Free Beneath the Stain - Part 7 by Amy Lane Page A

dug out your notebook and everything.”
    Mackey smiled a little and pulled away. “It’ll make a good single before we go on hiatus.”
    Trav grunted. “It’s fucking brilliant, McKay. It’s going to make you all a lot of money—but that’s not going to make up for what it’s going to cost to sing it.”
    Mackey sighed and shrugged. “Isn’t that art?”
    Trav grimaced. “Thanks. I’ll never envy you again. Now come on out. I dug out some old sweats and stuff. Get dressed.”
    For over a year, they’d shared a room. Once they had to get dressed in a minute and a half because the hotel had forgotten the wake-up call and their plane left in an hour. Even then Trav had touched his bare bottom in passing.
    “Trav?” he asked, grabbing his clothes with one hand and toweling his hair with the other.
    “Yeah?”
    “If you’re not mad at me, could you, you know, do me a favor and rub my ass? Or my back? Or my shoulders? Or—” His voice shook. He remembered Grant’s plea.
    “What’s wrong?” Trav at his back, sliding his hand across his stomach, was enough to make him shake.
    “Grant hadn’t been touched in two weeks. Nobody hugged him. I don’t think he got any before that either. Two weeks, Trav. I shake just—oolf!”
    Trav engulfed him, warmth from top to bottom, those big anaconda arms around his shoulders, the hard line of Trav’s body along his back, even Trav’s chin resting on top of his head.
    “Thank you,” Mackey sighed, leaning his head on that cannon-size bicep.
    Trav’s breath whispered in his ear. “Welcome. You can have more after you practice. You need it.”
    “Yeah. Move, Goliath—time for me to write.”
     
     
    S TEVIE DIDN ’ T have the drum set there, but Briony had brought two drum pads and a keyboard, and then, in a stroke of genius, she scrounged up a couple of pots and boxes, as well as some wooden spoons. Stevie cackled when he saw it, and by the time the guys had tuned their acoustic guitars, he was playing with all the toys, as gleeful as a kid playing rock band.
    For all their experience, for all their fame, Mackey had a moment to realize they were kids playing rock band.
    And that thought made him really fucking proud.
    They riffed for a minute, the garage door open so they’d have more room. Mackey kept his guitar slung around his neck, because some of the songs they’d picked had guitar solos, and he missed doing that work. When he wasn’t doing the worm on stage, he loved getting a chance to play.
    “Stevie, you ready?” Mackey asked, grinning.
    In response, Stevie started pounding out the drum riff from “When They Come For Me” on the top of three plastic cat litter boxes. “Try to catch up, motherfucker!” he crowed, and everybody howled.
    By the time they reached “Stairway to Heaven,” the band was hoarse and swimming in sweat. Mackey would need another shower before he slept, but he didn’t care. His body ached because he’d thrown himself around on his mother’s driveway just like he would have on stage, and he had the scrapes on his elbows and knees to prove it. He didn’t care. None of them cared. Kell, Blake, and Jefferson had done knee drops, and Stevie had sliced his hand open banging on the side of the garage for “Come Out and Play,” but none of them were stopping.
    Mackey played every song to their small audience—Trav, Shelia, Briony, his mom, Walter, Debra, and a collection of neighbors who had wandered in when the cacophony reached them.
    But now it was the second-to-last one, and it was time to settle down.
    “You know what pisses me off about this song?” Mackey mused, not really riffing to the crowd but talking to his guys.
    “What?” Kell asked, tuning up. His practice guitar was his old Walmart model, and it fell out of tune with almost every song. It was worse because there was frost on the air tonight, and the sky had turned black as they played.
    “It’s not just women who do this shit. Man, it’s fuckin’