Page 62 of Beneath the Stain

“I’ll make you a deal,” Trav said, standing up gingerly to wait for the wheelchair. “I won’t quitifyou go back to rehab. And make it stick.”

Mackey wiped his cheeks on the knees of his jeans. “Tomorrow morning,” he said. He hopped off of the ER bed and waited for Trav to sit himself wearily down in the wheelchair. After the orderly grabbed the handles, Mackey moved to the side with Trav’s good hand. “I’ll see you through this first,” he assured him.

Trav breathed through his nose and squeezed Mackey’s hand. “It’s a deal,” he said.

Trav had been shot before—more than once. He’d been beaten and knifed, and he’d been through the hospital just fine. His parents had freaked out, and he’d gotten the best care packages in Afghanistan while waiting for active duty, but he’d never been scared and had never needed reassurance. Life or death, Trav was steady. He knew right from wrong and he knew to enforce one and not to tolerate the other, and he was happy living and dying by that.

But he didn’t say a word of this to Mackey. Mackey stood by his side, clutching his good hand, while they X-rayed him and set his wrist in a splint with a promise to put it in a cast the next day. He clutched Trav’s hand while they got his pain meds and then called for a town car and were driven home.

It was late when they walked back into the house. The others had left dinner out for them—some sort of health-food casserole from Shelia—but neither of them ate. They went without speaking to Trav’s bedroom.

If Trav was hoping for approval, he was disappointed. Mackey looked around the bedroom with dead, exhausted eyes, kicked his shoes and jeans off in a puddle, and then grabbed the coverlet from the top of the bed, wrapped himself up in it, and curled up next to the bed, by the end table. He fell asleep before Trav could get back with more blankets.

Trav lay in the darkness, listening to him breathe as he slept, and wished he could do the same. The feeling of that lithe little body, limp and sad next to his in the ER, seemed to be imprinted on his skin, etched into his muscles. He started doing math in his head. Mackey was twenty-one, right? Mackey was almost twenty-one? Trav was thirty-five. That was fourteen years. That made Trav a pedophile. He was worse than Grant Adams, the kid who’d loved Mackey and left him. He was Daddy—Mackey had obviously never had a daddy. Mackey was impressionable, and Trav had left a big impression.

No. There would be no relationship. There could be no relationship, because it would be based on every sort of wrong.

That was what his brain was saying, the part of him that had walked away from Terry without a backward glance.

But another part of him, a quiet part of him he didn’t listen to much, had started to whisper.

He’s an adult. Wait until he’s cleaned himself up and he’ll be able to make his own decisions. Look at him. He’s walked out of rehab twice. If he makes it through this time, that meansnobodytells Mackey Sanders to do something he doesn’t want to. It’s not like he respects authority anyway, Trav. If he wants you, he wantsyou, not the authority, not the daddy, just the man. You’re the only one he can trust. Can you trust anyone else with him?

That last question made him bury his face in the pillow and growl. No. No, he couldn’t trust anyone else with Mackey. The world had done a shitty job for Mackey James Sanders so far. Trav could do things right. Trav could take care of him and help him take care of himself and keep him clean and make sure nobody, not even Trav, not even Mackey, ever hurt this kid again.

You clocked him in the jaw, you bastard. Not hurt him? Mackey’s in danger from the people who love him most.

Trav lay on his back, squinting into the darkness, tears of anger and frustration slipping down the creases of his eyes.

“What’s wrong, Trav?” Mackey mumbled, and Trav was too exhausted to hold back. How had Mackey kept that terrible secret so close to his heart for so long?

“I hit you, Mackey. I don’t think I can forgive myself for that.”

“Man, you’re too rough on yourself,” Mackey said. “Fucking up don’t make you unforgivable—just makes you human. I totally deserved it.”

“Nobody deserves to get hit, Mackey.”

Mackey shifted and popped up over the edge of the bed. “People don’t deserve to get beat,” he said after a minute. “They don’t deserve to get bullied or assaulted or abused. But you didn’t hit me thinking I was weaker and you could get away with it. You hit me thinking I was your equal and a pain in the ass.” Even in the moonlight coming through the big open window behind them, Trav could see Mackey’s teeth glinting in a smile. The bruise on the jaw, Trav couldn’t see, but that smile was plain as day. “Besides—you pulled that punch. We both know it.”

He dropped out of sight then, leaving Trav alone in the darkness, but Trav found himself laughing bitterly.

There you go. He was an equal and a pain in the ass. Trav was going to have to let Mackey make his own decision, and maybe have to live with the fact that he was human after all.

And Mackey was right. Trav knew himself. He’d pulled the goddamned punch. If he’d hit Mackey as hard as he’d hit that wall, Mackey would have been the one getting X-rayed.

It would have to be enough.

THENEXTmorning, bright and early, Trav called for the limo. He needed to go to the hospital afterward anyway so they could take off the splint and put on a cast, but nobody but Mackey had a reason to load themselves into the limo.

But the entire household got in anyway.

This time when Mackey got out, everybody got out with him. Shelia started it with the hug, and then Stevie and Jefferson and Kell.

And then Trav.

The kid had slept in his corner, between Trav’s bed and the wall. Trav gathered him into a one-armed hug that wasn’t even pretending to be distanced or professional or even platonic.

“Be good,” Trav whispered. “Come back. We’re all pulling for you, kid, okay? Don’t be afraid of us. We love you.”