Paint It Black Read online

  Cheever regarded him with unfriendly eyes. “No. No, I have not.”

  The man smiled, an ingratiating flash of teeth under his scruff. “Well, we’re a celebration of celebrity,” he enunciated, so Cheever would get it. Heh-heh. Right? Celebratation?

  Cheever stopped short. “You’re paparazzi?”

  “Yeah! We were wondering if you’d give us a quote?”

  Cheever’s heart burned in his chest. Oh God. Here was his chance. His chance to get these assholes off his back, to let people know exactly how he felt.

  Rob held up his phone with a nod, letting Cheever know he was on record. Cheever stared straight into the little flashing light and threw his brother under the bus.

  HIS MOTHER was so pissed, she pulled him out of school to yell at him.

  For an entire day.

  Which was still better than being at school.

  “Cheever, I just wish you appreciated what your brothers have done for you—”

  “My brothers don’t give a shit about me!” he shouted back, and his mother—his mother slapped him.

  Not hard.

  Not for blood, like Aubrey had.

  But like he was being hysterical and she was trying to get his attention.

  “You will live to take that back,” she said.

  “Why rehab?” he snarled back. “Why aren’t they coming home?”

  “Because if we want to keep the house, they’ve got to get back out on tour,” she said, eyes fierce. “You think they’ve been out there, having a big party? They’re out there working. Mackey has been working. Do you know his manager told me he’d organized his entire CD, and the one after it, when he was struggling with drug addiction and close to dying? Trav was stunned, said he’d never seen a bunch of kids with a better work ethic. Because they know what’s at stake for us if they fuck this up. So yeah. Now that they’re not a mess, they’re gonna see us more. They’re coming here for Christmas for two weeks. I’ve got the house all ready. But what they’re doing, they’re doing for all of us—even you, if you’d see it. And you just thanked them by stabbing them in the back.”

  Cheever swallowed, remorse hitting him like a freight train to the chest, adolescent pride the brick wall at his back.

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he muttered. His mother just shook her head.

  “You know, Cheever Sanders, even if they broke that promise, it has nothing to do with you talking to the press. You know that, right? Their sins aren’t yours, but selling your brothers out? That’s all on you.”

  Great. Cheever felt like shit.

  And the weekend had only begun.

  BY THE time Christmas rolled around, Cheever had lost twenty pounds and gained a shit-ton of bruises.

  It didn’t matter that he’d talked to the press. His class had forgiven him, but Aubrey hadn’t. Aubrey’s attacks had become less public, though. Less violent.

  And more disturbing.

  Right before Christmas, Cheever was packing to go stay with his mom, because he and his mom were going to pick up his brothers in Sacramento the next day, when there was a knock on his door.

  Before Cheever could even open the door himself, it flew open and Aubrey stormed in, kicking it shut behind him.

  “What the—”

  Aubrey shoved him, face-first, against the wall. “You gonna spend your time with your faggot brother over Christmas break?”

  “Yeah.” Cheever tried to take a breath but couldn’t. “So?”

  Aubrey leaned close enough that Cheever could feel his quickening breath against Cheever’s ear. Right when he expected Aubrey to speak, Cheever felt something wet and sloppy along his cheek, dragging up to his temple, and his stomach turned. Aubrey had licked him.

  “Ew! Gro—”

  Aubrey elbowed him in the back, then whipped his foot around Cheever’s, bringing him down to one knee.

  Cheever pushed up against the wall, only to have Aubrey grab him by the hair and shove his face in his crotch.

  “Get used to that view,” Aubrey growled.

  And then he was gone.

  It took an hour in the bathroom for Cheever to calm down enough to finish packing.

  All that, and the next evening, after a two-hour drive to the airport to greet the plane, Mackey didn’t even get off. Jefferson, Stevie, Kell—even Kell’s best friend, Blake, and some girl Jefferson and Stevie had sort of co-opted as, like, their mutual girlfriend. But not Mackey.

  No. They were going to have to go all the way back to Tyson, get clothes for Cheever and Heather, and drive all the way down to LA so poor fucking Mackey didn’t have to be alone with his faggot boyfriend for Christmas.

  By the time they got there, Cheever was pissed off enough to spit nails. He’d been shoved to the back corner of the SUV, listening to his brothers go on and on about tattoos and rehab and exercising and clubs and shit—and oh my God! Every half an hour, one of them would turn to him and go, “Hey, Cheever, how you doin’, man? You’re so quiet!”

  Like he was going to spill his soul right there?

  The only bright spot had been, unexpectedly, Blake Manning. During the quiet parts of the trip, Blake would turn to him and ask him about his drawing, about his school. Blake had seemed human, and he’d managed to pull Kell into their quiet little bubble for part of the trip too, but it didn’t outweigh the resentment in Cheever’s heart that they had to do this at all.

  Fuck. Them. Fuck them all.

  Mackey and his giant orangutan of a manager were stumbling about in their boxers in this ginormous house when they arrived, and God, he tried to piss them off. He dropped the F word—not the cool one that meant fuck, either—in every goddamned sentence, a sort of bitter satisfaction washing over him when he saw Mackey’s big gray eyes get damp and shiny.

  And then the orangutan grabbed him by the throat and took him outside for a little glory hallelujah.

  Travis Ford had served in the military with distinction as an MP for eight years. He’d gotten out of the service and gone to college on his own dime, and then he’d earned a living in a hard fucking occupation.

  All that, and he put up with Cheever’s asshole brothers.

  In his entire life, Cheever had never felt so small.

  Yet.

  Cheever let Trav’s words sink in, then walked back into the house and made up with Mackey and the guys. For two weeks, they made him the king of their house, took him to every amusement park known to man, tried hard to show him a world beyond Tyson/Hepzibah, which they all seemed to loathe as much as he did, and worked really hard to show him he mattered, right up to taking him on amusement park rides until he puked.

  And Blake Manning had held his head while he threw up. Plain, quiet, with a slow smile and a sly wit, Blake seemed like he was happy being the guy nobody noticed. Cheever tried to learn from him.

  He held on to that feeling for as long as he could when he went back to school. His brothers loved him. They would do anything for him. He had to remind himself of that again and again, because they were going on tour for nine months and he wouldn’t see them again until the fall.

  And in the meantime, Aubrey only got worse.

  It had been bad enough when Cheever expected violence, but what Aubrey was doing was horrific.

  A random hand on his ass, one on his crotch, a tongue on the back of his neck when he wasn’t expecting it.

  Any moment alone was a moment to be afraid of having his person touched without his consent.

  At the end of the school year in May, when Kellogg and Jefferson and Mackey were nothing more than texts and postcards from Europe, and his mom was an uneasy, fidgeting presence at dinner every night, Cheever was studying in his dorm when he heard the doorknob turn.

  His heart froze in his chest. He’d forgotten to lock it. Holy God, he’d forgotten to lock the goddamned door. He’d remembered—ever since Aubrey had come in before Christmas—to lock the goddamned door, but not this time. Not this night.

  By the time he’
d stood and rushed toward the door, Aubrey had slid in and kicked it closed behind him.

  Then he locked it.

  “Get out!” Cheever told him, but there was a quaver in his voice. Here, at school, was the only place he’d had his own room. He’d been waiting for two years to find out it was a mistake and he’d be sharing this space with three people in one bunk bed.

  “Make me,” Aubrey taunted, voice low. “Make me.”

  Cheever had seen his brothers wrestle, had always told himself he was too civilized to fight. But being here, locked in his room with his antagonist—the guy he still had tortured wet dreams about—left him in a cold sweat.

  He made a clumsy rush at Aubrey, unsurprised when Aubrey put him in a headlock and flipped him to his back.

  “Get out!” Cheever panted, winded. Aubrey had grown this last year, in height and breadth, and Cheever was taller but still slender, like his mother.

  Aubrey responded by throwing himself on top of Cheever, his knee at Cheever’s groin, his hands pinning Cheever’s above his head.

  Cheever’s vision went a little gray at the graze to his balls, and the scream he had planned turned into a whimper.

  “Get out,” he whispered.

  “I said make me.”

  “I’ll tell. I’ll tell every—”

  Aubrey bit him in the neck, sucking hard, hard enough to leave a hickey, and no amount of squirming could dislodge him.

  “You’re mine now, bitch,” Aubrey taunted. He moved his knee so he could grab Cheever’s crotch, and Cheever made one final desperate bid to dislodge him.

  Aubrey cracked him hard across the face and put his mouth low to Cheever’s ear. “Stop it,” he hissed. “Stop it. You’re mine. You let me do what I want, and I’ll let you back into the class next year. You’re already my bitch—just let me own you, and there’ll be no more getting tripped in gym. No more shit dumped on you at lunch. Just take the ‘be-my-bitch’ package, Cheever Sanders, and your life’ll be gold.”

  Oh God.

  Cheever didn’t even know what else Aubrey could do. All the ways he could be hurt. All he knew was that every day at school since October had been one long horrible sinkhole of loneliness, and Cheever was so fucking done.

  He didn’t say yes. In the following years, he’d remember that. He never once said, “Yes. You have my permission. Use me.”

  This time he just closed his eyes and let his body go limp.

  And tried to pretend that what happened next was happening to somebody else.

  WHEN IT was over, after Aubrey had left him whimpering on the floor, and he’d rinsed his mouth and wiped the come off his face and showered for an hour, he thought he should be thankful.

  His pants had stayed on.

  He had bruises on his nipples, his throat felt bruised and swollen, and he was going to have to sit on a pillow because his balls ached from that first graze, but his pants had stayed on.

  They wouldn’t always.

  Aubrey had promised him that. He was going to have to come back to school at Tyson/Hepzibah Prep with his ass prelubed, because next year, Aubrey was going to expect an all-access pass to Cheever’s room.

  And Cheever’s body.

  Cheever was owned now.

  There was no way out.

  SUMMER WENT by in a blur of his mother’s helpless worry and his own helpless misery. Three days after he was back in the dorms, it happened. He prepared for it—no tearing, no ripping, just some pain and Aubrey’s harsh breaths behind him.

  When it was done, Aubrey patted him on the head and told him he’d see him tomorrow.

  Cheever cried all night, but by God, he sat with Aubrey’s friends the next day.

  A month later, he could face those boys and talk, laugh like they had before Mackey had come out.

  Which was not always a free ticket out of hell.

  “Yeah, Cheever. We’ll stop calling you a fag when you lose your V-card!” Roger Gilchrist chortled.

  Cheever looked up from his mashed potatoes and sighed. His mom had apparently taken the hint of all his rolled eyes and cold silences, and she’d started leaving him alone a couple nights a week. A part of him was relieved, but a bigger part of him was hurt. Shouldn’t she have known he didn’t mean it?

  “I’m not sleeping with any of the girls here,” he said shortly. Yeah, he’d heard about Grant Adams, his oldest brother’s best friend. The guy should have gone with Outbreak Monkey, made it big, gotten the fuck out of the goddamned Tyson/Hepzibah area—but he hadn’t. No, Grant had gone and knocked up his girlfriend. Cheever wasn’t going out that way. For one thing, he didn’t feel that way about any girls, but for another? He could think of nothing worse than to be stuck in this tiny area, married to a girl he didn’t love and having to bend over for Aubrey Cooper for the rest of his fucking life.

  The actual thought of it made him physically ill. He’d looked up suicide. He’d looked up the easiest way to do it. Right now he was thinking pills because he wanted something quiet, but he’d take a razor to his wrist if he had to.

  “Then find a stranger,” Roger said with a cavalier shrug. Unlike Aubrey, who was pretty and substantial, Roger was plain, with a thin face and limp brown hair, but he moved with a liquid grace that Cheever found unsettling. Aubrey had gotten fairly impersonal about what he did to Cheever a couple of nights a week. Roger just moved like he could hurt someone. “It’s not like you gotta marry ’em.”

  “Right?” Tim Bronson rounded out Aubrey’s little group of popular jocks. Tim had a broad, ruddy face, sandy blond hair, and sort of narrow, piggy blue eyes. He looked like Aubrey would, if Aubrey was a cartoon character that ran into a plate glass window. Just sort of smushed.

  Of the three boys, Cheever suspected Tim was the one who had actually had contact with a girl.

  “What do you mean?” Cheever asked, keeping his voice pitched at ingenue levels. The thing was, he knew what they were talking about, and he’d always thought it was sort of revolting. But God, he was desperate. Aubrey was bad enough. If Cheever didn’t produce some sort of knowledge about being with a girl soon, he was afraid Aubrey wasn’t going to be his only nighttime visitor. Those razor blades were looking better by the second.

  “Man, don’t even ask them,” Tim sneered. “Just reach out and grab what you want. My dad says that’s the only way to make a bitch mind.”

  Cheever stared at him, his brain blank. The thought of calling his mother a bitch just did not fucking compute.

  “My dad says so too,” Aubrey chimed in, looking at Cheever with pure possession in his eyes. “Once they’re yours, they got no say. You can share ’em however you want, and they’ll always come back to you.”

  Cheever gave up on his mashed potatoes, his blood running cold. He heard the message loud and clear.

  God. He was going to have to grope a girl.

  NOBODY WAS more surprised than he was when one dropped into his lap.

  Apparently just thinking about Grant Adams and his brothers was enough to conjure a miracle. Of all things, Grant was dying of cancer, and Cheever had a brain cell to think that Grant was the luckiest sonuvabitch Tyson had ever seen.

  The rest of him was just sort of excited that his brothers were going to be home.

  He could talk to them, right? They seemed okay with Mackey coming out, and the ways he’d fucked up. They could be okay with Cheever and Aubrey Cooper’s all-access pass to his ass, right?

  Maybe just spending some time with them, like Christmas had been… maybe that would be enough.

  But things were a mess when they got to the house.

  Some girl who had been touring with them was sick, and the guys were all knotted up, because apparently, Grant Adams was someone they really fucking loved, unlike Cheever, who was someone who got in their fucking way all the time.

  That wasn’t entirely fair—Cheever knew that.

  The morning Grant came to their house, Cheever saw him in the kitchen and went to hide in his room, feeling wretch
ed.

  Grant looked awful.

  Cheever remembered how pretty he’d been when he’d been in high school, how his gold-brown eyes had practically glowed, looking at Mackey or Kell. Cheever remembered seeing him kissing Mackey when Cheever was supposed to be napping, and how he’d always hoped he’d end up with someone that beautiful, so pretty, it made his heart hurt.

  There wasn’t anything left of Grant now. Withered and wax-pale, he made Cheever rethink that “Yay for cancer!” idea. He was too tired to walk—Mackey’s asshole manager/boyfriend had to carry him to the table, for fuck’s sake.

  And Cheever could tell, just from that first morning, that the guys, their visit, it wasn’t going to be about him at all.

  He tried not to be heartbroken. Tried not to feel alone.

  But his mom’s house was filled with people, most of whom he didn’t know. When he realized one of them was a pretty girl—Briony, who apparently ran the light and soundboard for the band, even though she barely looked older than Cheever—Tim’s words about just reaching out to take what he wanted started ringing through Cheever’s brain.

  When he stumbled to the bathroom to take a leak and she popped her head out of the shower to see who it was, it seemed like… well, an opportunity. Just… just… reach out and touch it. That’s all. Reach out and touch it.

  A boob. He could say he touched a boob.

  If he’d had any idea what would happen next, he would have just taken the razor to his wrist right then.

  MACKEY AND his mom had left—something about going to fetch Mackey’s boyfriend—and Cheever was alone, sitting at the kitchen table, shell-shocked.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  Cheever barely glanced up.

  It was Blake Manning again. Tall, thin, slouchy—like a cat—with a narrow, appealing face and sort of a scruffy goatee. He had dark brown hair that layered from his nice hazel eyes to his narrow jaw, and there was something… feral about him. Not quite tamed.

  Sort of like Mackey, actually, but not mean. Just skittish.

  He’d been part of the Greek chorus of male voices, the companionship Cheever had craved but didn’t know how to unlock for himself, and now he was just… comfortable. Cheever still remembered that trip from Sacramento to LA, stuffed between Blake and Kell, and Blake’s quiet attention.