Page 27 of Beneath the Stain

“She’s pregnant,” Grant said, closing his eyes.

“No.” Oh God. Grant had honor. Grant wouldn’t…. “You can leave her. Pay her,” Mackey begged, hating himself.

Grant blinked hard, and Mackey saw his eyes, red-rimmed and glossy, spilling over. “I seen how much fun that’s been for you and Kell and Jeff,” he said.

Mackey recoiled. “But you can’t…. Grant, you heard him. A chance to make music for a living. To go places. Toget out of our shitty little town and stay with m—”

Grant closed his mouth over Mackey’s brutally, so hard his lips rubbed on his teeth, swelling, and Mackey tried not to sob. He wanted to argue, he wanted to plead, but Grant’s mouth on his had always been their best form of communication.

Grant invaded him, silenced him, then reached into his pants and stroked him, hard and without mercy. Mackey clutched at Grant’s shoulders, too weak inside to pull him off and make him talk about it, too desperate not to scratch at him and try.

But Grant stayed put, jacking Mackey off until Mackey groaned for breath, aroused so hard so quickly that he hurt. Grant knew his body by now and sank to his knees, pulling Mackey’s pants down in one hard yank.

Then Grant sucked the head of his cock in, andGodbut Grant was good at that, his lips so soft and sweet, his tongue so busy. Mackey clapped one hand over his mouth and screamed, and Grant pressed his free hand, the one not jacking Mackey, over it, and Mackey screamed and screamed and no one heard, because the sound was muffled in the music and the crowd and the combined force of their hands pressing his lips against his teeth.

Mackey came because there was nothing else he could do, and for a moment, the dressing room was so quiet they could actually make out the DJ warning the crowd that there would be five minutes of break followed by Outbreak Monkey doing their closing set.

Grant got heavily to his feet and pulled Mackey’s pants up, then leaned his forehead against Mackey’s. “You need a way to let me go,” he panted into the relative quiet. “This is it. You get to go be famous, and I’ll stay in Tyson and watch you fly.”

“No,” Mackey begged, his life opening up like a canyon under his feet, and him with broken wings and no safety net.

“Sing that river song tonight,” Grant whispered. “Sing it to me. Please. I know you’re gonna be pissed, but God. I love playing with you guys. Let me have one more set, and my song.”

Mackey wiped futilely at his eyes. “I hate you,” he moaned.

Grant wrapped those strong, load-bearing arms around his shoulders and held him. “Hate me after the set, McKay. Right now, it’s the only way we got to say good-bye.”

Grant left the dressing room first, presumably going to the bathroom to wash his face and rinse his mouth. He tapped on the dressing room door when he was done, and Mackey went to do the same.

He met his own eyes in the mirror as he washed his face and ran cold water through his sweaty hair.Faggot. Cocksucker. Fairy.

He hadn’t said those words to himself since he and Grant had spent that first night together, because he couldn’t say those words to Grant.

But now he was all alone, and they bounced loudly around his brain.

That is, until he was on the stage, screaming his heart out in their final set, letting Grant’s riffs wash through him like prayer.

“River song last,” Mackey said in the middle of the set, and although his voice was audible to the crowd, only the band knew they were making mental changes in the set list as they played. It worked fine, though, and “In One Ear” got the crowd loud and noisy and screaming for more. They did a fake stage exit then, because they’d pulled this sort of thing before, and when the decibel level got truly fucking insane, Mackey went back onstage by himself.

He picked up his own guitar, the one he didn’t get to play unless he was doing the solo gig, and looked out into the crowd.

“You ever steal a kiss?” he asked them, and that vibe, that noisy, we’re-gonna-burn-the-place-down vibe, turned suddenly dark and smoky, and Mackey felt reassured. Yeah. They’d all stolen kisses. It was okay. He wasn’t alone. The whole world had stolen kisses, and he was playing their song.

The river makes music just like you and I make love

And the sunlight cuts through shadows like a pie knife from above

And we sit inside the purple shade of a place we’ve forged from sin

And we listen to the river whisper ’bout the end.

The end. This was the end. He poured his heart out into the song, lamenting for the lover who would be gone when the sun was high and the sweat poured down their necks, crying for the kisses that would never come again.

Because they wouldn’t. Because Grant would be gone when Mackey left the stage, and his whole world for the next week would be moving from his tiny bunk bed in the tiny apartment into the big wide world, with only the crowd to catch him.

Stairway to Heaven

THENEXTmonth was a blur. So much of it was above Mackey’s head. Someone told him and the guys where to be, when they were going, and boom! They were there. He remembered the panic of their first plane ride, the way he and Kell sat next to each other, listening to their own iPods, all the fear and apprehension and excitement theirs and theirs alone. Neither of them talked about how pissed they were at Grant. Once they got to LA, it was alldrive hereandsign this, and with one swipe of the pen, their world changed. Jeff and Kell let go of their apartment. Mackey bought their mom a house.