Beneath the Stain - Part 7 (9 page)

“I’ve got as much right as anyone else to be here!” he protested, and Mackey caught his breath. He’d been afraid of Trav’s anger. He should have known. If Trav was ever really,
truly
angry at Mackey, Mackey would have been really,
truly
afraid.

He was certainly afraid for Stevie’s dad right now.

“This is private property, and you have until the count of three before everybody on this lawn either calls the police or helps me kick your ass back into your car!”

“He’s going to kill that bad man,” Blake said at Mackey’s side.

“Oh God, Mackey! He hated jail when it was all of us in there.” Kell sounded a little panicked.

So was Mackey. “Well, we better make sure he doesn’t go back.” He’d go with him—hell, he’d help Trav beat up Stevie’s dad for
free
—but…. “We don’t got time for jail right now. Grant’s counting on us. We can’t lose time for this bullshit.”

“Get ouuuuut!” Trav screamed, flecks of spittle coming from his mouth.

Mr. Harris must have been seven times a fool, because he was still stuttering, fumbling—and then, oh God, he really was too stupid to live. “It’s just that, you know, I lost my job and we could use a little bit of—”

Mackey knew where this was going, and he knew what Trav would do. “Stop him,” Mackey cried and ran down the lawn to grab Trav’s arm as he cocked it back. “We don’t got time for this bullshit!” he yelled, hoping to get Trav’s attention.

“I will
kill
this guy if he touches one of you!” Trav shouted.

To Mackey’s relief, Kell was on his other arm and Blake—brave man—jumped on Trav’s back.

“I’ll just… you know, I can come back….” Mr. Harris backtracked like a scuttling crab, and Mackey and his brothers just held on to Trav as every muscle in his body fought to either smash the man’s face in or wrap his hands around his throat.

“Do it and I’ll kill you!” Trav screamed, and Mackey snapped, “Not with witnesses, dumbass!” loud enough to penetrate.

The release of tension in Trav’s body was so great that it sent them all stumbling backward, Trav landing square on top of Blake, Kell and Mackey scrambling to the side.

He was small but he was quick, and he rolled, tumbled, and hopped on Trav’s chest, sitting with his backside toward Trav’s face. He didn’t want any of their intimacy done in front of the strangers now watching the show on the frost-crispy lawn as the battered Oldsmobile peeled down the street.

“You can get up now, Mackey,” Trav muttered.

“God, please!” Blake groaned, but Mackey didn’t believe it.

“Walter!” he called.

Sure enough, the driver—who’d had the day off and spent it hanging out in Mackey’s mom’s living room instead of the hotel like he’d said—popped front and center to where Mackey was perched on his stubborn-assed boyfriend’s chest. “Yes, Mr. Sanders?”

“Could you go to Walmart—it should still be open—and buy one of those big leather bags that we keep in the basement, and bring it here and set it up?”

Walter nodded, as if he approved of this plan. “Would you like tape and headgear and—”

“The whole nine yards,” Mackey said, smacking Trav’s arm. “Stop wiggling, asshole. I’m saving your butt.”

“Blake is kneeing me in the back,” Trav snapped.

“Good. If he was in position, I’d let him knee you in the balls. Jesus, you people talk about
my
self-control!”

“I have wanted to beat the shit out of that guy for a
year
!”

In spite of the absurd gravity of the situation, Mackey had to smile. His boys. God, Trav really was proof that God could throw you down a cast-iron jock sometimes, wasn’t he? “Well, we’ve wanted a piece of him for most of our lives. Get in line. We’re not doing this now. If we end up in jail, who’s visiting Grant?”

Trav’s muffled groan of self-awareness had real apology in it. “Aw, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck….”

“Walter?” Mackey said, nodding.

Walter nodded back. “Back in an hour, Mr. Sanders.”

“Use the gas card, Walter!” Trav called, but Walter probably knew that already.

“Okay,” Mackey said, standing up and turning around to offer Trav a hand up. “Show’s over, everybody. Vamoose!”

The neighbors took the hint—and just the fact that they scattered on command proved to Mackey that this was a much better neighborhood than the one they’d grown up in, not that he needed any convincing.

“You okay, Blake?” Mackey asked, truly concerned.

Blake grunted. “You twisted my knee, asshole!”

Kell helped him up, and he tested his weight on it. “It’ll be okay,” Kell judged. “Here. Let’s go get showers and let Mackey calm Trav down. I don’t know about you all, but I could use some boob-tube and dinner.” And it was just so normal. Like practicing. Like being together.

“Yeah, that sounds awesome. Go on inside.” Mackey checked on Trav, who was looking around sheepishly like he was trying to judge how many people had seen that. “We’ll be there in a minute.”

“Sure thing, Mackey.”

They disappeared, leaving Mackey and Trav out on the lawn in the darkness.

Mackey put his hands on either side of Trav’s face, liking the warmth and the stubble,
needing
the contact. “You can’t do that,” he said nakedly. “You’re our rock. You don’t get to murder the bad guys in front of witnesses.”

“But without witnesses is okay?” Trav asked, and he was his magnificent sarcastic self again. When Trav palmed the back of Mackey’s head and pulled him in against his warmth and his protection and his—oh my
God—
smell of sweat and expensive aftershave, Mackey went. Trav’s arms around his back, his heat in the autumn cold—these were animal things, like water and food, and Mackey needed them.

“Trav?” Mackey’s voice was muffled against his chest.

“Yeah?”

“I really love you. I’m sorry I got high.”

“I’m sorry your old boyfriend is dying. I’m sorry you and the guys hurt and I can’t do a fucking thing about it.”

“You’re gonna need to beat up that bag a lot in the next two weeks.”

Some of the pent-up tension loosened from Trav’s body. Thank God. It was about to strangle him.

“That was brilliant, by the way. First time I’ve seen you actually use money.”

“Well, it’s either that or stuff it in a big house and a bunch of show ponies you don’t know how to ride.”

Trav grunted. “Mackey, do you have a plan for when we leave here?”

Mackey looked up at him and saw that his face was bleak against the moonlight. This time, Trav needed some hope.

“We’re gonna go home. All of us. We’re gonna go to fucking Disneyland, ’cause Grant never got to go. We’re gonna buy a dog—you know that? I want animals in our place, I don’t care if we have to pay Astrid extra. And Christmas is coming up. I don’t know what the rest of the guys are doing, but I made a promise last year, and I’m keeping it.”

Trav’s mouth relaxed some. The aloneness eased from around his eyes. “God, I really want you to meet my parents. I think you’d love them.”

“I love you,” Mackey said again, and Trav bent down and took his mouth, softly.

“I love you too,” he whispered when the kiss was over. “And for the first time, I think my folks’ll see I mean it.”

Mackey pulled away only to rest his head on Trav’s shoulder again. They would go inside eventually and realize they were starving. Mackey would shower again, and they’d watch
The Dark Knight
and hoot and holler at the screen. Briony would fold herself just to rest on Mackey’s chest while Mackey rested on Trav’s, and Mackey would wonder why he’d never realized that women could be stunning creatures, even if you didn’t want to bang them. (For one thing, all of that long, soft, curling hair—he just liked to sink his hands in and stroke it.)

She’d sleep in her own room, though, and Mackey and Trav would touch each other softly in the dark, smoothing their hands down bare skin, erections secondary to the contact, to the touching.

Their orgasms would be quiet things, organic, easy cresting in each other’s mouths. They were mindful of the others in the house, but more than that. They were tender with each other, easy. Mackey kept hearing Grant’s pathetic words about being touched, and he was grateful that Trav had let that happen.

He would never take touching his lover for granted again.

When they were done and he lay with his head on Trav’s chest, stroking the fur that traveled to his hard stomach, he wanted to say something important.

“Trav?”

“Yeah?”

“You know when I wouldn’t tell anyone I was gay and it was eating me alive, and this thing with Grant was killing me, and all I could think about was my next hit?”

“Yeah.”

“That sucked.”

Trav’s bark of laughter echoed in the quiet room. “You think?”

“But it was worth everything—rehab and crying for months and all that bullshit—if you and me can walk away from this together.”

Trav groaned and swallowed him in a hug that was so tight he couldn’t breathe. That was okay. Breathing was optional. For the moment, he had Trav.

B
ETWEEN
T
RAV
and the other guys, they beat the bag soft by the end of the next two weeks.

They went over to the big, oppressive dragon-house (as Mackey called it) every day after lunch. The guys took turns talking to Grant, playing with the little girl, or playing music. Grant picked up Mackey’s tiny, beat-up guitar and maneuvered it around the various tubes and wires in his arm that tracked the pain meds and the fluids that were sustaining him. They played rusty versions of the songs on the first CDs, but only one or two at a time. By the time they finished the second song, he was usually falling asleep, unwillingly, and they would kiss him on the forehead or the cheek, then kiss Katy on the cheek as she cuddled with her daddy, and file out.

That one golden day when Trav saw more than he wanted and less than he’d hoped for, when he’d carried the young man back to his sick bed, had been the last time Grant walked on his own.

He would never leave the bed in the perfectly pristine living room again.

A week after that day, Grant called Trav, Mackey, and Kell in for a conference. Reeves sat next to him, stoic and professional. Only the tight lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth betrayed the fact that Grant was more than a client and that he was mourning what could have been between them.

“I know,” Grant said, a tired smile on his face, “you all are tired of the damned manila folders. This one’s sort of the last one—” Suddenly he sat up like he’d forgotten something. “You signed the paperwork, right? I mean, that’s in. Sam signed off and—”

“It’s done, Grant,” Reeves said, touching his shoulder gently. “Everybody signed, it’s ironclad and airtight. The guys will have a right to be a part of your daughter’s life.”

Grant fell back against the pillow and sighed. “Okay. Good. I’m tired. I’m forgetting shit. I keep waking up and worrying that my dad’s gonna find my stash of weed, and then I remember it’s legal now.
Then
I remember I can’t smoke it anymore—too hard.”

Mackey stroked his hand, and Trav focused on that motion. The skin was pale, dry, like paper, contrasted to Mackey’s vital, rough, brown, ink-stained left hand. Trav had seen Mackey walk away from writing at his desk with black smudges from his pinkie to his elbow, and even though he’d wrecked a couple of shirts and one misguided purchase of white jeans that way, Trav had never minded. It meant Mackey’s brain was engaged: he was happy when he was writing.

A dark smudge appeared on the back of Grant’s hand, and another. Trav found himself hoping they’d stay.

“What’d you need us for?” Mackey prompted. “It’s my turn to sing with you. Was looking forward to it.”

Grant breathed out. “Mr. Reeves here has my funeral requests. My folks are sort of pissed about them, but I can pay, so it’s all right. Reeves wants you to take a look and tell me if you agree to all of them.”

“Grant, you really suck, do you know that? Jesus! We couldn’t just show up in black suits and let some stranger say shit over you?”

Grant laughed, and it sounded like tattered pages fluttering. “Yeah, well, consider it payback for all the times I kept you from being beat up. You owe me this.”

“I don’t owe you shit,” Mackey said, but amicably, like they were competing over who got the last piece of pizza.

Grant suddenly focused his eyes hungrily on Mackey’s face. “You don’t,” he said seriously. “You owe me nothing. I owe you every good moment I’ve ever had. I can give you my daughter to help raise, but that’s an obligation. I know it. But do this for me, okay? I don’t want the black suits and the person I don’t know. I want you and the guys. And I don’t want to be buried here in the local cemetery in the family plot. I fucking
lived
here. Reeves set up a trust for me—I want my ashes sprinkled in the ocean. I want to be
free
.”

Mackey looked up at Trav, helpless in the face of the paperwork in the folder.

“Of course.” Trav’s voice sounded a long way away, even from his own ears. “I can make this happen.”

“But Trav—”

Mackey’s shoulder shook under his hand, and Trav knew that this was the thing he could do, the way he could help his boys, the thing he was uniquely qualified to take care of.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s what I do. I manage.”

“Yeah, asshole,” Mackey said, keeping that tender stroking of Grant’s hand. “We’ll do it. In case you were wondering how much you meant to me, I’ll tell you right now how much I hate this.”

Grant aimed his weary, dreamy gaze at Trav. “I hope you’re not expecting flowers, Mr. Ford. Or poetry. Or fancy dinners.”

“I know what I’m getting,” Trav said sincerely. “Good and the bad, hard and the soft. I know.”

“He’s amazing, isn’t he?”

“Stunning.”

“Shut up, both of you,” Mackey said thickly. “Now are you going to tell us what you need us to do or not?” He never stopped touching Grant’s hand. Trav would have picked up if he left off.

The directions were very specific. Trav was sure he was going to get flack from the boy’s family.