richardson, only yesterday I was about to be homeless."
Kevin smiled and shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. "We are indebted to you Lenny, thank you for doing this, you're making our dream come true."
"Well, in a month, you and Mrs. Richardson will be parents and I couldn't be any happier that this child I'm carrying will have a nice home to live in and parents who will love her."
Kevin's eyes glimmered at the mention of the baby, his heart felt full, knowing that he would become a father. Finally, they would be a complete family.
"I'm counting the seconds," He replied and then smiled. "Well, you must be tired, why don't you take a nap, Kristin will be home in an hour and then I think you ladies will go out baby shopping and also for some new clothes for you."
"Oh please, don't bother about me, I'm just happy I have a roof above my head."
Kevin shook his head. "Kristin wouldn't be too happy about that, she loves having a partner in crime when she goes shopping and I'm not much of a shopping fan. You'll have fun, trust me."
-
It felt like forever since he had first settled at the coffee joint in the mall when he finally saw the tiny figures of his wife and Lenny approaching him. They were locked in a conversation, smiles on their faces, hands filled with loads of paper bags. He got up immediately and rushed for them, hoping that the Nike cap he was wearing was enough to blend him in with the crowd.
"Are they having sales somewhere?" He asked as he took the bags Lenny was carrying and then went over to his wife and they kissed lightly. "Wow, it's heavy."
"I'm used to carrying heavy stuff, it's no biggy really."
"She's a super woman, I'll give her that." Kristin said. "Let's have lunch, I think the baby is hungry by now and you need it too after that workout."
The restaurant was exclusive and definitely expensive and once again, Kevin saw the uneasiness creeping up on the young lady. Next to her, his wife was busy reading the menu, he would pretend to read at his own and then listen to the conversation between the two of them.
"Found anything to your taste?" Kristin asked.
"I can't believe fries could cost you ten dollars."
"I know, that's why Mc Donald's is my favourite." Kristin replied. "But Kevin here, can't afford to be seen at Mc Donald's, he'll never get around to eating anything then."
"Yeah, I almost forgot he's a Backstreet Boy. You're a very normal couple, thank you for having me."
"Lenny, you have to remember that it is you that are doing us a huge favour. I know how difficult this must be for you, but we promise we will never shut you out once the baby arrives. You can stop by on college breaks."
"I wouldn't even be in one if it weren't for you two. Don't you think I'll be too old for College?"
"Nobody's too old to learn, besides, you're only 23, that's young."
"I envy the two of you, your lives together are perfect, I wish I had someone like your husband to love."
"Well Lenny, when the time is right, you will find that someone. And you know what, I envy you too."
"Oh? How could you possibly be envious of me?"
"Carrying that child in you, that's a miracle women get to go through, something I will never get to experience."
Kevin felt his grip on the menu tighten. He remembered the phone call that had woke him up in the middle of the night, on the bunk bed in their tour bus. How every ounce of sleep was robbed from him when the soft cries of his wife calling out his name invaded his ears. In between choked tears and sobs, she had told him of her visit to the doctor's that immediately ruined everything they had dreamed and hoped for.
-
The rest of the scene showed the Richardsons and Lenny having their lunch, small conversations thrown in between. Brian couldn't help the tears that were paving down his cheeks. If there were someone who knew how precious and meaningful it is to have a baby, it would be him.
"Kevin, I'm so sorry."
Kevin too, had tears in his eyes and when Brian looked at the faces of the rest of them, they too, had tears threatening to shed. Except for Vinhorian Alni, who showed nothing but calmness on his face.
"You have nothing to be sorry about." Kevin replied, forcing a smile.
"Why did you keep it from us Kev?" Nick asked.
"I didn't mean to. We were on a break and telling you over the phone didn't seem special." Kevin replied.
"How come we never get to see your daughter? From the looks of it, this was during our break after the Millennium Tour, I'm sure the baby has arrived." AJ asked.
"Yeah Kev, what's her name?" Howie asked. "Gentlemen, we have a Backstreet Girl."
Vinhorian cleared his throat, the questions were beginning to rain on Kevin and it wasn't even time for him to answer anything yet. "Um, you might want to hold that thought Kevin, because I need to show you more."
Nick rolled his eyes. "Your people sure suck at timing Vin."
"It's just the way it has to be." Vinhorian replied with a smile.
"Let me guess, you want us to hold hands?" AJ asked with a smirk.
"There's another way of teleporting ourselves, by hugging, you prefer that?"
"Okay, hands people!" Howie said, clapping his hands together like a professional basketball coach. No way was he hugging anybody.
-
Nick loved the soft humming of the tour bus engine, that and the gentle bumps as the tires rolled the even mortared road, could lull him into a dreamless sleep any time. Of course it wouldn't take much to get him to sleep, especially when being on the road took a lot of his energy away. That night, while everyone else was fast asleep and wishing that tomorrow would come a little bit later than usual, he found himself in the tiny restroom, staring at his own reflection in the mirror. Sleep was the last thing in his mind.
He hated the media for always criticizing how he looked and he hated the fact that his relationship with his girlfriend had caused such a huge rift between him and his family. He didn't want to admit it to anybody, but he missed his mom. People in the business always advised him that in order to win some, you have to lose some; he didn't expect to lose his mother though.
Everyone said he was the heartthrob of the group, when they first started out; he was even reigned America's boy. They still look at him that way and expect him to be that way forever but he knew he couldn't. It just wasn't him at all.
He turned on the tap water and started washing his face again and again, unsure of what to do next. When he got tired of that, he stopped and stared at his reflection. He didn't want the tour to end so soon, he needed to be up on stage, where it constantly reminded him how far they have gone to achieving something so huge. Over there, he was at the top of the world, along with four brothers that were his family now.
Sighing to himself, he reached out for his small travel pack and fished out the familiar white bottle, uncapped it and poured a white tablet onto the palm of his hand. He stared at it for some time and then shrugged, pouring another tablet. He popped them in his mouth and washed it down with a few gulps of tap water. He felt proud of himself for the idea of replacing the pills in an unlabeled bottle; so far he had been sneaky, but if someone caught him taking one, he could save the embarrassment and wave it off for antibiotics or some energy booster pills.
Deciding that he should get some sleep no matter what, he walked out of the tiny restroom, the travel pack safely in his grip. Passing by the first two bunks, he was surprised to hear Kevin's soft mumbling. A wide grin plastered on his face, thinking the older man was mumbling in his sleep. He climbed up to his bunk with no difficulties at all; the road wasn't too bad this time around.
It was while he was lying on his back, willing for sleep to come that Kevin's soft mumbling became a little bit clearer for him. He realized Kevin must have been on the phone with his wife. He couldn't quite make out what he was saying and Nick didn't really want to know. The last thing he wanted to do was invade Kevin's privacy. He pulled the curtains to his bunk bed, enveloped himself in darkness and with the headphone geared, he pressed the 'play' button expertly and escaped himself in music, hoping that sleep would come soon.
-
Oh boy, here we go again, Nick thought.
"I remember this, we were still on the Millennium Tour. That was Kristin on the phone right?" Nick asked, hopefully getting the rest of them curious and automatically forgetting the pill incident.
Kevin nodded. "She just received the results back and called me."
"Kristin couldn't get pregnant?" Howie asked.
Kevin nodded again. "Two weeks after that, we decided to go for adoption. That's how we met Lenny."
"She's an unwed mother?" Brian asked.
"Yeah. We looked through a lot of candidates and Kristin loved her the very moment she saw her picture, so during the break, we met up. She was a nice woman and was 8 months pregnant and about to be homeless cause she couldn't pay up her rent. We didn't want the baby to be born homeless so we took her in."
"That's very noble of you Kev." Brian said.
"But it still didn't explain why you kept her from us." AJ said.
"Yeah Kevin, how come we never got to see her?" Howie asked.
"It's nothing compared to what we saw Nick doing then." Kevin said, looking at Nick with that 'don't mess around with me' look on his face. "Were you sick back then? Was it serious?"
"Yeah Nick, the first vision I saw, you looked like you were on your solo tour and that doctor said it could kill you, don't tell me it's been that long and you didn't tell us." Brian pointed out.
"No, I wasn't sick in that bus." Nick smirk, which in turn annoyed the rest of them [except for Vinhorian, who didn't seem to be feeling anything]. "Yet."
"Guys, I have something else for you to see." Vinhorian Alni interrupted.
"I'm sorry, but you have to see everything the way it happened exactly. No short cuts."
"Um Vin, can I just ask a really quick question first?" AJ asked.
"Sure AJ, what is it?"
"What's happening to us back on...you know...earth?"
"You mean right now?" Vinhorian asked.
"Yeah...I mean, have they found our car?"
Vinhorian nodded. "It's been four days since they found you and that's all that I can say, for now."
AJ nodded his head. How far were they from reality and would they ever find their way back home? "Understood my man."
-
The moment he had stepped into the house, he knew exactly where Kristin would be. His long strides tore the living room and literally flew up the flight of stairs before turning left and turning the knob to the first room there.
The light was dim, everything in there was pink and lacy and filled with cartoon characters. Racks filled with all the dolls a child would want were sat neatly from the bottom to the top of the ceiling. Another corner of the room was made into a playpen; complete with a stunning dollhouse the height of a three-year-old toddler.
In the middle of the room, a baby's cot stood elegantly. The mattress was layered with a thick comforter that was attached to a lacy cover that dropped all the way to the soft, carpeted floor. Hanging from above it, a mobile of stars that glowed in the dark as it turned around and around, belting out the tune to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
Next to it was the rocking chair that had been equally revamped to match every piece of pink furniture in the room. That was where he found his wife, rocking herself slowly, eyes starring at the empty baby cot.
He rushed over to her and she threw herself in his protective arms, crying her heart out. He was to be the strong one in the marriage, but that day, he cried along with his wife. For the second time in a space of three months, they had cried for their lost dreams and hopes.
"You won't leave me too right Kevin?" His wife asked in between her sobs.
He hugged her tighter, lost that he couldn't seem to make his wife feel any better. "Never baby, I love you too much."
-
"Don't you dare say hold hands cause I'm not going to make it alive if we have to transport out of here with this tension." Brian told Vinhorian the moment he felt that they were shown enough to understand what went on. Puzzling enough, Brian was crying even worse than Kevin.
"No, we're not transporting out of here yet."
Brian turned to Kevin, he wished he could reach out to his cousin and tell him how much he understood his sorrow. "Kevin, did the baby die?"
"Is that why you didn't tell us? She die at birth?" AJ asked.
Kevin wiped his tears away; it was difficult to tell them anything when his heart still ached just thinking about it.
"It's much more complicated than that." He started and then took a deep breath and let it go slowly. Staring into the empty space ahead of him, he continued. "We learned that Lenny was good academically, but she came from a dysfunctional family and got herself a bad ass boyfriend who got her pregnant. So when we decided to adopt her baby, in exchange, I offered to pay her off to College and help her find a decent house and pay off her mortgage. It was the least I could do, after all, she was going to give away her baby to us."
"You were going to do all that?" Nick asked, awed at the generosity of this man. Kevin was never a tight wad when it came to charity but Nick never thought he would go that far.
Kevin nodded. "On the last week of her pregnancy, she went missing, along with the cheque for the first installment of her College fee."
Nobody dared to say anything and even if they did, no one could find any words of comfort for the disappointment that Kevin was heaving.
"She left us a letter saying that she met her boyfriend and that he still loved her. They were going to live together, with their baby. She even apologized for taking the cheque, said she was going to use it for stuff when the baby arrived."
"But you signed stuff right? The baby was legally yours." Howie said.
"I know, but who are we to take what's not ours in the first place? I'm not sure if she was telling the truth but we had no other choice but to trust her. I don't want to start suing her, that's the last thing she needs when she was supposed to be thinking about the baby."
Kevin sighed and rubbed his cheeks, suddenly feeling chills all over. "She would be four years old now. Every time I see a girl her age, I think of her, wondering what she looks like now. We were going to call her Katherine, Kate for short. You know, we want all our children to have names starting with K."
"Kate Richardson sounds beautiful Kev." Nick said. Kevin looked up at him and smiled. Nick didn't handle emotional outbursts very well, it was almost comical seeing him standing there, unsure of what to do.
"You can't stop trying man, with all those medical breakthroughs, I'm sure there is a way." AJ said.
"I hope so," Kevin smiled. "Right now, we're still too hurt to even think about it. Hopefully in the future."
"Kevin, is that why it took granddad's memorial service for you to see Baylee?" Brian asked, fresh tears streaming down his face. It had Kevin puzzled, it wasn't one of hatred or anger and if Kevin had not known any better, he would think that Brian knew exactly what he had went through. The pain was identical yet it didn't make sense. Brian had a son, he had a family.
"I'm sorry Bri, I didn't mean to...it just hurts too much and I know Kristin...she would have broken down in front of everybody. You didn't hear her crying at night after the service Brian, I did...she kept on saying how beautiful Baylee was, nothing else...he's beautiful Kevin, he's beautiful..."
Brian went over to Kevin and hugged him and despite the years of being the tough one, Kevin crumbled. He felt somewhat free, that the secret and sorrow he had been keeping to himself were now out in the open. Yet another part mourns for the daughter that wasn't even theirs in the first place.
He didn't know how it happened, but when he had finally found the strength to look up again, the five of them were in a group hug, somewhere along the line, his brothers had joined in for the support he badly needed, it worked though, because suddenly he felt light again, as if a heavy burden had been lifted off his shoulders.
The change of scenery around them and the smile on Vinhorian Alni's face as he looked on a few steps away told him that they had, unknowingly, transported themselves together to another place.
