Beneath the Stain - Part 2 Read Free Page A

fucking needed it, do you hear me?”
    Trav stared at him, rubbing his cheek. “I came home early,” he said, feeling helpless. He wanted to howl and be angry and hit him back—but eight years in the military, six of those years in the MPs. Six years of being stoic and thinking fast and not ever once letting his temper get the better of him, because he had a big fucking gun and a lot of fucking power and people depending on him to think. Six years after that, business school, cutthroat competition, becoming a consultant in personnel relations and how to keep your company from being ripped off—Trav knew nothing if he didn’t know discipline. He couldn’t hit Terry back. He couldn’t.
    “I came home early,” he said again, closing his eyes. “You sounded sad.”
    “You couldn’t call me up and tell me that?”
    Trav breathed hard through his nose. “I came home early.”
    Terry touched him on the shoulder, gently. “And I let you down.”
    Trav had dropped his suitcases—expensive gray leather luggage with the smooth rollers—at the front door. He turned around mechanically and retrieved them.
    “Take my name off the lease,” he said, keeping his voice even. “Box my stuff up and put it in the storage unit downstairs. I’ll get it when I have a place to stay.”
    “Trav?” He sounded so surprised. “That’s it? You’re just going?”
    Trav didn’t even look over his shoulder. “Why should I stay?”
    “Because we love each other?” Terry’s voice cracked, and in the background, the shower went off.
    Trav turned back around and grimaced. “Maybe, but I’m not ever gonna let this go. Better I leave now, and then we can both move on with our lives.”
    Terry started screaming at him, his voice half-hysterical, his words—well, it was probably best Trav just forget what he was trying to say.
    It wouldn’t change anything, would it?
    “Trav? Trav, are you paying attention?”
    Heath Fowler was one of Trav’s oldest friends. They’d survived boot camp together, and MP school two years later, and six years in the MPs together in the Middle East. Heath had opted out of the military first, because he had a friend in the music industry and he wanted to take advantage of that, but the minute Trav had cleared college, Heath had offered him a job.
    Trav had taken it, actually—his first two years out of business school, he’d managed Pineapple Express and had loved it.
    “I’m always paying attention,” he said, and he meant it. “Poor Gerry Padgett dropped dead while Outbreak Monkey was getting ready to record their new album, and now you need a Management Monkey, and hello, you know I’m between gigs!”
    Heath shook his head and scowled, and Trav sat up a little straighter. “Be nice,” he snapped. “Gerry was a friend—”
    “Gerry was a pill-popping disaster—”
    “Yeah, but he was a nice guy. I sent him to Outbreak Monkey on purpose, do you get that? Man, one look at those kids on stage—three of them are brothers, right? No dad—not even the same sperm donor, and they’ve got the ripped jeans and the hungry eyes and the fucking attitude, and I’m thinking, ‘Heath, if these guys make it, this business is going to ruin their lives.’ So I send them Gerry, thinking that he’s going to be good ol’ Uncle Gerry, and he’ll sort of take care of them, right?”
    “Wait—you say kids. How old are they?”
    Heath grimaced. “Let’s see—I’ve had them for fourteen months, and Mackey—that’s the youngest—he turned nineteen just before he signed, so, he’s twenty, Jefferson and Stevie are twenty-one, and Blake and Kell are twenty-three.”
    Trav rolled his eyes. “That’s hardly children in a salt mine,” he muttered.
    Heath scowled again. “You liking the corporate apartment, Trav? The one I gave you with an hour’s notice because Terry fucking left you like he should have done years ago? So you’re an adult—you’re thirty-fucking-five years old, and you need a