Beneath the Stain - Part 7 by Amy Lane Read Free Book Online Page B

that?”
    It seemed unlikely. He could see Grant coming out about the affair and even about the little girl’s name—which had seemed like a particularly cruel joke until Trav walked into this lovely cream-colored brocaded room with stark green silk bamboo plants on the maple end tables. There wasn’t any dust, which Trav was used to in LA, but here, with the horses and the entire backyard being devoted to a farm, the thought of keeping everything free from cloying red dust was terrifying. For the freedom to get dirty alone, that little girl deserved to get the hell out of Tyson, and she deserved a namesake who could be strong enough to carry her away if she wished it.
    So he could see Grant telling his family he was gay, and that he wanted his daughter to know Mackey, and to know Kell and the boys he’d called his brothers.
    But he couldn’t see Grant telling any of them—not his blonde helmet-coiffed mother, his good-ol’-boy father, or his bitter small-town bride—that he and Mackey had fucked away their high school years like too many kids to count.
    “He must have,” Sam said, looking away. She was wearing a blue turtleneck and dark blue jeans. Besides fake plants and the playpen in the corner filled with toys, he couldn’t see any other color in the entire house. The living room was supposed to be arranged into a conversation pit. The effect was ruined by the giant hospital bed placed under the window. The window itself was in a vaulted turret, and it shined down into the room. The light made the bones of the place easy to see. Trav’s gaze lingered on that bed in the sunshine, and he swallowed.
    “Mr. Reeves, can I see those papers again?”
    He took the sheaf and looked through them, looking for Katy’s birth date, and his eyes widened. “She was born on the first of June?” he said, to make sure.
    “Says so on the papers,” Mr. Reeves confirmed. “Why?”
    “Because Outbreak Monkey signed with Tailpipe Productions at the end of August.”
    “I’m sorry?” Reeves looked puzzled, but as Trav looked around the room, Sam glared at him and walked toward the window, folding her arms and turning her back on them all.
    Grant’s mother, Loretta, didn’t meet his eyes.
    “Right,” Trav muttered, shaking his head in disgust.
    “Right what? What sort of judgments are you passing, faggot?” Casper Adams, Grant’s father, was a real prize. Trav raked him over, top to bottom, leather cowboy hat, matching shiny boots, and all.
    “Nothing you would understand,” he said after a moment. “And to answer your question, yes. Yes, I can and I will insist that you honor Grant’s last will and testament. I’ll get Mackey and the boys to sign that they accept.”
    “You can’t do that!” Loretta said, fidgeting. Trav could smell the old smoke in the living room, and her fingers were nicotine stained. A smoker—not reformed, maybe, but perhaps forced to smoke outside the house. She was dressed elegantly in a daytime outfit of a burnt-orange pantsuit and pearls that would give any woman in Beverly Hills a run for her money—and Trav knew enough executives, male and female, to know this was fact. She’d used enough hairspray to lock a semi into place on the tarmac, and her boobs, butt, and face had all been done with the same X-Acto knife.
    Trav’s mom was probably the same age. She’d had her eyes done, and she dyed her hair brown like it had been in her youth, but the brittle quality, the so-perfect-it-can-snap thing—that was missing in comfortable, kind Linda Ford, who had always wanted to hug Trav as he was growing up and too old for such things.
    “I can,” Trav said, looking at the paperwork. “I mean, Grant’s wife can withhold Katy from us, but that would mean that the royalty percentage Grant gets from the band would no longer be going to support Samantha but would, in fact, be divided between Katy’s college fund and an LGBTQ homeless shelter. Now, you two could take them both into your