Beneath the Stain - Part 4 (10 page)

“What’s that make Mackey?” Blake asked suspiciously.

“Uhm….”

“Yeah, I think Mackey’s the mom. The bitchy mom, but she’s only bitching at you to do your homework and dress right ’cause she wants what’s best for you.” Since Blake’s mom had only bitched at him about being too loud and eating all the food, that actually made Mackey a better mom high than his mom had ever been sober. And she hadn’t been sober often.

“So if Mackey’s the mom, what’s that make Kell?”

“Uhm….”

Blake hadn’t been able to answer that in rehab. He still didn’t have an answer for it now.

His phone buzzed again.  God
dammit.

Kell opened his eyes again and frowned. “Whoizit?” he demanded.

Blake shrugged, embarrassed. He hadn’t told Trav about this, because, well, you know. Mackey has a meltdown and calls his mom, and she drops everything and comes running. Blake sends
his
mom a letter, and she realizes he’s made money and she wants some.

God. Even Mackey’s trash was better than Blake’s.

But Kell knew, because Kell didn’t let him get away with a shrug like that often. “Gimme the phone,” he snarled.

“Kell, it’s not like—”

Kell shook his head. “No. No. Nobody does this to one of us. She thinks you’re all alone, right? She’s all you got? You got us. Gimme the fuckin’ phone.”

Blake handed it over obediently. Yeah, Kell was a follower when it came to vice, but when he got an idea about family—like the “everybody come home to watch television with Mackey” thing he started the week after rehab—the brothers had to damn well tuck in and do it. And apparently that included Blake. The weird thing was that just like being forced into rehab, the whole idea of being made to do something for his own good, or even the good of the family, wasn’t as awful as Blake had first thought. It even came with some perks.

“Yeah, this Blake’s mom? This’s Kell Sanders. You know what? Blake signed a contract, and he’s got an accountant, and the accountant is under strict orders not to give you any fuckin’ money. You go to the tabloids all you fuckin’ want—we got plenty of dirt on you too. How do I know? ’Cause your son’s my best friend. If you can’t be a real mother, you just stay off the fuckin’ phone or I’m having our manager take out a restraining order. You think he can’t? Our manager? Ma’am, I’m pretty sure that man could turn the moon to fuckin’ blood. I’m hanging up now. You call this number again, you’ll be talkin’ to him.”

He hit End Call and then turned off the phone, looking up at Blake as he did so. “You got a girl calling?” he asked to make sure.

“Not since rehab.”

“Yeah, well, that’s any of us. Thank God for Shelia or we’d be the house of celebation or some shit like that.”

Blake laughed, not sure if Kell knew it wasn’t a word or not. It
didn’t matter. Kell wasn’t quick, not like Mackey, but he had a heart of
gold.

“I’m going to bed, my brother,” Kell mumbled, because obviously they
had
managed to make the fish tank out of the Pacer, and watching them weld more of the seams in the car was just not all that exciting. “You can camp on the floor again if you need to.”

Blake had taken to doing that. Something about sleeping in his own room made him forget he had people in the house all around him. It was weird—he used to be able to sleep in his mom’s old trailer by himself just fine. In fact, not having his mom and her current boyfriend in the place had been a bonus.

But he wanted to see how the
Tanked
brothers sealed the damned car, so he mumbled ’night to Kell, and then to Stevie, Jefferson, and Shelia when
they
decided to go to bed.

He woke up around one in the morning, the television playing some sort of nature program quietly in the background, and…

And someone was having sex in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

Blake blinked hard to clear his vision. Jefferson, Stevie, and Shelia were in the bedroom on the other side of the house; they could have been swinging from a trapeze and nobody would have heard them. Kell was right up the stairs; his voice wouldn’t have echoed down the hall this way.

Besides, Kell was straight, and Blake heard two male voices, quiet, intense, but male. Both of them were male.

Mackey and Trav.

It had finally happened.

He grunted, picturing them against his will. Trav would top, but Mackey would top from the bottom. Trav had that powerhouse thing going on, the chest that could be measured in acreage, the biceps that could crack walnuts and double as cannonballs. Mackey was so tiny, but tough, like shoe leather or a bantam rooster.

And both of them, beautiful.

It was late, and Blake had awakened at the boner time of the night. He snuck his hand under the waistband of his jeans and found his sleepy cock.

Which perked up and grew hard under his touch. Ah, God, he missed girls. Or the occasional boy. Or anyone touching him, for that matter.

But he had the voices in his head now, and his fantasy wasn’t so much fantasy as voyeurism, as he imagined Mackey and Trav, naked, together, being sweet with each other.

It didn’t take long for him to hit a sleepy climax—nothing too dire, just enough to need to change his shorts before he grabbed his blanket and pillow and moved to Kell’s room.

As he folded himself in the blanket (because nobody liked sleeping on the carpet), he heard Kell snoring like a bandsaw.

And then and only then could he admit that when he’d been fondling himself to orgasm, it hadn’t been Mackey and Trav in his thoughts anymore.

He’d been dreaming of a Prince Charming. He’d been dreaming of Kell.

He never told Kell Sanders about his little crush—certainly not after Kell found the love of his life and his own ordinary heaven in her eyes.

But he remembered that moment, because it meant something important. Not just that he was more bi than he maybe let on, because really, that wasn’t news to him and wasn’t even really news to Mackey. And if Kell had been listening, it wouldn’t even be news to Kell. (Kell missed a lot of innuendo—if he’d been quicker on the pickup, Blake might have told him more.)

No, it was more than that. It was that Blake wanted somebody who would save him.
That
was what he was really in love with—
that
was his honest fantasy.

It was sad, pathetic if he dwelled on it. But in a way, it also cemented his relationship with the Sanders boys and the band. The band had saved him. He was going to take a page from Kell’s book and be loyal, dogged, and determined.

It was the best lesson he ever learned.

Part Five

Mackey is great at taking a leap of faith into a crowd—but taking one into a relationship and a future is a totally different animal. When he and Trav decide to take a risk that Mackey’s healing can hold up to them together, they know it’s going to be a long, difficult road. Mackey proves he can handle the stress of performing on his own, but when it comes to the demons that broke him in the first place, that’s a whole other song.

The first time Mackey tries to go home, it sends him into a palm-sweating, stomach-heaving anxiety attack, and Trav has to concede that Mackey is still on loan from the things that almost wrecked him when he was still a kid. When news arrives that affects the entire band, Mackey can either go home and face his demons, or let them haunt them forever.

A
MY
L
ANE
is a mother of four and a compulsive knitter who writes because she can't silence the voices in her head. She adores cats, Chi-who-whats, knitting socks, and hawt menz, and she dislikes moths, cat boxes, and knuckle-headed macspazzmatrons. She is rarely found cooking, cleaning, or doing domestic chores, but she has been known to knit up an emergency hat/blanket/pair of socks for any occasion whatsoever, or sometimes for no reason at all. She writes in the shower, while at the gym, while taxiing children to soccer/dance/gymnastics/band oh my! and has learned from necessity to type like the wind. She lives in a spider-infested, crumbling house in a shoddy suburb and counts on her beloved Mate to keep her tethered to reality—which he does, while keeping her cell phone charged as a bonus. She's been married for twenty-plus years and still believes in Twu Wuv, with a capital Twu and a capital Wuv, and she doesn't see any reason at all for that to change.

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