Page 168 of Beneath the Stain

He couldn’t do that. Not with Mackey. He could no more walk out on Mackey than he could walk out on his heart if it lay at his feet, still beating.

I could go down and blow the guy, Trav, and it wouldn’t have a thing to do with you.

Mackey finished breathing, stopped touching his lips to Grant’s, and sat down, leaning back and closing his eyes. He was rubbing Grant’s legs now, familiarly but not… not sexily.

Trav was holding his breath, or he never would have heard Grant’s plea to be touched.

He took a breath and backed up, closing the door to the barn softly behind him. He leaned against it for a moment and dragged in a breath, feeling the fine particulate of grief and his own hypocrisy sand his lungs like metal scrap.

He’d wished Grant could have love again. Wished he could have kindness, could have touch. For a moment, for a hidden, stolen piece of time.

You always knew Mackey was on loan from his demons.

Well, this was the last debt Mackey had to pay. Trav had made this bargain without knowing it, the year before, when he’d let Mackey in his bed, made them public, when they’d become lovers. He’d known Mackey had to finish his business, but he’d been willing to take him on faith.

Now he had to have some.

This was not as simple as cheating with a kiss, cheating with a drug. Trav was a grown-up, and he knew that.

He hadn’t known that a year ago. A year ago, walking into a hotel room in Burbank, he’d thought everything was black and white, everything was cut-and-dried. A lover cheated, or he loved you. Those things could not coexist.

Mackey loved him.

He knew Mackey loved him.

He knew it in his vitals, deeper than his stomach, or his groin, or his heart. It was in his cells, in hissoul.Mackey loved him.

What was happening in that barn had nothing to do with Trav. It had everything to do with a kid who would never have a chance to fall in love again, who would never leave the house that had trapped him, a fly in a jar, until his few hours on earth were up.

He thought of Terry again and looked around. Kell was dancing with the baby in the sunshine near the horse pen, crooning softly to her as the guys sang harmony. They were singing, of all things, Harry Nilsson, and he wondered where they’d heard that in their fractured childhood. It was a good song, about a tiny little boat kept afloat by faith.

Trav had to have faith.

He had some time, he figured, so he pulled out his phone and opened an e-mail.

Terry,

I know, we’re done talking, and I don’t want to get back together. You don’t even need to reply to this, but I needed to say it. I was wrong. I don’t think we should have been together—but I was wrong to just walk away. You tried to tell me what you were doing with that boy had nothing to do with me and everything to do with something inside of you. I was not the person who would listen to you then. I hear you now.

I’m sorry I didn’t listen. I hope you’re happy.

I am.

Trav.

He’d just hit Send when Samantha stalked outside, heading straight for him. He made sure to block the door.

“I thought you were bringing Grant in,” she said, her voice plainly unfriendly.

“Grant’s busy right now,” he said flatly. “I’ll go get him when they’re ready.”

He’d never really thought about heaven or hell—had always assumed demons were figurative, like Mackey’s. But the way her face twisted, her forehead furrowed, her lip curled up in a sneer—the way this pretty girl, still in her twenties, could suddenly turn ugly—abruptly made Trav believe in hell.

“You’re not even man enough to keep them from doing it in the barn, are you?” she snarled.

Trav’s laugh sounded flat and humorless, even to his own ears. “Exactly what do you think they’re doing?” he asked. “What do you think he can do? He can barely walk; he’s not getting it up in there. They’re not having swinging-from-the-rafters monkey sex. They’re having a moment.”

“Well, I’m going to put an end to that right—”