Chapter 2 – Gone

He felt like his guts had been ripped out of his body.

“It doesn't make any sense,” Addy said, biting her thumbnail and staring down at the floor. “It just doesn't make any sense.”

“Ad, sit down,” Lance commanded. “Your pacing is making me dizzy.”

“I can't sit, Lance,” she said. “I can't sit and do nothing. I can't stop moving or I'll go crazy.”

“And you'll drag us all along with you,” Lance responded.

Chris sighed as he sat on his couch. Lance sat next to him, off to his right; JC sat off to his left. Joey sat in the recliner, while Justin was parked on the armrest of the couch directly next to Lance. And then there was Addy...pacing the living room floor, the picture of a nervous wreck.

“It doesn't make any sense,” she repeated. “Why would she leave? Not only leave period – but leave in the middle of baking a pie? She's a chef, for fuck's sake!”

“Addy,” Lance scolded. “You're driving me crazy. Dear God woman, sit down before I sedate you.”

She shot him a half-wounded look.

“Please,” he amended, lowering his voice. “Please sit down before I sedate you...honey.”

“Addy's right,” Joey said. “It doesn't make any sense. This isn't like Mel – not only leaving while in the middle of cooking, but leaving period. What would make her leave?”

“Mel loves pie, so that can't be it,” Justin responded.

Justin jumped when Lance reached over to smack him hard on the back of the head.

“Ow!” he said. “What? I'm trying to help this time, seriously!”

“I think what Justin's trying to say, in his own stupid, moronic, fucked up sense of trying to help,” JC said, “is that it's highly unlikely that Mel had some kind of epiphany while baking an apple pie that made her suddenly realize that she didn't want to be with Chris.”

“Yeah,” Justin said. “That's...sort of what I was trying to say. I think.”

“Mel wouldn't leave her stuff,” Addy said. “She wouldn't just pack enough to get her by for a while and leave the rest. That's not like her.”

“Addy...” Lance said softly. “She did it once before.”

“She was running,” Addy said, her tone sounding defensive. “She was running away. She was scared. I know you've never trusted her--”

“Excuse me,” Lance said, stopping her in her tracks. “But I love Mel just as much as you do. What happened between us is in the past. I care – so don't try to make me out to be the bad guy here.”

To all of their surprise, Lance stood from the couch, breezing past Addy and walking down Chris's hallway and into the music room, shutting the door behind him.

“He just...feels bad,” JC said, looking up at Addy. “Don't worry about it, Ad. He'll be fine.”

“I should go talk to him,” she said, giving the boys a brief look before walking down the hall to follow him.

“Everybody's on edge,” Chris said, and all of them turned to look at them since it was the first time he had spoken in several minutes. “This is not the way to start out a tour.”

“We can postpone the tour, Chris,” JC said. “The fans will understand.”

“We're not postponing the tour,” Chris responded.

“C's right,” Joey said. “The fans will understand. Hell, how long have they waited for this reunion? Another month or two won't hurt them.”

“We're not postponing the damn tour, alright?”

Everybody was surprised at Chris's angry tone.

“Chris is right,” Justin finally said. “Mel was a huge fan herself. She wouldn't want us to postpone the tour. It'd crush her.”

Everyone in the room nodded, not saying a word more. They didn't necessarily agree with Justin, but they knew it was best to go along with what Chris wanted.

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When Addy opened the door to Chris's music room, she was surprised to hear the soft plucking of guitar strings being played. She opened the door slowly and gently, taking two steps inside the room quietly before recognizing the tune being played.

“I know people make promises all the time, then they turn right around and break them,” he sang, seemingly oblivious to her presence with his back turned to her. “And someone cuts your heart open with a knife, now you're bleeding...”

“Lance, I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm frustrated, that's all. I know you care, and I wasn't trying to make you out to be the bad guy. You're not the bad guy. You'd bring Mel back here if you could.”

“He loves her,” he responded, silencing the vibrating strings with the palm of his hand. “I love her. And I know how he feels right now. I wish I could take it away for him. I keep thinking back to when you left me, and moved back to Los Angeles.”

They both paused, and he turned his head slightly.

“I wanted to die, Ad, because nothing else mattered,” he said. “Without you, I had nothing. When you left, you took my heart, my life, and my whole world with you. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I could barely function – because you were gone but in my mind, you were always there. You were...always there.”

“When I left, I didn't take your heart,” she said. “I left my heart with you. I was a zombie for a month. Stephanie had to come and stay with me like I was some damn invalid, Lance.”

“Why would she leave?” he said. “I thought she loved him. I thought...I thought at times, they were doing better than we were.”

She nodded, even though he had turned away from her. She had thought the same. Her and Lance had gone through too much over the past year, and there were so many times they both thought they were staring at the end of them. Meanwhile, Chris and Mel were always there for them as their best friends, and their relationship had flourished.

“I can't do it again, Ad,” Lance said, resting his face in his hands and running them harshly over his eyes. “I can't do this again – lose someone I love. I just...I...can't.”

She saw him break down as he sat the guitar down to the floor, and with tears in her eyes, she ran to him. Kneeling on her knees in front of him, he pulled her to him as she started to cry.

“You don't know what you've got until it's gone,” he said.

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“There's a thousand words that I could say to make you come home, yeah...seems so long ago you walked away, and left me alone...”

The tears fell down Melissa's cheeks softly and quietly as she watched the trees and landscape pass by outside the window. She couldn't imagine how Chris was feeling at this moment.

“Was it something I said to make you turn away, to make you walk out and leave me cold? If I could just find a way to make it so that you were right here, right now...”

She had written the note with shaky hands. He had screamed at her the whole time to stop her quivering, but nothing in the world could stop the fear.

Someone would notice. Addy – she had an attention for details like that. Lance would notice that something important, something meaningful to Melissa hadn't been taken. Chris would know that Mel would never leave him by choice.

Wouldn't he?

“I've been sittin' here, can't get you off my mind, I'm tryin' my best to be a man and be strong...I've drove myself insane wishing I could touch your face. But the truth remains, you're gone...”

Derek had driven all night, on absolutely zero sleep. Just outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania, he had stopped at an all-night truck stop for a coffee. He had made her come in with him, and had made it clear what would happen to her if she tried anything “funny”.

And that was only the first time he had hit her. The first time, in a string of many to come, she was sure.

The sun had started to come up once they hit Roanoke, and it was then that she was able to catch her first glance in the mirror of herself. By then the bruise had started to turn purple. Luckily, her eye hadn't swollen shut this time.

She was exhausted, and her eyes wanted to close on their own – but she was too afraid to give in to sleep. Afraid of the darkness, afraid of where they were headed...afraid of what he would do to her now that he had her.

“The time is passing so slowly now...guess that's my life without you. And maybe I could change my every day, yeah, but baby I don't want to...”

They were now leaving Knoxville, and she finally realized where they were headed – back home to Arkansas. Already she missed New York.

And what she'd left behind there.

“Quit your cryin',” he said from the driver's seat of the truck. “It's a song. He never wanted you.”

She didn't say anything; instead, she only softened her sniffles to near-silence, wiping away a few tears conspicuously. She didn't want to believe what he said – that Chris never wanted her. A part of him must have, since he was with her for over a year. But with Derek, it was hard to shut off that part in her brain, that voice in her head that told her that he was right.

“It's tearin' up my heart, when I'm with you...”

He groaned. “I hate this song,” he said, reaching over to press the button. “It's so overplayed.”

She watched as he pressed the button on the dashboard, switching the Greatest Hits CD to the next song, tears coming to her eyes again as she heard the melody.

“Lying in your arms, so close together...didn't know just what I had...”

She bit her lip, fighting tears as she heard the voice – the voice that she would stay up so many nights listening as he sang and played the guitar, in his own universe in his head.

“Now I toss and turn, 'cause I'm without you, how I'm missing you so bad...”

“I'll bet he is,” Derek said, glancing over at her with a smirk on his face. “Poor Chris. Now he'll have to move on to some other bleach blonde bimbo who wants him for his money.”

She closed her eyes, exhaling a breath as she watched the skies of Tennessee pass her by. She hoped, in a way, that he did move on – even if it hurt her to think about it.

“Where was my head, where was my heart? Now I cry alone in the dark...”

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“Addy, Lance. What a surprise. It's good to see you.”

Lance's head snapped up from the chair in the lobby of the 88th precinct.

“Is that Liam?” Detective Abrams asked, looking at the squirming child in Addy's arms.

She only smiled in response.

“That's him,” Lance said. “We're looking for a buyer, but the economy's rough, you know...”

Abrams chuckled. “He's gotten so big. But I guess that tends to happen when you don't see someone for a year, huh?”

“Yeah, that does tend to happen,” Lance said.

Abrams narrowed his eyes, noticing the demeanor of both of them.

“Why the long faces?” he asked. “Is something wrong that I can help you with?”

“Actually, there is,” Addy said.

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“So, she disappeared? Randomly?”

“Yeah,” Lance responded.

“No warning, no notice,” Addy said, glancing over at her side to keep a close eye on Liam, who sat on the floor chewing on the arm of his sock monkey.

“Did she leave a note?” Abrams asked.

“Vague,” Lance responded, producing the note from his jacket pocket and handing it over. “Saying she couldn't do it and she was going home. What does that mean?”

Abrams glanced over the note for a moment.

“Well, I'm just a detective, and I only have twenty years of experience in law enforcement, so I can only take an uneducated guess,” he said. “But I would say that means...she's going home.”

Lance sighed.

“Guys...I'm not missing persons,” Abrams said, looking at both of them. “The sad fact is...Melissa is an adult, in her 30s. Once they reach that age, unfortunately, they can do what they want. I know it sucks. I know you are both hurting right now; I know Chris is hurting. But Lance, if you were standing here in front of me telling me that Addy had packed up Liam and her stuff and taken off in the middle of the night without telling you where she was going...I'd be saying the same thing.”

He paused, watching both of their faces fall.

“You've all had a rough couple of years,” he continued. “Addy, you went through a divorce. A rough pregnancy. You guys had the ordeal with your exes. You became parents. Mel and Lance lived through a fire. Now you guys are going on an insane, cross-country tour for the first time in ten years. Half that is too much stress for any normal person to bear...you guys have to deal with all of that. Mel is no different. She's probably been stressed. It got to be too much. Running away was the solution. You're lucky that she left a note so you would at least know.”

“I don't believe for one second that she ran away,” Addy said. “Not on her own accord. All due respect, Joe, Mel was happy. She wasn't stressed about the tour; she was excited. She's been a fan since she was a teenager. This was the best thing that had happened to her in years, aside from Chris. She wouldn't miss this for the world – and she wouldn't run away from us, her best friends, because she was stressed. She would come to us...she would come to me.”

Abrams sighed.

“I got the kid in handwriting analysis tickets to some rock concert in the Bronx last summer,” he said. “For free, for him and his buddies. He owes me a favor. Bring me a normal sample of Melissa's handwriting. The note might tell us something. I'll have him take a look at them, see what he can come up with. I can't promise anything.”

“Thank you so much, Joe,” Addy said.

“I wish I could do more, Addy,” he responded. “I really do.”

Lance followed his wife's lead, standing up to shake the detective's hand and thank him, leaning down to pick up his son off the floor and cradle him on his hip. It was something, and he was grateful for the help from his detective acquaintance. After all, he was right; he wasn't a missing persons detective, and he didn't have to call in a favor, and his hands were pretty effectively tied by the circumstances. He had done a lot for the two of them already, saving their lives and all.

But it wasn't enough. And it wouldn't ever be enough until he found out why Mel left...and got her back safe.

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“I'm sure he'll be here.”

Justin stared at JC and Wade, watching JC tap his foot nervously and Wade run his fingers over his goatee.

“Give him like, ten minutes,” Justin said, shifting his stare to the door of the rehearsal room. “Lance will be here. I mean, he's married now, right? Addy probably had to change her dress because she thought she looked fat. Or she had to put all her makeup back on because she thought she didn't look pretty enough. Women, right?” he said with a scoff.

JC cut his eyes to Justin, giving him a downwards look.

“I know, shut up Justin,” he said, sighing to himself.

“Rehearsals were supposed to start twenty minutes ago and we have three-fifths of NSYNC here,” Wade said. Then he looked around. “Two-fifths – where the fuck did Joey go?”

JC and Justin shrugged.

“Look guys, I know it's been a rough week. We're rehearsing hard. You guys are older – you're tired, you're sore, you're worn out. You guys have wives and families now, to top it off, that you want to spend time with. And your friend...”

Wade paused.

“But, the tour starts in seven days. Those people, those fans, have been looking forward to this for ten years. They paid to see NSYNC, and they paid good money – go big or go home, remember? Wasn't that your idea, Justin?”

Justin nodded slightly.

“Some members of this group are taking 'go home' a little too literally,” Wade said. “If Joey, Lance and Chris aren't here in ten minutes...”

“Jus'in! Jus'in!”

Justin and JC's heads popped up when Lance walked through the door at that moment, his duffel bag flung over his shoulder, Addy following him, Liam running to Justin.

“Hey buddy,” Justin said, picking the boy up in his arms.

“About damn time,” Wade said.

“Lance, where have you been?” JC asked. “Rehearsals started almost half an hour ago.”

“We had to go see Abrams,” Addy said, watching Lance stalk off towards the benches next to the mirrors and set his bag down, pulling his sweatshirt off and stuffing it in. “We hit traffic on the bridge. There was like a five car pile-up or something.”

“Sounds about like this tour,” Wade said, walking towards the middle of the room.

“Hey Wade, you got something to say to me?” Lance said, turning around and throwing his arms up in the air. “Say it to my face instead of mumbling it behind my back.”

“Just that you're late,” Wade said. “A watch – ever heard of it?”

“Wade, we're sorry,” Addy said.

“No, Ad, we're not,” Lance said, holding his hand up to stop her. “We're late, but we're here. If Wade can't accept that, he can cancel rehearsal and leave.”

“Lance, don't do this,” Addy said.

“Do yourself a favor, Bass,” Wade said, staring deeply at Lance. “Listen to your wife.”

Addy could see it coming by the look in her husband's eyes; JC could feel the tension in the room. So neither were surprised when Lance lunged toward Wade, shoving him up against the mirrored wall.

“Fuck off, Robson,” he said. “Let's see how well you can dance after I kick your ass.”

“Alright, boys,” Addy said, her and JC immediately rushing to the scene, pulling Lance away as JC held Wade back. “Let's go to our own corners and have a time out. I don't think anybody wants to perform with a black eye or a broken nose, okay?”

She watched Lance grit his teeth, only walking away from them and out the rehearsal door. Wade watched after him, but quickly shoved past JC and walked toward the corner of the rehearsal room, toward his own duffel bag.

“That was a close call,” JC said to Addy, exhaling a breath. “Last time I saw Lance that pissed was when he ripped up that check in front of Pearlman. I really thought he was gonna kick Wade's ass that time.”

“He's...” Addy only sighed. “Just give him a few minutes to himself. Where's Joey and Chris?”

“Joey needed a few minutes to himself, too,” JC responded. “Chris...” He paused, sighing. “...is out on his motorcycle. Looking for Mel.”

“He doesn't even intend to come today, does he?” she asked.

JC only shook his head from side to side.

Addy sighed. “This tour is falling apart before it's even started, Jace.” Instinctively, she reached for her hand and twirled her wedding ring around her finger. “God help us all through the next seven months.”