Page 44 of Beneath the Stain

“Kid, c’mon. You breathing? What’d you take? Jesus, what could you take, you didn’t have time to take anything.”

Mackey groaned. “’S beer,” he mumbled. “Trav, ’s beer.”

“Beer? Yeah, well, this looks a lot more like….” Trav surveyed him, sprawled sideways in the garbage, and realized his pants were down to his ankles, his ass exposed for anyone to see. There was blood, he saw, feeling sick. Blood smearing his asscheek, and a slick white track of what must have been semen.

Oh God.

Trav took a breath, and another, and remembered that even when Mackey was high as a fucking kite, there were condoms in the trash.

“Oh Mackey,” he murmured.

And then he lost his mind. He must have. Mackey’s brothers were coming. What heshouldhave done was call an ambulance, let them take a rape kit, let them do a blood test, but Mackey’sbrotherswere coming, and his bandmates, and his friends, and he couldn’t. He couldn’t let them see him like this.

Before he could acknowledge what he was going to do, even to himself, he pulled Mackey’s pants up and buttoned them around his hips. Then he scooped the kid into his arms—Jesus,he still weighed nothing—and leaned against the wall so he could fumble for his phone.

They’d taken a limo in, and he called the driver, who was waiting in the garage nearby, and had him swing around to that side of the building. He was going to call Jefferson next, but he didn’t have to. The door behind him exploded out, and there were frantic footsteps coming from the other direction, and suddenly everybody was there, even Blake, who was using a wad of paper towels to keep his nosebleed in check.

“Here,” Trav muttered, giving his phone to Jefferson so he could hold Mackey, arms dangling at his side, in his arms. “Dial the hospital. Tell them we’re bringing in a roofie victim. He’s going to need a blood test as soon as we walk through the door.”

“Roofies?” Kell asked, wrinkling his nose. “Isn’t that, like, a date-rape drug?”

“Shut up,” Trav snapped, clutching Mackey closer. His head had tipped back and he was breathing loudly from his nose.

“But I didn’t say any—”

“Shut up!” Trav snarled, and prayed for the car to get there. With the exception of going back to rehab, Mackey had done everything Trav had asked. Gotten up, gone to rehearsal, come back, eaten breakfast, eaten dinner. Gone shopping and bought clothes Mackey didn’t care about so they could impress people Mackeyreallydidn’t care about—and what did Trav do?

Trav watched from across a crowded room while some fucker weaseled his way into the party and got a piece of Mackey Sanders’s ass.

God fuckingdammit!

Jesus, Mackey. How many of us have to let you down?

The car swung around and the lot of them piled in, Trav going last with Mackey.

Halfway to the hospital, Mackey groaned and started to convulse. Trav tilted Mackey’s head and he vomited on the floor at their feet. Trav barked for water, and Stevie handed him a bottle from the bar while Shelia pulled out a wad of tissues to wipe Mackey’s mouth.

“How’d he get roofied?” she asked when he was as clean as they could make him. The smell was overpowering, but not one of them said a thing. They just stared at Trav with big, frightened eyes.

“Some guy—I didn’t see his face. Wrapped his arm around his shoulder, grabbed him a beer. Man, he must have used a fuckton of it too.”

“Why weren’tyouthere?” Kell asked.

Trav looked at him sharply. His eyes were puffy and his nose was running—he was pissed, but then, so was Trav.

“We were working our way to meet,” Trav muttered, remembering the relief on Mackey’s face when they made eye contact. “And….” He swallowed. “Goddammit.”

“Do we got any idea who it was?” Stevie asked.

“We’ve got some evidence,” Trav muttered, thinking about the semen. His stomach lurched, and he kept a tight rein on himself. “If the guy’s on file, we’ve got him.” Maybe. If Mackey wanted to press charges. If the guys wanted the world to know their brother had been….

Trav couldn’t even finish the sentence. For a moment he was almost overwhelmed—sick, like Mackey, on the floor of the limo—but he swallowed the tears back. These kids looked to him, and he’d already let them down.

“Gerry didn’t use to let Mackey hang out alone at those things,” Kell said softly, savagely. “Gerry and Mackey used to hang out together—”

“Popping Xanax and getting hammered,” Jefferson snapped. “Wasn’t perfect either, Kell. It’s our fault, all of ours. He never needed taking care of when we were kids. Just forgot how much of a kid he was when we got here.”

“Speak for yourself!” Blake snapped. “Kid’s notmyresponsibility. You’re the ones all overwhelmed with this brotherhood shit. I’m just the hired hand, remember? He wouldn’t hardlytalkto me because I wasn’t the almighty Grant fucking Adams.”