Page 59 of Beneath the Stain

Trav literally saw red. “Get out, or I will hurt you.”

Terry took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean—”

“You slapped me in the face, Terry. Do you remember that? And I didn’t fight back, because I could level you. Well, I’mbeggingyou—walk out the door. Do you understand?”

Trav’s jaw was clenched, and he could feel a pulse throbbing in his eyes. He was violent, when he’d never been violent unless the situation called for it. You didn’t just walk into this house with the cute girl and the bewildered brothers and the broken, healing camaraderie and say it wasn’t important. You didn’t call Mackey James Sanders a burnout. You just fuckingdidn’t. Not when you knew what Trav knew. Not when you knew the boys like Trav was coming to know them. And it didn’t matter that Terry didn’t know it—Trav couldn’t forgive him anyway.

Goddammit.

A red haze still threatened his vision and he turned around. “Just go.”

“I’m sorry,” Terry murmured. “Please—at least keep the chess set.”

“Go.”

“But I just got here.”

Trav whirled around just in time to see Mackey Sanders walk in before Terry walked out, and for a moment he wondered if it was possible for your jaw muscles to constrict so hard you strangled yourself and died.

“Holy fucking mother of fuckity fuck fuck fuck—Jesus Christ, Mackey, what are you doing here?”

Mackey turned around and watched through the glass panes in the entryway as Terry walked toward his car in the long shadows of the early autumn evening. “That guy was crying. What’d you say to him, Trav? I mean, you don’t got a lot of poetry in your soul, but I didn’t think you made pretty guys cry.”

“That guy was the shitty part of my day,” Trav said, taking in the kid’s appearance as he tried to breathe. “Thegoodpart of my day was supposed to be that you were in rehab, getting better.”

Mackey was still thin and still pale. His hair wasn’t back in a ponytail, though, it was hanging in his eyes, and looked like he’d dragged his hands through it about six thousand times. His eyes were red-rimmed—not like he was high, but like Terry’s had been before he’d walked out—and his goddamned new jeans were hanging off his hips.

“Why’s it gotta be rehab?” Mackey asked, and his chin quivered like Terry’s had too. “I’m sorry I interrupted your… breakup or whatever, but why’s it gotta be rehab? Man, I don’t know those people, and I’m supposed to be talking to them, and it’s like everything I say there hurts. Hurts Blake, hurts… hurts to say. Why can’t I just not do drugs? Just not drink? C’mon, Trav, whatya say? How ’bout I just don’t do the bad shit?”

Trav wasn’t a cuddly guy. He barely hugged his parents. The best thing about having a boyfriend had been the uncensored touching of skin, but even then, it had been all about sex.

But Mackey was standing here, his suitcases at his side, which meant he’d probably taken a cab right out of rehab and packed his own shit, and Trav had the most absurd urge to hug him like he’d hugged Terry sometimes, and just hold him until it was better.

He was so raw from the talk with Terry that he almost didn’t trust his own voice, his own hands, his own body, to even give this kid a hug.

“Mackey?” he asked helplessly. “How bad do you want a pill right now? Or a shot of vodka? Or a snort? Tell me straight up, what would you give for something to make your hands stop shaking or to blur whatever is buzzing around in your pointy fucking headas we speak.”

Mackey closed his eyes and dropped his bags. “Shut up,” he begged. “Man, I just want to crawl in next to your bed and—”

“Sleeping in a corner isn’t going to solve it!” Trav snapped, mostly because he envied Mackey’s corner at this very moment. He wanted it—cravedit. “Whatever’s in your head, it’s not going to get better until you tell someone. You need to get itoutof your head, make it stop hurting—”

“Well maybe I don’t wanna do that!” Mackey snarled, pacing in the entryway.

Trav heard some restless movements on the stairs behind him and wondered if the brothers were visible or just listening. Probably just listening, because God, who wanted to be there forthis?

“Maybe I just want to stay here and fall off the fucking wagon and—”

Trav’s blood ran cold. “Mackey, could you not fucking say that shit? You know the statistics and the names and the histories—probably better than I do. Do you want to be another face on the memorial wall?”

Mackey nodded, his fuck-off-and-love-me smile firmly in place, his slightly crooked teeth showing, a full-fledged panic sweat seeping through the underarms of the new jersey he was wearing. “Yeah! Yeah—why the hell not? I could be like fucking Jim Morrison or Shannon Hoon—Jesus, I could go outproudlike fucking Kurt Cobain, ’cause that motherfucker didn’t justgo, he went with ablast—”

Crack!

Trav stared as Mackey, all 110 pounds of him, flew back against the coffee table, thrown there by Trav’s right hook.

“Oh God.”

Mackey stared at him, rubbing the rapidly reddening spot on his jaw. “Holy crap, Trav—you just hit me.”