Read Online Beneath the Stain - Part 2 by Amy Lane - Free Book Online

sense.
    Mackey wanted to find Trav, tell him how much sense it made, because he’d been a little hard on the guy for thinking he had all the fucking answers. But now Mackey was surrounded by teenaged girls—the daughters of someone big in the business and kids he’d actually met before—so he needed to be as personable as he could. In the back of his mind, he heard Gerry telling him that making nice was what let him make the music he wanted. Gerry had been good about breaking it down like that. “You do this, kid, and then you can do that.” Of course, some of that “doing” had been the pills, but they’d been Gerry’s problem too, so Mackey couldn’t hold that against him. He’d learned at his mother’s knee, whenever she’d had to go to work and leave them with Kell because a babysitter would have bankrupted her, that you did the best you could, and the mistakes you made were part of the best you could do.
    “So, Mackey, you’re so skinny! How do you do it? I can’t lose weight to save my life!”
    Mackey looked at the nineteen-year-old girl with bleached-blonde hair and a little minidress sheath that probably cost the rent for both the shitty apartments his family had lived in that last year.
    It was a mindfuck. It wasn’t any easier to do now than it had been a year ago.
    “It’s the drugs,” he said, smirking so it looked like a joke. “It’s like the song says—we all stay skinny ’cause we just don’t eat.”
    The girl cracked up, her laugh brittle like ice, and he wondered how many times she’d been to rehab, because it sounded like she knew it wasn’t funny.
    Her little sister sniffed. “Well, I like a man with some meat on his bones,” she said.
    He grimaced at her. Sixteen, and she’d probably had as many men as he had. “Don’t you mean with a boner of meat?” Mackey cracked, and both girls giggled. He winked at them and took that as his exit line, looking for Trav again. Trav was talking to Heath, his drill sergeant’s face compressed into those lines that meant he was being earnest.
    Which was always.
    Mackey paused to watch him, liking the way his shoulders stayed square and he didn’t break eye contact. He had nice eyes—brown, with brown-red lashes, and Mackey had been surprised at the gentle, sneaking attraction that hit him at the oddest times these past weeks. There was something solid about Trav. Something unyielding . Even when he was making Mackey crazy with rules like “Everyone has to eat breakfast, dammit, even if it’s only a protein shake!” and “Yes, there’s a curfew until you prove to me you’re not fourteen, and yes , I can and will impose penalties because thank God it was in your contract!” He was watching out for them. What Gerry had done with rewards and cajoling and gentleness, Trav did with lines in the sand and an army to make sure they didn’t cross them. Gerry had been a nice guy, but Trav—Trav would fight them to make them take care of themselves. Mackey wasn’t so young he couldn’t appreciate the difference.
    His musing on that tight military form was broken by an unfamiliar arm slinging around his shoulder and steering him to the corner of the room leading to the hallway.
    “Mackey Sanders—it’s a wonder we’ve never met.”
    Mackey turned to glare at the owner of that arm. “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded, not worrying too much about the niceties. Be nice to the girls, yeah, but boys were fair game. Especially guys who’d used the stubble setting on their razor that morning, wore super-expensive satin vests, and had irises dilated wide enough to fuck with an elephant’s penis.
    “I’m a fan,” the guy said, and he whispered into Mackey’s ear. “I’m the fan who can hook you up,” and there was suggestion in the way he almost touched Mackey’s ear with his nose.
    Mackey stepped away from him uncertainly, jostling someone behind him but unable to find his footing in the suddenly oppressive crowd. God. He