Beneath the Stain - Part 3 by Amy Lane

twenty-five in September.”
    “So not much older. Why’d it get broken off?”
    Mackey closed his eyes and simply dropped to the floor, hugging his knees to his chest and shaking. “Do we have to?” he asked, talking into his knees. “Is this—I mean, it’s stupid. I—”
    “C’mon, Mackey. See this through!”
    “He knocked up his girlfriend and couldn’t follow the fucking band. Happy now? He knocked up his girlfriend, we had to get another second guitar, Blake took the job, and there you are. We’re all fucking caught up. Good? Do you need to know anything else after that? Who, how many, cock size?”
    “No,” Cambridge said, crouching down by Mackey. “Because really, they’re all the same guy, aren’t they?”
    Cocks shoving into his asshole with pain, the rubber not always lubricated, the strange mouths on his cock, the smug looks on their faces, all of them thrilled to take a piece of Mackey Sanders, the guy they’d just watched thousands of people eye-fuck on stage….
    Grant. Grant, whose hands had trembled on his shoulders, who had buried his face against Mackey’s back and wept….
    “Yeah,” Mackey admitted, because his voice would stop it—stop the weight of the memories pressing him to the floor, detonating in his stomach, making him shake and heave and yearn.
    “What was his name?”
    “Grant.” His voice was a whisper, a gravel slice of pain. “My brother’s friend Grant Adams.”
    He’s beautiful. So beautiful. And hurt. And he needed me, I know it, and he let me go.
    “Have you spoken to him since you came to LA?”
    Mackey reached into his back pocket and fumbled for his phone. He looked up Grant’s text messages and then shoved the phone at Cambridge, hoping that would be enough. For just a minute, he didn’t have to answer any questions, ’cause all the answers were in the phone.
    The doctor raised his eyebrow and then sighed. Creakily, he settled his middle-aged bottom in front of Mackey, crossing his legs.
    “Succinct,” he muttered, looking at the text. “Is that a thing with you guys?”
    Mackey glared at him. “It’s not Los Angeles, Doc. Do you know what people in my neck of the woods think about shrinks? Wanna take a guess?”
    “No need,” Cambridge said dryly. “I’m grateful you graced us with your presence—”
    “What the fuck ever,” Mackey snarled, in pain and needing. “I could have been fucking Grant on the sly for my whole life if we’d stayed at home. But no—he’s got to get us a fucking contract and run away like a pussy, because his girl’s knocked up and he can’t fucking tell them all to go to hell. Graced you with my presence—my whoring fucking ass.” God. He was crying. He hated crying. It left him raw and stripped, like a kitten without skin, and he knew, just knew, he’d never be warm again.
    The sob that escaped him was as whipped as that kitten’s, and he couldn’t find a way to stop it.
    “You know what?” he whimpered, trying to keep it together, keep it together, keep it together.
    “What?” Cambridge put a warm, soothing hand on Mackey’s shoulder, and for once, Mackey couldn’t find the wherewithal to shake it off.
    “I would literally spread my ass for a gangfuck right now if I could get some fucking Valium.”
    That hand didn’t move. “You are so not allowed to go to the bathroom,” Cambridge muttered.
    That did it. Mackey started to laugh semihysterically into the hollow of his body. His stomach muscles ached, they’d been taut for so long, and his shoulders screamed with tension. The laugh rocked him, careened through his bones, veered out of control, and began to slam him back and forth. He rocked in the fetal position on the floor of the shrink’s office as his sobs ripped him apart.
    He couldn’t stop. He tried. He deepened his breaths and got a stitch in his side. He counted to ten, and counted to ten, and got lost at eight.
    He tried to recite all the lyrics to Led Zeppelin IV , and actually