Beneath the Stain - Part 3 (4 page)

Trav couldn’t explain the surge of protectiveness, of reluctant admiration, that knotted his stomach when he watched Mackey sleep. He was defenseless like this, every bit of sarcasm, sass, and fire shuttered behind closed eyes. Trav
had
to protect him when he slept—who else would? So far the world had done a
stunningly
poor job of taking care of Mackey Sanders. Kell had Blake. Stevie and Jefferson had apparently always had each other. But Mackey?

Mackey couldn’t even protect himself from himself, although God knew he tried.

For that vulnerable moment between sleeping and waking, Trav hadn’t been able to protect himself from Mackey either.

Attraction, unwanted and uncomfortable, wormed its way into Trav’s consciousness and settled in his gut. It left a host of uncomfortable realizations behind it.

That
was when Trav sat up, used the bathroom, splashed water on his face, and tried to scare up some breakfast in the cafeteria.

He couldn’t. Not the breakfast—he had a piece of fruit and some milk. No, it was the attraction he couldn’t do. He would
not
acknowledge it. Impossible. This kid depended on him. Trav couldn’t let him down.

He came back into the room and Mackey was sitting up eating eggs, the blanket loosely draped over his bare legs. Trav could make out one of those big donut pillows under his hips, and he sighed.

“Yeah,” Mackey muttered. “Hiding this shit is gonna be hard.”

“You know,” Trav said, feeling like a dog with a bone, “there’s a place where people are really fucking anonymous, and where you could heal your body and your soul.”

Mackey glared at him. “Rehab,” he muttered. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. All roads lead to rehab. I’m hearing you.”

“Do you hear me enough to go from here to rehab without passing
go?”

Mackey thought about it and munched on some toast while his eggs and sausage congealed on the plate. Trav looked at the food getting ready to be wasted and sighed.

“Will you think about it more if I go get you a donut?”

Mackey looked up and just emanated sunshine. “Really? They have donuts? You’d get me one? Really?”

Trav swallowed hard. “Yeah, Mackey. I’ll go get you a couple—any preferences?”

His smile widened, pushing his cheeks up until his eyes squinted. Trav could see his overbite, and the crowding on the bottom, and the pure vulpine beauty of his features. “Apple fritters,” Mackey said, nodding. “Not pastries or danishes but fritters—do they have those?”

“I’m pretty sure—and if they don’t, I’ll go down the block, so I might be a few, but I’ll be back.”

That smile, sunshiny and surreal, stayed in place. “That’s awesome, Trav. Thanks!”

Trav nodded. He had to get the hell out of there, because he was suddenly not comfortable in his own skin. He tried to remember Terry, a grown-up, sitting across from him and eating cereal in his pajama bottoms and socks, but he couldn’t. There was too much sunshine in his eyes to see anything but Mackey.

“You’re welcome,” Trav said and practically bolted through the door. He had a sudden thought when his hand hit the frame, though, and he turned around. “Just, uhm, don’t go anywhere, okay?”

Mackey rolled his eyes. “My ass fuckin’ hurts, Trav. Where’m I gonna go?”

Great. There was some cold water right there.

“Yeah. Yeah—I’ll be back.”

He actually
did
have to go to the donut shop down the block, and he came back with a dozen since he knew Mackey’s brothers would be by later. Jefferson—apparently the Trav/Outbreak Monkey liaison—texted telling Trav they’d be by to visit around noon. Trav asked for him to bring some of Mackey’s clothes—new ones, he specified, because he was tired of seeing Mackey ignore the new clothes on his own and go for the stuff that Kell had probably worn in the ninth grade—and then asked if Kell or Blake suspected the rape. He didn’t ask if Stevie or Shelia knew—he was going to assume they did.

No. But Blake is stoned already. Maybe him and Mackey should be roomies in rehab.

Trav grimly thought he’d have a look at Blake’s contract and see if he could force that issue. For one thing, putting Mackey and Blake in the same room for some deep soul-searching might be a way to keep Blake in the music business. Trav was pretty sure that without the family support the Sanders boys had, Blake wouldn’t last long if they kicked him out.

Trav refused to analyze his lack of regret at that thought—why losing Blake as lead guitarist didn’t pluck a single guilt string while having Mackey descend into the pit Trav had just pulled him out of annihilated him.

When he got back, Heath was there, carrying a suit bag for Trav and a knapsack for Mackey.

“God, did you just buy me clothes?” Trav asked. He set the pink donut box down so he could take the bag from Heath. The price tag still dangled from the hanger.

“How many old friends from the service do you think I have?” Heath muttered. “Now do you have a place you can clean up? Debra sent you a kit last night, but the nurse said you were too out of it to put on your jammies and brush your teeth. I can’t believe you went out like that. You look homeless.”

Trav groaned. He didn’t even want to look—he was pretty sure Heath was being nice.

“
Animaniacs
,” Mackey said, clearly delighted as he opened the knapsack and took out a brand new pair of pj’s. “Fuckin’ awesome! I ain’t seen these guys since I was a kid!” He took the pajamas from Heath and swung his legs around to stand up. A look of discomfort crossed his face, and he settled back up on the bed. “I’ll change into these after I eat my apple fritters,” he said, like he was fooling anyone. “Trav can help me into ’em—I’m feeling sort of weak.”

Trav met his eyes then, and the world stuttered. Weak, sore, and vulnerable. Trav nodded. Yeah, he understood. “Yeah, okay, Mackey. Let’s hear what Heath has to say while you eat, okay?”

What Heath had to say reflected pretty well on the LAPD, actually. For one thing, the recording studio had security cameras everywhere. The cops had a great shot of this Charleston guy drugging Mackey’s drink and another of him guiding an obviously out-of-it Mackey into the hallway. There weren’t any pictures from the outside of the building, but that didn’t matter—they had the guy’s DNA, and that was all they had to say before he’d called lawyer and the lawyer called deal.

“What’s the deal?” Trav asked grimly.

Heath looked at them both. “The deal is, you come down and sign as Mackey’s proxy—it’s in the contract you can do that for just such emergencies, so don’t worry, all real. And this guy goes in for three years, aggravated assault, and nobody breathes the rape charge—not him, not his lawyer, not anybody. But we’ve got his DNA on file—if he does it again, we’ve got him dead to rights.”

Mackey exhaled unhappily. He put his half-eaten apple fritter down on the little portable table. Trav wanted to sit there and feed it to him, bite by bite. “God. I hate that thought,” he muttered. “I hate it, like I’m a big fucking coward, taking the back door out.” He laughed grimly at his own pun. “Man, what kind of waste of fucking skin am I, I can’t fight on—”

“Shut up,” Trav said gruffly. “Eat your fucking donut and thank God the justice system runs on wheels greased with money. Mackey, I’ve seen these trials, you understand? I’ve seen women up on the stand facing down their whole fucking platoon—and neither of the lawyers are on their side. The whole world wants them to think the worst of themselves, and by the end of the trial? They do. If you were in prime fighting shape? I’d say go for it. If you’d already come out to the press, were clean and sober? Yeah. You cry rape and get this guy hanged for a scumbag. But right now
they’re going to try the victim, and Mackey, I know you’re innocent,
but—”

“You what?” Mackey said, staring at him.

“I know you’re innocent. Heath knows you’re innocent. We know you were on the wagon and trying but—”

“You know? You believe me? You….” Mackey floundered. His mouth opened and closed for a minute, and then he pulled a piece of his apple fritter off and ate it. “Fucking imagine that. Yeah, fine. Pep talk over. Bored now. Go put on your suit, Mr. Ford—you gotta look all shiny and shit.”

Trav stared at him. “You’re giving me orders?”

“Well, you’ve got barf on your shoes. I didn’t want to say anything, but you might want to wash that off.”

Trav fought the temptation to smack him. “Yeah, McKay, I’ll do that.”

“Yeah, Travis, you just fucking go ahead.” Mackey looked at him sideways and stuck his tongue out to lick some sugar glaze from the corner of his lips. He was being a shit on purpose, Trav knew that, but that tongue—that was innocent provocation right there. Trav was too strung out to be provoked.

“Back in a minute,” he muttered, and Heath followed him out.

“He doing okay?” Heath asked, darting a worried gaze into the hospital room. Mackey crammed the last of the fritter down his gullet and followed it up with a little carton of milk he must have kept from breakfast.

“Mackey?” Trav asked sourly. “Someone could nuke SoCal and Mackey would come back, glowing with radiation, with super spider powers, and get on the stage and sing.”

Heath laughed and shook his head. “Those kids are tough,” he said, his voice full of wonder. “Man, they grew up in a two-bedroom apartment, can you believe that bullshit?”

Trav grimaced. “It makes more and more sense to me every time I talk to him. So I get to go sign and this guy goes away. That fast?”

Heath shrugged. “Mackey’s going to rehab after this?”

“Says so. Why?”

Heath had a wide, almost florid face. In another ten years he was going to
look
like the fat-cat record producer—all he’d need was a trophy wife and a three-olive martini. The almost paternal concern might have seemed smarmy and self-serving, except Trav had known Heath for a while, and he was anything but. He’d once carried a kid across twenty miles of desert, on his back, to get him to medical care, while wounded. Trav had carried the kid’s wounded sister, who had been tinier but had taken a shine to Trav. They’d spent the entire forced march singing rock and roll, telling the kids about the video games the soldiers would let them play when they got to the hospital. Heath, with his family connections, had come through with a couple for the kids to keep.

That was Heath. He liked having money—liked spending it—and didn’t understand people who might not have had it growing up. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to share.

“Because I saw the tape,” Heath said gently. “He was on the verge of a five-star freak-out, and then he spotted you and calmed down a little. And then Charleston Klum gave him a beer, and everyone watched him take that beer and give thanks to a merciful god. If that kid doesn’t go through a program, he’s going to go home in a box.”

Augh! “I knew that,” Trav muttered. He’d known that. He’d
known
that.

“Well, yeah. But now you can fix it.”

“You’re giving me too much credit,” Trav muttered. “Stay with him until I get back.”

And then he went to change.

T
WO
DAYS
after Trav went in to sign paperwork, the limo came to take Mackey from the hospital to rehab. Trav sat with him, like he’d sat with him through most of the time in the hospital, and Mackey was a little disgusted. It wasn’t like he was going to take off, was it?

Okay, well, yeah, he’d thought about it, but seriously—in the hospital, they were giving him pain meds. Why would he leave that?

But sure enough, the pain meds were a thing of the past by the time he got gingerly into the limo (and onto the waiting donut pillow Trav had set down for him) and discovered he wasn’t the only one going to rehab.

“What in the fuck is
he
doing here?” Mackey snarled. Blake flipped him off from the other end of the car. His suitcases were next to him, along with Mackey’s, and suddenly Mackey laughed. “Heh, heh—did your last blow, huh, Blake?”

“I don’t even want to fucking talk about it. Do you know I’ve got a
sobriety
clause in my contract?”

Mackey blinked and stared at Trav, who was waiting for him to get
in.

“I don’t got one of those,” he said, sliding next to him. My, that man looked mighty fine in his suit. Of course, Mackey was starting to think Trav looked mighty fine in anything. He’d looked mighty fine in khakis and a polo shirt the last time Mackey had seen him, and that was usually the least attractive getup in the history of anybody, as far as Mackey was concerned. Mackey moved restively, grateful for the stupid donut pillow, and sighed inwardly. The last thing Trav needed was a fuckup like Mackey hanging on his pockets.

“Nope,” Trav said in response to his question. He looked up from his laptop and gave Mackey a grin that was all teeth. “We assumed
you’d
be a good boy, McKay, and go on your own.”

“Which one of my stinking brothers told you McKay was my name? I want to kick him in the ’nads.”

“How come I didn’t know that?” Blake asked, surprised. “Man, I lived with you people for a fucking year. I bought your coke, I ate your shit—”

“You got on the party bus and you and my brother did
everybody’s
drugs,” Mackey snapped, unsettled again. “Man, why you gotta get mad at me? You and Kell hung out for a year. You had a grand ol’ time. Now we both gotta clean up our shit or that goes away. It’s a job like anything else, Blake. You don’t pull your weight, you get fired.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t see anyone threatening to fire you. Poor little Mackey Sanders—”

“He writes the songs, moron,” Trav said from behind his computer screen. He looked up. “And I think maybe whatever you two have against each other needs to get worked out in rehab. That’s why you’re going together.”

Mackey pouted and crossed his arms. “Did you bring my sunglasses?” he whined, obnoxious and not particularly caring. “My head feels like a giant split it like a melon with a mace!”