Page 165 of Beneath the Stain

Mackey laughed some more and slid his hand down Grant’s thigh. He was just touching, familiar, and Grant sighed.

“God, Mackey. It just feels so good to be touched. My family ain’t hugged me since I came out.”

Mackey kept stroking, not trying to arouse, just to touch. He leaned his head back against the hay and closed his eyes. “Well, your real family is here now,” he mumbled, sliding his hand to Grant’s other thigh. “You’ll get all the touch you can stand.”

Ghosts That We Knew

TRAVMISSEDhis parents with a terrible, sudden ferocity.

He remembered coming out. He’d been so nervous—seriously, who liked to talk to their parents? And he’d already told them about joining the military, and they were so very, very opposed. Liberal to the bone, both of them, they had disliked everything the military stood for.

But they’d ultimately been proud of their son.

He’d come down the stairs of their little Quaker-style house wearing cargo shorts, a polo shirt, and loafers, feeling so very grown-up because he was going to take the car into town and find himself a summer job at a local tourist trap, and because he’d graduated from high school two days before and his little brother still looked at him like he was a god. After pouring himself a cup of coffee, he sat down, thinking he was going to have a little adult talk with Tom and Linda (as he had never called them since), and they… well, listened gravely at first.

“Mom, Dad, I know you have been waiting for me to date, because it’s age appropriate, but you should know that there’s something about me—”

“You’re gay,” his mom interrupted practically. “Travis, we’ve been waiting for you to tell us—it’s one of the reasons we were so opposed to the military!”

He stared at them, all of the wind flown from his sails. “But—but isn’t this going to be a thing?”

“No,” his father said grimly, shaking Splenda on his oatmeal and bananas. “It should never be a thing. The only reason people should worry about telling their parents is so their parents know who they’re bringing home. That’s polite. Gender expectations may be antiquated, but sometimes they’re all we have.”

Trav’s dad—graying curly hair, stooped shoulders, graying red beard, and horn-rimmed glasses—gave the closest approximation to a growl Trav had ever heard. And suddenly his family was talking politics, which they did all the time anyway, and Trav ate oatmeal and bananas before he went to find his job—and his first lover, the musician on the corner.

Grant’s family was nothing like his family.

Nothing.

“Now, Mr. Ford, you surely know we don’t plan on letting our son do this to his wife and baby girl.”

Travis looked at the paperwork in his hands and at the lawyer who’d handed it to him. “I’m going to scan this with my phone and send it to the boys’ lawyer. Then we’ll talk.”

“It should be airtight,” Mr. Reeves said, and Trav nodded.

Harold Reeves was a dapper little man about Mackey’s height, with an aesthetic, slightly built body, a brown tweed suit, and a bow tie. He was the epitome of the middle-aged gay bachelor, and Trav wondered if Grant had chosen him with that in mind.

He’d certainly done Grant Adams proud with what he’d planned.

On the one hand, Trav was appalled, because Grant was giving partial custody of his baby girl to a bunch of feckless rock stars who, this time last year, could barely take a dump on their own without missing the bowl.

On the other hand, he was pleased—pleased and honored—because his boys were grown-up, and they were ready. The baby would be an impetus to stay straight. These boys loved each other like brothers—their brother’s child would be sacred.

It wasn’t full custody, which would have been madness, but just enough. Just enough to make them part of the little girl’s life. Just enough to keep Grant Adams alive for them. Just enough to want to be better men for her.

Just enough to remind the boys where they came from, and how far they’d come.

This, he thought as he scanned the documents, could be a very good thing.

There were only three really ugly things in the way.

“I think it’s disgusting,” Samantha Adams spat. “He did those disgusting things with that Sanders kid when they were in school, and it’s one thing when you’re kids at school, but it’s another when—”

“How did you know?” Trav asked, frowning. “You just said he came out a month ago—how do you know they were together when they were in school? Did Grant tell you that?”

It seemed unlikely. He could see Grant coming out about the affair and even about the little girl’s name—which had seemed like a particularly cruel joke until Trav walked into this lovely cream-colored brocaded room with stark green silk bamboo plants on the maple end tables. There wasn’t any dust, which Trav was used to in LA, but here, with the horses and the entire backyard being devoted to a farm, the thought of keeping everything free from cloying red dust was terrifying. For the freedom to get dirty alone, that little girl deserved to get the hell out of Tyson, and she deserved a namesake who could be strong enough to carry her away if she wished it.

So he could see Grant telling his family he was gay, and that he wanted his daughter to know Mackey, and to know Kell and the boys he’d called his brothers.