Beneath the Stain - Part 3 (8 page)

“Knows what?” Trav asked gently. He sat up and gingerly moved his good hand to rub a soft circle on Mackey’s back. It wasn’t hugging, but it seemed to calm him down.

“And they’re not even the worst part,” Mackey went on, like he couldn’t keep it back but like Trav wasn’t even there either. “How do I tell that baby—he named the baby Katy, do you know that? After McKay. So she’s out there in the world, and how would I tell her that I never wanted her to be? Or if she was going to be born, that I wanted her daddy to leave her? I
know
what that’s like—how can I even look at them if they know that’s what I wanted? And he knows I’m in rehab. God, what if Kell tells him about all them guys? But he was married and I just needed to be touched so bad, and Kell won’t even look at me if I tell him I’m a fag, and I wouldn’t even care, but he left. You see, he left, and he’d always taken care of us, but he left to go get married and I hate him and it’s just all… just all….”

Trav managed to haul that slight, unresisting body against his and to hunch his shoulders over Mackey’s. When the doctor came in, Trav waved him away and had to wait another hour for his X-ray, but it didn’t matter.

It wasn’t until he’d waved the guy off and gathered a sobbing, repentant Mackey Sanders into his arms that he realized that he was crying too.

God. He’d only heard one name in their past—one. They all knew one guy who stayed home to get married and have a kid. Kell only had one best friend he was pissed at for leaving. And Mackey only had one heart to break, and it had been broken for over a year, and he hadn’t told one person—hadn’t wept, hadn’t vented, hadn’t grieved.

Trav hadn’t expected this. Of all the sins and all the demons, a simple broken heart hadn’t been on his list.
Oh, baby boy—did no one teach you how to have your heart broken? How long has this been a secret sorrow, held close to your heart until you were consumed?

“Mackey?” he asked hesitantly,
needing
to know. “How long were you with this guy?”

Mackey was sobbing so hard Trav almost didn’t hear. When he made out the words “fourteen” and “seventeen,” he had a physical sense of dislocation.
They’re hardly children in the salt mines.
Had he actually said that to Heath? Children. They were children. Mackey was as fresh and as new to the world of broken hearts as a newborn bunny to a wolf’s den, and he was weeping, savaged, because this whole time he’d thought he was a wolf.

The storm passed—all storms must—leaving Mackey exhausted and helpless, leaning against Trav as they perched on the bed in the ER. Trav had wrapped his good arm around Mackey’s shoulders, and every now and then he could feel shudders of breath shake their bodies.

“What was his name?” Trav asked in the sudden silence. He knew, but he needed Mackey to say it.

“Grant,” Mackey whispered. “Grant Adams. He and my brothers were friends since the third grade.”

Trav swallowed, then swallowed again. He closed his eyes and saw the colors of rage, and then opened his eyes and tried to breathe. A part of him, the rational part, told him that Kell wasn’t that much older than Mackey. Mackey was precocious as hell—there was no real abuse here, just kids getting it on.

The part that was in the ER with an aching wrist and a devastated, emotionally stunted rock star wanted to hunt Grant Adams down and put him in a room with the guy who’d raped Mackey in an alleyway.

Not the same thing.

No, it wasn’t. Grant, with his heartache and his baby daughter and his leaving, had probably done more damage to Mackey than his rapist. The assault was par for the course, as far as Mackey was concerned. One more proof that everything in the world was out of control, including who you loved and what you could do to make them stay, or who took advantage of you when you were passed out in an alleyway.

But it couldn’t be fixed now, not while Trav’s wrist was swelling exponentially and Mackey was probably running probabilities on leaving the hospital high. Trav saw the orderly coming and dropped a kiss on Mackey’s hair.

“Time to go,” Trav said reluctantly. God—all this time hoping Mackey would break, and now he’d broken and it was Trav they were putting back together.

“Don’t quit,” Mackey begged, whispering through a clogged throat.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Trav said, standing up gingerly to wait for the wheelchair. “I won’t quit
if
you go back to rehab. And make it stick.”

Mackey wiped his cheeks on the knees of his jeans. “Tomorrow morning,” he said. He hopped off of the ER bed and waited for Trav to sit himself wearily down in the wheelchair. After the orderly grabbed the handles, Mackey moved to the side with Trav’s good hand. “I’ll see you through this first,” he assured him.

Trav breathed through his nose and squeezed Mackey’s hand. “It’s a deal,” he said.

Trav had been shot before—more than once. He’d been beaten and knifed, and he’d been through the hospital just fine. His parents had freaked out, and he’d gotten the best care packages in Afghanistan while waiting for active duty, but he’d never been scared and had never needed reassurance. Life or death, Trav was steady. He knew right from wrong and he knew to enforce one and not to tolerate the other, and he was happy living and dying by that.

But he didn’t say a word of this to Mackey. Mackey stood by his side, clutching his good hand, while they X-rayed him and set his wrist in a splint with a promise to put it in a cast the next day. He clutched Trav’s hand while they got his pain meds and then called for a town car and were driven home.

It was late when they walked back into the house. The others had left dinner out for them—some sort of health-food casserole from Shelia—but neither of them ate. They went without speaking to Trav’s bedroom.

If Trav was hoping for approval, he was disappointed. Mackey looked around the bedroom with dead, exhausted eyes, kicked his shoes and jeans off in a puddle, and then grabbed the coverlet from the top of the bed, wrapped himself up in it, and curled up next to the bed, by the end table. He fell asleep before Trav could get back with more blankets.

Trav lay in the darkness, listening to him breathe as he slept, and wished he could do the same. The feeling of that lithe little body, limp and sad next to his in the ER, seemed to be imprinted on his skin, etched into his muscles. He started doing math in his head. Mackey was twenty-one, right? Mackey was almost twenty-one? Trav was thirty-five. That was fourteen years. That made Trav a pedophile. He was worse than Grant Adams, the kid who’d loved Mackey and left him. He was Daddy—Mackey had obviously never had a daddy. Mackey was impressionable, and Trav had left a big impression.

No. There would be no relationship. There could be no relationship, because it would be based on every sort of wrong.

That was what his brain was saying, the part of him that had walked away from Terry without a backward glance.

But another part of him, a quiet part of him he didn’t listen to much, had started to whisper.

He’s an adult. Wait until he’s cleaned himself up and he’ll be able to make his own decisions. Look at him. He’s walked out of rehab twice. If he makes it through this time, that means
nobody
tells Mackey Sanders to do something he doesn’t want to. It’s not like he respects authority anyway, Trav. If he wants you, he wants
you
, not the authority, not the daddy, just the man. You’re the only one he can trust. Can you trust anyone else with him?

That last question made him bury his face in the pillow and growl. No. No, he couldn’t trust anyone else with Mackey. The world had done a shitty job for Mackey James Sanders so far. Trav could do things right. Trav could take care of him and help him take care of himself and keep him clean and make sure nobody, not even Trav, not even Mackey, ever hurt this kid again.

You clocked him in the jaw, you bastard. Not hurt him? Mackey’s in danger from the people who love him most.

Trav lay on his back, squinting into the darkness, tears of anger and frustration slipping down the creases of his eyes.

“What’s wrong, Trav?” Mackey mumbled, and Trav was too exhausted to hold back. How had Mackey kept that terrible secret so close to his heart for so long?

“I hit you, Mackey. I don’t think I can forgive myself for that.”

“Man, you’re too rough on yourself,” Mackey said. “Fucking up don’t make you unforgivable—just makes you human. I totally deserved it.”

“Nobody deserves to get hit, Mackey.”

Mackey shifted and popped up over the edge of the bed. “People don’t deserve to get beat,” he said after a minute. “They don’t deserve to get bullied or assaulted or abused. But you didn’t hit me thinking I was weaker and you could get away with it. You hit me thinking I was your equal and a pain in the ass.” Even in the moonlight coming through the big open window behind them, Trav could see Mackey’s teeth glinting in a smile. The bruise on the jaw, Trav couldn’t see, but that smile was plain as day. “Besides—you pulled that punch. We both know it.”

He dropped out of sight then, leaving Trav alone in the darkness, but Trav found himself laughing bitterly.

There you go. He was an equal and a pain in the ass. Trav was going to have to let Mackey make his own decision, and maybe have to live with the fact that he was human after all.

And Mackey was right. Trav knew himself. He’d pulled the goddamned punch. If he’d hit Mackey as hard as he’d hit that wall, Mackey would have been the one getting X-rayed.

It would have to be enough.

T
HE
NEXT
morning, bright and early, Trav called for the limo. He needed to go to the hospital afterward anyway so they could take off the splint and put on a cast, but nobody but Mackey had a reason to load themselves into the limo.

But the entire household got in anyway.

This time when Mackey got out, everybody got out with him. Shelia started it with the hug, and then Stevie and Jefferson and Kell.

And then Trav.

The kid had slept in his corner, between Trav’s bed and the wall. Trav gathered him into a one-armed hug that wasn’t even pretending to be distanced or professional or even platonic.

“Be good,” Trav whispered. “Come back. We’re all pulling for you, kid, okay? Don’t be afraid of us. We love you.”

Mackey jerked back and grimaced. “Not possible,” he said. Then he grinned that same cocky fuck-off-and-love-me grin that had sent Trav over the edge. “But remember, I only have to make this stick once.”

And he grabbed his suitcases and sauntered up the damned sidewalk alone.

Stefan Olsdal
, Trav texted.

Mackey rolled his eyes.
Duh.

Billie Joe Armstrong.

Really?
Mackey was surprised.

He’s bi. Says it shouldn’t be a big deal.

Note to self: Buy FOREVERLY.
Mackey owned everything else Green Day had put out. Why not?

It’s already on your iPod.

Oh.
He couldn’t remember.
I must have been high.

I am shocked. Rob Halford.
Trav wasn’t letting up.

Who?

Judas Priest, you heathen.

Seriously?

Duh!

Well, how do you like that? Mackey had no idea.

Michael Stipe
, Trav pursued doggedly.

I am not surprised.

Chuck Panozzo, from Styx.

I know who Chuck Panozzo is.

You didn’t know who Rob Halford was!

Mackey let out a breath.
I’m not big into the Satan metal, okay?

* sigh * Heavy metal was my one rebellion.

You mean you didn’t just squirt out with a crew cut?

Mackey laughed as he texted, thinking that you never did know about people. He never in the world would have suspected Trav capable of anything resembling a rebellion.

It was all the way past my ears in high school
, Trav texted, and Mackey could hear Trav’s dry, deadpan sort of humor.

So was that before or after the Internet and the invention of the cellphone?

Shut up.

Mackey laughed, enjoying the idea of giving him shit.
Make me.

There was an uncomfortable silence, and Mackey rolled over to his stomach on his little bed. It was “contemplation time,” which meant that they had about an hour to themselves to read, play on the net, call their dealers (yeah, Mackey knew a few not-so-clean-and-sober folks in rehab), or generally fiddlefuck around. The doc said the idea was to give them time to get used to being by themselves. Mackey figured it was just impossible to structure everybody’s day down to the last fucking nanosecond while they tried not to think about their drug of choice. Right now, as Mackey wondered if he’d crossed the line, gone too far, poked the one guy who texted him with impunity in this human desert too hard for him to text back, he sort of longed for a Xanax.

Please don’t give me shit about that
, Trav texted, and Mackey stared at his phone for a minute. It was just so damned honest, really.

I’m sorry
.
He wondered when the last chance he’d had to say
that
had been.
I crossed the line. I’m sorry.

I will never be okay with that, do you understand?

Mackey sighed. This here was a fundamental disagreement.
Then you will never be okay with me
. And wasn’t
that
scary? He wanted to take it back. He had been
anything
for Grant, would have done
anything
to make it so Grant would stay with him and not Sam. When he’d been high, he’d been like an in-and-out drive-through of ass. He would have bent over for Satan if he’d had a condom.

But he wasn’t high, and he wasn’t a kid. This… this
attachment
he had to Trav—it was not going to be worth anything if Trav couldn’t deal with Mackey James Sanders as God made him. Mackey could change for the better—he could learn to say “I’m sorry” and try not to piss people off quite so much—but he would never believe that people were meant to be perfect.