Page 61 of Beneath the Stain

MACKEYWASsurprisingly competent with the details, and when he was done talking to the nurse, they sat side by side in the little ER cubicle, waiting for X-rays. They had given Trav some pain meds, which he took, and he was aware and more than aware that Mackey watched him hungrily as his throat worked, washing the pills into his system.

“Why’d you leave?” Trav asked quietly, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes.

“There’s too much stuff I don’t want to talk about,” Mackey said, just as quiet.

Trav sighed and reached for his phone, working a one-handed dial to Heath’s office.

“Who are you calling?” Mackey asked incuriously.

“Heath—I need to tell him I’m resigning.”

And just that quickly Mackey yanked his phone out of his good hand and threw it against the wall.

“Youcan’t!” Mackey begged.

Trav opened his eyes enough to see tears starting at the corners of those luminous gray eyes. “Mackey, Ihityou—”

“Everyone wants to hit me—”

“But Idid. Man, do you evenknowhow far under my skin you’ve got to be for us to be here? But we are. And you won’t even… won’t even talk to the doc in rehab, and what’s going to happen to me? What’s going to happen to Kell and Jefferson and Stevie when you break loose and get high and your body just fucking can’t take it anymore?”

Mackey hugged his knees to his chest and took a big, shuddering breath. “I’m trying to keep it together,” he confessed brokenly. “But how am I going to tell people? How do I evenlookat Kell when someone else knows? Or Mom. Or Jefferson or Stevie?”

“Knows what?” Trav asked gently. He sat up and gingerly moved his good hand to rub a soft circle on Mackey’s back. It wasn’t hugging, but it seemed to calm him down.

“And they’re not even the worst part,” Mackey went on, like he couldn’t keep it back but like Trav wasn’t even there either. “How do I tell that baby—he named the baby Katy, do you know that? After McKay. So she’s out there in the world, and how would I tell her that I never wanted her to be? Or if she was going to be born, that I wanted her daddy to leave her? Iknowwhat that’s like—how can I even look at them if they know that’s what I wanted? And he knows I’m in rehab. God, what if Kell tells him about all them guys? But he was married and I just needed to be touched so bad, and Kell won’t even look at me if I tell him I’m a fag, and I wouldn’t even care, but he left. You see, he left, and he’d always taken care of us, but he left to go get married and I hate him and it’s just all… just all….”

Trav managed to haul that slight, unresisting body against his and to hunch his shoulders over Mackey’s. When the doctor came in, Trav waved him away and had to wait another hour for his X-ray, but it didn’t matter.

It wasn’t until he’d waved the guy off and gathered a sobbing, repentant Mackey Sanders into his arms that he realized that he was crying too.

God. He’d only heard one name in their past—one. They all knew one guy who stayed home to get married and have a kid. Kell only had one best friend he was pissed at for leaving. And Mackey only had one heart to break, and it had been broken for over a year, and he hadn’t told one person—hadn’t wept, hadn’t vented, hadn’t grieved.

Trav hadn’t expected this. Of all the sins and all the demons, a simple broken heart hadn’t been on his list.Oh, baby boy—did no one teach you how to have your heart broken? How long has this been a secret sorrow, held close to your heart until you were consumed?

“Mackey?” he asked hesitantly,needingto know. “How long were you with this guy?”

Mackey was sobbing so hard Trav almost didn’t hear. When he made out the words “fourteen” and “seventeen,” he had a physical sense of dislocation.They’re hardly children in the salt mines.Had he actually said that to Heath? Children. They were children. Mackey was as fresh and as new to the world of broken hearts as a newborn bunny to a wolf’s den, and he was weeping, savaged, because this whole time he’d thought he was a wolf.

The storm passed—all storms must—leaving Mackey exhausted and helpless, leaning against Trav as they perched on the bed in the ER. Trav had wrapped his good arm around Mackey’s shoulders, and every now and then he could feel shudders of breath shake their bodies.

“What was his name?” Trav asked in the sudden silence. He knew, but he needed Mackey to say it.

“Grant,” Mackey whispered. “Grant Adams. He and my brothers were friends since the third grade.”

Trav swallowed, then swallowed again. He closed his eyes and saw the colors of rage, and then opened his eyes and tried to breathe. A part of him, the rational part, told him that Kell wasn’t that much older than Mackey. Mackey was precocious as hell—there was no real abuse here, just kids getting it on.

The part that was in the ER with an aching wrist and a devastated, emotionally stunted rock star wanted to hunt Grant Adams down and put him in a room with the guy who’d raped Mackey in an alleyway.

Not the same thing.

No, it wasn’t. Grant, with his heartache and his baby daughter and his leaving, had probably done more damage to Mackey than his rapist. The assault was par for the course, as far as Mackey was concerned. One more proof that everything in the world was out of control, including who you loved and what you could do to make them stay, or who took advantage of you when you were passed out in an alleyway.

But it couldn’t be fixed now, not while Trav’s wrist was swelling exponentially and Mackey was probably running probabilities on leaving the hospital high. Trav saw the orderly coming and dropped a kiss on Mackey’s hair.

“Time to go,” Trav said reluctantly. God—all this time hoping Mackey would break, and now he’d broken and it was Trav they were putting back together.

“Don’t quit,” Mackey begged, whispering through a clogged throat.