Paint It Black

by Amy Lane

  THE EXTRA plane ticket was not a problem, since they were flying out so early in the morning on what was essentially a commuter flight, but Blake did get some satisfaction listening to Trav bitching and moaning about finding an SUV that could accommodate six adults, a kid’s seat, and luggage.

  As they stood in line at the car rental, listening to Trav teach the person behind the counter manners and efficiency old-school style, Blake smacked Cheever in the arm.

  “See what you did?”

  Cheever didn’t even look repentant. “It’s a car rental place, Blake. He’s not even swearing. I’m sure they’ve heard worse.”

  Mackey snorted, shifting from one foot to the other restlessly, probably because the plane had been hell on his back. “Yeah, this is tame from Trav. Don’t worry. He always calls the place afterwards and apologizes, then gives them a big tip. And he’s always real careful not to make anybody cry. Think of him like a real cranky teacher, that’s all.”

  Blake snorted. “Don’t let Cheever off the hook. I told him we’d be back in the morning, but he seemed to feel we should all share the suck.”

  Mackey watched as Kell took Katy for one more run around the lobby to try to burn off some of her energy after being cooped up in the plane all morning and then getting in the car for a good four-hour drive.

  “Stupid,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Runs in the fuckin’ family. You sure you want to hook up with that?”

  Blake lifted a shoulder, enjoying Cheever’s scowl. “It’s not like he’s gonna knock me up with inbred assbabies, Mackey. Stupid’s not catching unless you want it to be.”

  Mackey snickered, and Cheever leveled a killing look at Blake.

  Blake returned it blandly, and Cheever shook his head and ran off to join Kell.

  “Seriously,” Mackey said, once he was out of earshot. “This always sucks so bad.”

  The year before, Kell had needed to pry Katy out of Mackey’s arms before giving her to her glowering grandfather. Trav had practically scraped Mackey off the ground to get him in the car, and Kell had sobbed on Blake’s chest like a little kid.

  “Sam will be there,” Blake soothed, and then he let out a sigh. “I know it’s gonna be bad, Mackey. I think it’s why he wanted to come. So he can… I don’t know. Be part of the family misery ritual and understand it.”

  “I don’t want him anywhere near that fuckin’ town.” Mackey followed Cheever with his eyes as he chased Katy between the seats, graceful and grinning and all that was beautiful about youth.

  “You think I do?” Augh! Blake’s stomach churned with self-blame, but Mackey just arched an eyebrow at him.

  “You noticing the family resemblance yet?”

  “Stubborn as fuck? Yeah.” Blake sighed. “He’s also a manipulative little shit who gets his way all the fuckin’ time.”

  Mackey’s deep chuckle was almost reassuring. “Yup. Well, we all had survival skills. Cheever’s was figuring out how not to be ignored and to get his way. You complaining?”

  Unbidden, the night before passed in front of Blake’s eyes, Cheever, legs spread, as Blake stroked his cock and licked his head.

  “I need you to trade places,” Cheever had panted. “I have plans.”

  Blake had opened his mouth to dissent—to just this once have his way in bed, to suck Cheever stupid so maybe he’d listen to sense.

  But Cheever had lifted his knees and pushed up, grabbing Blake’s hair and pulling him gently, slowly, off his cock.

  Blake whimpered, suddenly shaking with need, and Cheever nodded. “See? Now let me!”

  And it wasn’t even a question of letting him, not anymore. It was a question of needing him.

  “Not until he’s tired of me,” Blake said in the present, the memory of being fucked senseless still tingling on his skin. “You want to hear bitching? You’ll hear bitching then.”

  Mackey grimaced. “I was twenty-one when Trav walked into our lives and saved us all, and I ain’t ever letting go. Give the boy some credit. We know what we want.”

  Blake had no answer to that, which was just as well, because Trav had finished taking the poor attendant apart and putting him back together again. It was time to go get their giant Suburban out of the parking lot.

  THE TRIP up was fun—they sang songs with Katy, told her jokes, and when she got tired and needed to calm down, they let her play happily on her tablet. They stopped at a Black Bear Diner outside of Redding and ate, and bought her a teddy bear to add to her giant collection of stuffed animals that had all been packed in one of her suitcases. By the time they got to Tyson, with its depressing collection of old storefronts and apartments, followed by the Walmart and a winding road through the wealthy part of town, Katy was sleepy and ready to see her mother.

  The Adams’s family home always struck Blake like a fifty-fifty bar. The front part of the house was like a gracious Georgian mansion, with pillars and a great sweep of lawn on either side of the drive and giant shade trees peppering the landscaping, making it look old-school Southern and rich.

  Blake knew for a fact that the back of the place was plain old red dirt, crab grass, and horse pens, and he knew that because he’d been there. Unlike when they were there to see Grant, Mr. Adams did not wave their SUV to the back lot to park. Trav steered the thing to the front and let Mackey and Kell help Katy out while Blake and Cheever got her luggage and Heather gave her some last-minute grandma hugs.

  Once Mr. and Mrs. Adams came out, they wouldn’t be staying long.

  Samantha Adams turned out to be a blessing.

  Originally, Blake had hated the woman. The whole reason Grant had stayed back in Tyson was because Sam was supposedly pregnant, but once Katy was born, anybody could see she’d lied. Katy had been born ten months after Outbreak Monkey blew town—plenty of margin for Grant to have escaped with them, if Sam hadn’t trapped him to begin with.

  It had been a shitty thing to do. Trav had called her on it, Mackey had called her on it—and something about that had been freeing.

  She’d made mistakes. She’d done shitty things. Well, at that point, hadn’t they all?

  She took her opportunity—and the money Grant had left her in his will and that Outbreak Monkey was willing to gift her with for more time with Katy—and ran with it, getting her college degree and her law degree and opening a practice in Redding.

  She had bettered herself.

  The woman who came out to the front porch and greeted her daughter was poised and warm—not bitter and angry.

  This was someone who had seen the damage she could wreak with her viciousness and decided not to do that to her child.

  Blake could respect that—hell, all the boys could respect that. And Grant was gone, God rest him. All they had left was Katy, and they had to work as a team.

  This time was different. This time Katy ran to her mama and hugged her and talked a mile a minute about all the things—the tour, her summer, her time with her cousins. She gave all her uncles hugs then, including Blake, who booped her nose, finishing with Cheever.

  “This is my new Uncle Cheever,” she said proudly. “He plays with us now. It’s fun. We used to be scared of him ’cause he was so cool, like a movie star, but he’s really just regular folk.” Blake wondered where she’d picked that term up—maybe from the boys themselves.

  Samantha’s mouth quirked at the corners, making her look young at thirty-two when she’d been old at twenty-three. She squeezed her daughter’s shoulder and greeted Cheever warmly. “Nice to see you again, Cheever. You probably don’t remember me—”

  “I do,” Cheever said, bobbing his head respectfully. “You grew up pretty.”

  “So did you,” she said dryly. “So nice of you to come up. I understand you and your girlfriend have been doing a lot of childcare—”

  “Friend,” Cheever corrected charmingly. “My boyfriend might have some words if Marcia and I started to date.”

  Samantha raised her eyebrows. “Oh! Well, good to know.” She shook Katy
playfully, and Katy grinned. “You could have warned me, Katydid.”

  Katy giggled. “But you know his boyfriend! It’s Uncle Blake!”

  “Oh!” Color rose to Samantha’s face. “Okay! Well, now I know, and that’s okay.”

  Blake felt his own cheeks burn. “Glad to have your blessing,” he mumbled.

  “Well, not that any of you need it. I’m just saying—it’s the first time I’ve seen you with anyone, Blake. It’s good to know you’re doing okay.”

  “Thanks, ma’am.” He winked at Katy. “A lot better since you agreed to be here,” he admitted, and all the guys nodded.

  Samantha sighed. “Well, we’ll try to make sure this is how we start summer vacation all the time,” she said. “But Trav, if you don’t mind, I loved your suggestion about coming down for the holidays. Is there any way we can make that solid?”

  “Absolutely!”

  From the bowels of the house, they heard the sour tones of Grant’s father.

  “Samantha, don’t keep that child out in the heat all day. She’ll need a bath as it is!”

  “You could always help with her luggage!” Samantha hollered into the house, then, more quietly to Trav, “I’ll call you.” Katy waved to all of them from behind her mother’s back as Sam beat a hasty retreat.

  The relief sliding off everybody’s shoulders was a palpable thing.

  “Oh God, that was better,” Heather said as they boarded the SUV. “So, so much better.”

  “Blake’s idea,” Trav noted.

  “Was not. That was all you.” Blake didn’t know why people insisted on doing that.

  “Was too,” Trav argued lazily. “Anybody want anything? I gotta stop for gas.”

  There was general discussion after that, with the consensus being everybody needed to use the bathroom and people wanted ice cream and sodas and a big bag of chips for the trip back to the hotel. Yeah, this had been relatively painless, but that didn’t mean they weren’t going to miss the girl.

  Trav filled the SUV up, and they all raided the gas station minimart, which was pretty well stocked, given that there weren’t a lot of towns out here. Cheever was the last to the bathroom, and he gave Blake his own pile of junk food and soda to purchase from the boy at the counter.

  The boy was pretty, in a faded, straw-colored way, taller than Blake, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist and muscle tone that could easily melt to meat. Blake knew the look of a small-town hero who was about to age badly because that’s how all the heroes in his high school had looked at twenty-two.

  Blake grabbed his little bag of crap and his two sodas and made it back to the SUV, setting up his and Cheever’s middle row, since Kell and Heather had the back this time. He was sipping his soda, wondering what was keeping Cheever, when he saw him exit, with the blond high-school-hero kid on his heels.

  Cheever’s posture was ramrod straight, and his face had shut down, assuming that cool, remote expression Blake remembered from eight years of hating him for being so much better than them all.

  He barely looked at the faded hero, and Blake frowned. “Cheever must really hate that kid.”

  Heather grunted. “Yeah, well, Aubrey Cooper was always a sneaky little asshole. Best thing I ever did was break up with that kid’s father after Mackey came out.”

  “You dated his father?” Kell asked, surprised, and Blake’s brain started to get fuzzy.

  “What did you say his name was?”

  “Aubrey Coop—Blake!”

  Blake didn’t remember much of the next ten minutes, but he’d never forget the killing haze that filled his vision.

  Street Fighting Man

  CHEEVER SHOULD have known he’d run into Aubrey Cooper sooner or later. He’d been so preoccupied with Blake—and how relieved everybody seemed to be that Katy had gone willingly, and her mother was there to take care of her, and they didn’t seem to be abandoning her in hell—that he hadn’t even seen the guy on his way into the bathroom.

  On the way out, Aubrey had called his name.

  “Cheever?”

  Oh Jesus. “Hey, Aubrey.” Cheever wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t going to throw a big old tantrum right here, and he certainly wasn’t planning a confrontation.

  “How you been doin’, man? I missed you once you moved out of town.” Aubrey smiled like they’d been the best of buddies, and Cheever’s brain pulled a big self-protective cloak around itself.

  “Not doing this,” he said politely. “Excuse me, my family’s waiting in the SUV.”

  “Not doing what?” Aubrey skirted around the counter, maneuvering his six-foot-plus football-player’s frame with ease, and followed him out, the late afternoon sun hitting them both like a calculated blow. “Man, I’m just trying to say hi! We were real tight back in middle school—”

  “Tight?” Cheever swung in a circle. “Tight? Aubrey, you raped me. Repeatedly. We weren’t friends. We weren’t boyfriends. You raped me and extorted me to stay silent.”

  Aubrey looked hurt. “Aw, you knew that was just boys playing rough, right? I mean, you’da said something if you didn’t want it.”

  “No,” Cheever told him. “Because I was desperate not to be picked on anymore. Man, what makes you think what you did was okay?”

  “You wanted it, right?”

  And oh my God. Aubrey’s face was just… puzzled. Like he hadn’t ever realized.

  “No,” Cheever said again. “Never. Being touched by you made me vomit.”

  And there it was. Shock. Hurt. Surprise.

  It was everything Cheever had ever wanted to see in his tormenter, and now it just made him feel…

  Sad.

  “You know what?” he said. “Forget it. I’ve got a boyfriend in that car, and he loves me, and he knows what consent means, and he’ll never hurt me. You’re stuck here. Where you gonna find someone like that here?”

  Aubrey Cooper looked like he was going to cry, and that gave Cheever some serious satisfaction.

  Until a madman barreled out of the SUV and started beating the shit out of Aubrey, that is.

  “Oh my God, Blake! Trav, get out here! Blake, stop it!”

  Blake was straddling a stunned Aubrey, his fists battering at the boy’s face—and he was shouting, and he was crying, and Cheever couldn’t make him stop.

  “Blake, dammit! Get off him—oh.”

  Trav got behind Blake and lifted him bodily off Aubrey, who was lying in a little ball, sobbing.

  “Holy God, Manning, what in the hell—”

  “Trav, you gotta let me kill him! Man, you gotta let me kill him. He hurt him! He hurt him! I gotta fuckin’ kill him!”

  Trav looked at Aubrey, pathetic and bleeding, and then looked at Blake.

  And then he looked at Cheever, and Cheever could see when he made the connection.

  “Dammit, keep hold of him!” Cheever snarled, but Blake had lunged out of Trav’s grasp toward Aubrey again, only to be caught around the waist by Kell.

  “Ten years ago, I would have killed him myself!” Trav snapped. “You weren’t going to tell us this was him?”

  “Dammit, Blake, back off!” Kell hollered, shoving him a few feet away and planting his feet in front of Aubrey. “We can’t just go around beating people up! Man, there are cameras and wall-to-wall fucking people who just watched Outbreak Monkey walk into a minimart! You will go to fuckin’ jail!”

  “I’ll go to fuckin’ prison!” Blake snarled, trying to dodge around Cheever’s mom, who had placed herself in front of him. He was having a hell of a time, unable to put his hands on her or even shoulder her out of the way, because he was basically decent and he loved Cheever’s mom.

  “No, you won’t!” everybody screamed, including Trav, who had calmed down enough to join Kell, standing in front of Aubrey.

  Mackey appeared at Blake’s side, tugging at his arm. “C’mon, man. This guy, he ain’t worth it. He hurt my brother. Don’t let him hurt you.”

  Blake tore his arm out of Mackey’s grasp, and Mackey winced,
because the movement twisted his back. Kell and Cheever met eyes. “Blake, you’re hurting Mackey!” Cheever said at the same time Kell said, “You fucking asshole, you’re fucking hurting my fuckheaded little shit brother. Now stop it!”

  The fight went out of Blake so quickly, he almost toppled onto Heather, who was screaming, “You are not going to prison, goddammit, because you will break my son’s heart! Now stay!”

  Now that he didn’t have to defend Aubrey fucking Cooper, Cheever moved to where Blake stood, distraught and shaking, and put a hand on his bicep. Blake tensed, and Cheever pulled it away, then met Blake’s red-rimmed eyes and tried again. This time Blake relaxed, just enough for Cheever to touch him.

  “You sane now?”

  Blake shook his head. “He hurt you,” he mewled, and Cheever opened his arms and pulled him in.

  “And you put me back together,” he whispered.

  “He hurt you.”

  “Never again.”

  “I can’t fix it, baby.”

  “You already did,” Cheever soothed, and the tremors that had rocked Blake were now rocking them both.

  This was what love looked like when it hurt. Shit. Now he knew. He held Blake tighter, relieved when Blake’s hands came up and clutched the back of his shirt, clinging for dear life.

  “C’mon, Blake,” Cheever whispered. “Let’s get the fuck out of this town before someone posts a video, okay?”

  Blake nodded into his shoulder. “He hurt you.”

  “But not for a long time.”

  Cheever was still coaxing him to the car as Aubrey stood up and started to scream, “I’m gonna tell my father, Cheever Sanders! He’s gonna have your psycho boyfriend locked up! You better watch your rearview mirror, you little pissant—”

  Cheever’s mother walked up to him and punched him hard enough in the stomach to bend him over and make him gag.

  “Augh!”

  “You listen to me, Aubrey Cooper,” she snapped. “You tell your father, you tell the sheriff, you tell any person in this town what just happened, and we’ll open up an ad in the local paper telling the world that you assaulted my son. Cheever’s all grown up now, and he’s nobody’s victim, and we don’t give a shit who knows ’cause we’re proud of him all the way through. But what’s that gonna do to you, Mr. Hometown Hero? You go ahead and tell the world you treated my boy like….” And her voice broke for the first time. “Like you done, and we’ll see who it hurts. I know your daddy. You tell him where your peter’s been. He’ll have you out on your ear so quick, your ear’ll be a smudge on the sidewalk.”