Beneath the Stain - Part 4 (7 page)

Trav took a deep breath and tried to forget that he’d been up early that morning, pounding the hell out of the bag so he didn’t have to remember the feel of Mackey’s body against his, didn’t have to remember he’d made promises to support Mackey’s rehab by not just taking him to bed and keeping him there.

Didn’t have to fight the disappointment that a date with him seemed to have triggered Mackey right back into relapse.

Pound, pound, pound. Mackey’s rhythm was impeccable. One mile. Two.

“Jesus, Mackey,” Trav asked, his wind back by now. “What crawled up your ass and taught you how to run?”

“Tony,” Mackey muttered.

“Who in the fuck is Tony?” Jesus. Grant? Tony? Just what Trav needed. Another fucking ghost from Mackey’s past.

“Friend,” Mackey grunted and then increased his pace, tried to pull ahead, probably so he didn’t have to answer.

Trav had longer legs and more stamina. He drew even and left off the questions. Down the dusty path to the canyon overlook, up the dusty path to the side of the road, listening to Mackey grunt in exertion as their steps got shorter, harder, more powerful. Even Trav was out of breath for the next two miles, but then, straightaway, they were even, maybe ten miles out, and Trav was glad he’d brought his cell phone.

“You thinking about maybe turning around?” he asked, because usually they did three miles and Mackey called it quits.

“No,” Mackey replied shortly. He was clenching his bottle of water, probably until it hurt, but he hadn’t drunk yet.

“How long?”

“Till I’m done!” Mackey snarled, and put on another burst of speed.

Trav pulled even with him and took a look. Mackey was blowing hard, his face pale, sweat pouring down in the middle on a mild seventy-degree day. They were up over the canyon by now, running on the shoulder of an overlook, and Trav thought maybe it was time to call bullshit.

“When you gonna be done?” he asked, still running. “When’s it gonna be enough?”

“
Till I’m done
!” Mackey shouted, turning around. He tripped, went down on his ass, bounced up again, and screamed it again. “
Till I’m done!
I’m not done! I need to get this shit out, Trav. I need to run till it’s gone! ’Cause I don’t want it in me anymore!” He turned again, hopping because he’d probably rolled his ankle, and Trav grabbed his arm, ducking when Mackey whirled around swinging.

“You wanna spar, Mackey?” Trav baited, dancing backward. “You wanna spar? Then let’s spar! Here on the goddamned road. We’re ten miles out, you know that? You wanna fucking run back? I mean, I can do it. But that’s about a fucking marathon right there—your legs aren’t like rubber bands yet? Because maybe you wanna stop trying to run and stop trying to fight and maybe tell me what in the fuck happened!”

Mackey paused for a minute, struggled, his face twisting until he looked like he was going to cry.

He turned and rushed the guardrail instead.

Trav wasn’t sure if he planned to go over, tumble down the canyon through the brush until he rolled off an outcropping and died, or if he planned to do what he did anyway, as Trav grabbed him around the middle just when he slammed against the corrugated tin.

He screamed.

Loud, primal, something Trav would expect from a microphone, screaming, rending his throat, the echoes of his pain ripping down the scrub-covered hills, bouncing along the suburban valley below.

Again and again, until Trav shouted too. “Stop, Mackey, stop! Stop, dammit, breathe, baby, breathe!”

Mackey’s next scream broke, his next scream crushed, disintegrated into dust at his feet, and Trav held on tight as Mackey gulped in air and let out a rubble of sobs.

“Breathe, baby, breathe,” Trav murmured. “Breathe.”

“God, Trav,” Mackey mumbled, and he turned in Trav’s arms, crying helplessly.

Trav held him, thinking only,
Thank God. Thank God. He’ll take me and not the drugs. Me and not the horrible fall. Thank God.

M
ACKEY
CALMED
eventually, pulled away and wiped his face on his shoulder, then laughed weakly.

“Jesus,” he muttered. “My legs hurt. And we gotta walk back.”

Trav held on to his shoulder, leaned forward, and kissed his sweaty forehead. “Nope. I’m earning my keep today. I brought my cell phone.” He pulled it out and asked for their driver to meet them as they walked back. “We’ll be the ones looking like ass and smelling worse. Bring towels and a fuckton of water and chocolate milk,” he ordered, very aware of Mackey cracking up in front of him.

“What?” he asked innocently.

Mackey shook his head. His running hat was soaked through, and tendrils of hair snaked out from under it, plastered to his cheek. Trav risked everything and pushed some of that back behind Mackey’s ears. Mackey looked away, out into the hazy valley, and sighed.

“Someday,” he said ruminatively, “you’re going to get tired of bailing my ass out, you know that, right?”

“Hasn’t happened yet,” Trav answered promptly. “You going to tell me what just happened? I was in the middle of a conference with Heath and fucking Japan—it would be great if I could lie to them convincingly about a burglar, you know?”

Mackey smiled faintly. “Would you? Lie about a burglar?”

Trav hated lying. They both knew it. “If it would keep you from another run like this one, yeah.”

A brief nod. Mackey sighed. “Let’s start back,” he said, voice only a little wrecked from all that screaming. Well, Trav had seen the concert footage—the primal scream was Mackey’s bread and butter.

They turned around and started the long trudge back. Silently Mackey opened the water bottle and took out half in a gulp. Then he handed it to Trav, who did the same thing. Trav crumpled the bottle and held it, and they walked on.

“Thanks for following me,” Mackey said after about two hundred yards. “That was nice.”

“I was worried.”

“Well, that was probably wise.”

Trav sighed but didn’t press. Mackey just might surprise him and talk on his own.

Three hundred yards. Four. A train of cars came by, going fast enough to make walking on the scant shoulder a little scary.

“Fuckers gonna kill us,” Mackey mumbled. They kept walking until they came to another turnout, where they both walked to the guardrail and made themselves comfortable, waiting for the car.

“Tony was a friend,” Mackey said, and Trav was grateful, but not surprised. He’d hoped that Mackey had started healing. Maybe Mackey had healed enough to talk.

“Was?”

“He was our roadie—only out kid at our high school.” Mackey laughed without humor. “Kell tried to be horrible to him, but me and Grant—”

“Wouldn’t let him.”

“Yeah—and then he started helping with our roadie shit, and Kell backed off. Just liked the music,” Mackey murmured. “Our first fan. Heard me practice, guessed about me and Grant. I guess he had a crush on me, but I was straight with him. Told him the truth, let him tag along when we did out of town gigs.”

“Why didn’t he come with you?” Because obviously he hadn’t. The kids had apparently stepped out of their own lives with only the shitty hand-me-down clothes on their backs.

“I asked,” Mackey said, sounding wounded. “I asked. But his mom was sick and his sister was away at school. And we left, and I… dropped out of my head and dropped out of life, and he was all alone.”

“What happened?” But by now Trav sort of knew.

“I wanted to talk to him,” Mackey said plaintively. “I was… I was happy. I’d had a
date
, and you know? Neither of us had one of those. I thought I’d call, share. Tell him to get the fuck out of Tyson so he could have one too.”

“What—”

“He hung himself,” Mackey said abruptly. “Listening to my fucking CD. Fucking Jesus.”

Their sweat had cooled by now, but they were both sticky, smelly, and sore. Trav moved to the side a little and grabbed Mackey’s hand anyway. Mackey squeezed, and Trav nuzzled his temple.

“That’s horrible, McKay. I’m sorry you lost your friend. But it’s not your fault.”

Mackey grunted and leaned into him. “Why’s shit gotta be so awful, Trav?”

It was a child’s question, one that adults could never answer.

“So we know the good stuff when we see it.”

Mackey nodded, and they stayed there, just stayed there and breathed, until the car drove up the hill.

M
ACKEY
DIDN
’
T
say much on the way back—just sat and gazed out the window—but Trav didn’t blame him. Probably arranging stuff in his own head. They got back and showered—thank God—and Trav got out and dressed in sweats and a soft T-shirt. His running clothes had chafed the holy fuck out of his thighs and nipples, and he figured Mackey’s had probably done the same.

That was when he remembered the cuts on Mackey’s hand.

The minute he heard the shower turn off in Mackey’s bathroom, he was there at the doorway with the first-aid kit in his hand and a no-nonsense knock.

“Trav?” Mackey opened the door with a towel wrapped around his waist and dripping hair. “I thought no—”

“No sex,” Travis sighed, almost flattered that that was the first place Mackey’s mind went. “I get it—”

“Not that I don’t
want
sex,” Mackey hastened to add. “I mean, like—dayum—but you said. It’s like rules. No sex until… I don’t know.” His shoulders slumped in sudden exhaustion. “Sometime,” he finished disconsolately.

Trav wanted to appreciate his trim little body—the muscles popping out along his abdomen and arms, the pebbled pink nipples against his tanned skin—but his nipples were, in fact, red, and he had marks on his neck where his collar had rubbed too. The slices on his hand—between his thumb and forefinger on both hands and across the palm of his right—were the most troubling, though.

“Sometime,” Trav promised, swallowing. “But let me doctor your boo-boos first. Let’s stop everything from hurting, okay?”

“Sometimes it feels good when it hurts,” Mackey said. He tried to make a joke of it, but his eyes were bright and shiny and his face was a peaked little triangle against the blue of the towels.

“Sit down on the bed,” Trav ordered. Mackey did, without any fight at all. Well, it had been a long run. Trav pulled the numbing antibiotic out, and the big bandages first. “The hand,” he instructed. Mackey’s meekness when he held it out almost frightened him. “I know sometimes it feels good when it hurts,” Trav said, his voice pitching gently. Mackey looked so defeated—this was not the good kind of hurt. “But I think you’ve been hurt enough.” Trav applied the ointment on the cut on his palm, and then the big Band-Aid.

“I ain’t a nice person,” Mackey said. He used “ain’t” primarily when his self-hatred was the harshest.

Trav smoothed the Band-Aid with careful fingers. “Not always,” he admitted, working on the cut between his thumb and forefinger. He was going to use gauze and tape on this one—it would need to bend. “What did you do now?”

“I….” Mackey sighed. “I just got so mad. Nobody told me. Kid hung himself listening to my CD, you think someone would have called and told me. I mean, I was a fucking mess, but… God. He was a friend. And his sister was yelling at me about how it was all my fault and….”

Trav finished doctoring the right hand, held it up to his lips, and kissed the knuckles. “All better,” he said softly. “What’d you say to her?”

He’d started on the cut on the left hand—a particularly nasty one that would probably hurt Mackey like a motherfucker when he was playing—before Mackey answered.

“I called her a bloodless whore,” he mumbled.

Trav laughed. “Wow, McKay—tell me how you really feel.”

“I was stupid,” Mackey snapped. “I thought we covered this!”

Trav squatted down so they were eye level and held a finger to Mackey’s lips. They were cold. The two of them had gulped water and chocolate milk in the back of the car, but it was pretty clear Mackey needed some real food. And a blanket. And a snuggle on the couch.

“Don’t you have something in your affirmations about forgiving yourself, McKay?”

“My whole first name again? Jes—”

“Answer the question.”

“Yes,” Mackey sighed, some of the tension going out of him. “I am supposed to forgive myself for being human and try to make it right.”

“You weren’t responsible for Tony,” Trav said, because Mackey wasn’t up to saying it himself right now. “You may want to call the young lady back and apologize—but only if you think it will make
her
feel better, and not just you.”

Mackey grunted like he wasn’t sure. “Maybe a letter,” he said after a minute. “Or a song.”

Trav gave up any pretense of distance and sat on the bed next to him, wrapping his arm around Mackey’s shoulders and pulling him into the warmth of his chest.

“You write good songs,” he said, probably needlessly. “God, Mackey, you’re so cold. I’m going to give you some ointment for the chafing, okay?”

“You don’t want to put that on yourself?” Mackey’s voice was sly.

Trav kissed his blond head and wondered what it was about soap and Mackey that just undid him. All his chafed places were tingling, and his groin and thighs were thinking heavy, aching, sexy thoughts when they should have been thinking carbs and sleep.

“You have no idea how much,” Trav whispered. “But I want to make you dinner and hold you, okay? You ran for that guardrail and my heart stopped. I don’t want to have the kind of sex that hurts with you. I want to have the kind of sex that makes you feel
outstanding
, do you hear me, McKay?”

Mackey sighed and pulled away. “It’s a sweet idea,” he said, his voice bleak. “I’ll try to hope it happens.”

Trav closed his eyes and sighed too. This was Mackey. One step forward, two steps back. He knew that. He knew that through three trips to rehab. He knew that when Mackey first walked into this house looking unnerved and skittish as an alley cat, his packed suitcase next to him. You had to love those cats for who they were. If you tried to love them for house cats, you got stripes torn from your hand.