Page 54 of Beneath the Stain

He pulled Trav’s sunglasses over his eyes and pushed off of the car with a grunt.

“Was that your mom?” Trav asked, squinting at him perceptively in the California smog glare.

Mackey grunted again and shook his head. “She called this morning—saw the press release.” Mackey had calmed her down—as, apparently, Kell had been unable to. “I told her I was going to a… whatstheword?” God, his brain had seized up, a rictus of remembered pain, as soon as he’d seen Grant’s text. “Retreat. Yeah. I’m going on a ‘restorative retreat.’ Some bullshit. Fuckin’ LA—it’s like shrink city here, you know that, right? The shrinks have shrinks who have shrinks who have kids who buy our records and tell us they’re just as fucked-up as me and my brothers are. It’s insane.”

He rambled—he knew that. He did it on purpose, because letting his brain just spew forth with whatthefuckever was an easy way to dodge the hard shit.

Apparently cutting through whatthefuckever was Trav’s best talent. “So if that wasn’t your mom, who the hell was it?”

Mackey glared at him through the glasses. Nosy fucker. “The ghost of Shannon Hoon. Whatsit to ya?”

Trav narrowed his eyes, and Mackey took perverse pleasure in the thought that Trav was squinting against the sun because Mackey was wearing his sunglasses.

“Whoever it was made you look like you wanted a fucking Xanax, Mackey. Tell me who it was so I can block the call, or I’m taking your goddamned phone. I’m not shoving you into rehab so you can get cozy with your dealers all over again.”

Mackey’s throat shriveled up. “You’ve met my dealers,” he said, shoving the phone at Trav and grabbing his suitcase. “One of them is dead and the other’s going to rehab with me. Happy now?”

“No,” Trav said shortly. He took two steps forward and shoved Mackey’s phone in the back pocket of his jeans. “Here. Keep your damned phone. Text me if you need anything. And whoever that was who texted you—man, stay away from them. That look on your face just now—that was a bad thing.”

Mackey stayed still as Trav pulled his hands away from his hips. For a moment under the orange sky, everything stopped—the wind, the birds, the whirr of the engine. Mackey cursed the suitcases in his hands—he wanted to lift his sunglasses and look Trav square in the eyes. Trav had nice eyes. That redhead’s brown definitely suited him.

Trav took a deep breath and slowly raised the sunglasses, then set them on top of Mackey’s head. Mackey took a deep breath and smelled… Trav. It had gotten so that Trav’s smell, his animal, had pervaded Mackey’s sleeping and waking in the past few weeks. Suddenly Mackey was comforted and turned on at the same time, and he wassonot ready to deal with that.

Slowly he licked his lips, still captured by Trav’s brown eyes. “This,” he said, too softly for Blake to hear, “is for boys who don’t have to go to rehab.”

Trav nodded slowly. “You won’t always have to go to rehab, Mackey. But you do now.”

Mackey took a step away and turned toward the entrance. Blake was already halfway up the walk, and Mackey expected that he’d just walk in by himself, like that.

He was surprised and unsettled when Trav fell in stride next to him. “I can do this by myself,” he muttered.

Trav bent and took his largest suitcase from him. “You don’t have to now.”

Somewhat reassured, Mackey kept walking.

THEYCHECKEDin, and, thankGodand maybe thank some of that money they had rolling around, they got separate rooms. Mackey was both relieved and a little spazzed out about that, actually. His room was small, with a bed, a dresser, a desk, and a chair—much like most of the nicer hotel rooms he’d ever been in, except with fresh flowers and no minibar—but Mackey wasn’t used to sleeping alone. Most of the time, he’d slept in Gerry’s room, and on the odd times they hadn’t roomed together, well, Mackey had found ways not to be alone.

The first morning, his phone went off at six, all the better to start the day with some good old-fashioned PT. He hit the Dismiss key with every intention of getting up, and then fell back asleep in the little spot between the bed and the wall.

When the administrators—Dr. Cambridge included—came in to wake him up, he was fast asleep and nobody had seen him. If his phone hadn’t buzzed insistently in his hands, he could have stayed happily like that until noon.

“Wha’?” he answered, remembering to hold it to his ear.

“Mackey, where the fuck are you?”

“Trav? I’m in rehab. You walked me here, remember?”

“They’re looking all over for you!”

“I’m asleep.”

“I can hear that,” Trav replied with some humor in his voice. “Whereare you asleep?”

“Same place I’m always asleep. Why?”

“Never mind.”

Trav hung up and Mackey went back to sleep—for a whole five minutes. This time Dr. Cambridge alone came in to get him.