Paint It Black Read online

  “That kid in there—he was, like, giving away blow, man. Couldn’t fuckin’ do it all himself.”

  “Oh God,” Marcia moaned.

  “Cheever Sanders?” Blake asked, to make sure.

  “Man, who the fuck cares!” The taller one—blond and pretty, or he would be if he was cleaned up and not covered in coke and come and God, was that blood? “Best piece of ass I’ve ever had!”

  The other guy guffawed. Shorter, built a little more brutally than his buddy, his laugh was an ugly donkey sort of sound. “You only say that ’cause he didn’t fuckin’ move! Just lay there and cried like a pus—”

  Blake hit him so hard, square in the nose, the boy sat down, looking stunned.

  “Dude,” his friend said reproachfully, so Blake hit him too. He and the boys had been in their share of fights, but he’d been a scrapper long before he had backup.

  “Oh my God!” Marcia squeaked, but Blake grabbed her arm before she could start doing lines off their faces and hauled her into whatever nightmare waited for them in the room.

  The two idiots outside hadn’t closed the door completely, which was a blessing, but that meant Blake got a good look as the California sun streamed in. And that was not a blessing in any way, shape, or form.

  Coke mirrors were everywhere, and so were syringes and spoons and dirty fucking needles. The two beds were a mess, covered pretty much in what had covered the guys outside—coke and come and blood.

  Marcia looked around and moaned. “I’m going to have to reup another thirty days just for standing here,” she whispered, but Blake ignored her.

  Where was Cheever?

  Then he remembered Mackey, and that year or so they’d toured together before Trav, when everybody knew Mackey didn’t sleep on a fucking bed. He made his way to the far corner of the room and peered between the bed and the wall.

  Cheever was there, face iced in cocaine like a cake with frosting, blood streaming from his nose. His eyes were wide and dilated, and his knees were drawn up to his chin. He was naked, and Blake’s heart cracked as he realized Cheever’s nose wasn’t the only thing that was bloody.

  Those fuckers. Those fucked-up raping little assholes. Blake should have used their faces to clean the cement.

  And then Blake saw what Cheever was doing and even the violation ceased to matter. Cheever had a razor blade, and he was cutting deeper, steadily deeper, into his own wrist.

  “Cheever fucking Sanders, you stop right now!” Blake shouted, and Cheever dropped the razor blade in surprise. Then he took one look at Blake and began to cry.

  BLAKE GRABBED one of the top sheets from the floor, figuring it would be the cleanest thing in the place, and wrapped it around Cheever’s long, slender body. The boy was pipe-cleaner thin most days, but now he was just skin and bone.

  “Marcia, don’t touch nothing!” he snapped. “Follow me!”

  She was still frozen in the center of the room as far as he could tell, but his nose was tingling just from the amount of product in the air.

  He used the running board to put Cheever in the middle seat and then helped Marcia up, handing her the pocket knife he kept out of habit.

  “Rip off some strips from the sheet, wouldya, darlin’? He missed most of his vein, but he’s still bleeding quite a bit.”

  “Oh my God!” she squealed, probably getting a good look at the blood seeping through the sheet as Blake ran around the truck. But she had a strip ready for him as he slid into his spot. He went for Cheever’s wrist first, tying the first strip pretty tight, then the second one too. He used the third one to wipe the boy’s face, and then made a grim assessment.

  His breathing was thready, and he’d lost some blood. And God knows if he’d need stitches or care for his backside.

  He’d definitely need an AZT pack if he wasn’t on PReP, and that alone was going to require a hospital stay.

  “Marcia, honey, we’re going to have to take him to the hospital before I get you back to rehab. I hope that’s okay.”

  She nodded, stroking Cheever’s hair back from his face with gentle little strokes. “Oh, baby,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me it all hurt so bad?”

  “’Cause that would mean he had to talk to someone,” Blake snarled, feeling savage. “And his whole fucking family sucks balls at that.”

  He looked at Cheever again, his eyes closed, shivering, face a waxy sort of green, and figured they were twenty minutes from Cedars-Sinai.

  Then he stepped on the accelerator and made it in fifteen.

  HE CARRIED Cheever into the ER himself, screaming for a doctor like seven kinds of fool, but the nurses were quick to get the boy on a stretcher and take him past the big locking door, leaving Blake to give all the information to admitting.

  When he was done, the woman—tall, blond, late forties and a real knockout—fixed him with a gimlet eye. “And who are you?”

  “I’m a friend of the family. The boy disappeared from school, and his mama was worried. His brother just got hurt in Seattle. I came as soon as his mama let us know.”

  The woman raised her eyebrows. “And how long has the boy been using?”

  Blake looked at Marcia, who was shaking hard enough to be in shock. “Ma’am, can we get a blanket for her? She wasn’t exactly in prime condition to come on this ride, and I’m a little worried.”

  The woman blinked past his shoulder, and her expression softened. “Sure, sweetheart. In fact, let’s get you a bed and a sedative—”

  “I’m in rehab,” Marcia said, like her words came automatically. She actually looked around her then and flushed. “I mean, I sort of broke out, but only because I was worried.” She bit her lip then, looking earnest. “He’s going to be okay, right?”

  Blake looked at the admitting nurse, smiling tentatively. “Right?”

  But the nurse didn’t take the bait. “How long?” she asked.

  Blake looked to Marcia. “He sort of used occasionally,” she said softly. “I’ve never… never seen anything like this. This was… this was a breakdown. This… this wasn’t like Cheever at all.”

  An orderly came out with a wheelchair and a blanket, and Marcia looked desperately at Blake.

  “Can I come back there with her?” he asked. “You’ll find us when you know about Cheever?”

  He took two steps toward the girl as she sank into the wheelchair and grabbed his hand fiercely.

  “Yes, that’s fine,” the nurse said, and her stolid, no-bullshit expression relaxed a tad. “We’ll let you know as soon as we do, okay?”

  Blake nodded and followed the orderly back, thinking furiously. This wasn’t like Cheever—not the Cheever that Blake had known over the years.

  Nope, this wasn’t cool or reasoned. This wasn’t measured or planned. Since that one day, way back in Tyson/Hepzibah, after Cheever had grabbed Briony and sat at the kitchen table looking puzzled and forsaken, Blake hadn’t seen Cheever when he wasn’t looking at the time. He was always, always, trying to measure exactly how long he had to be with his brothers, how long he should play with his nieces and nephews, how long until he had to go do homework, or had plans with friends.

  Not girlfriends, apparently—and that was something else the family didn’t know.

  But no, going out on a bender, taking a razor to his wrist, that didn’t seem like Cheever at all.

  But it was for shit-sure exactly like Cheever’s brothers, which made Blake wonder who had been showing up at holidays and summer vacation for the last goddamned eight years.

  They gave Marcia a gentle sedative, and after asking if she wanted him to contact her parents—and getting a hard no—Blake sat by her bed and held her hand while she sort of whimpered her way to sleep.

  Poor baby, he thought, smoothing the hair away from her eyes. He promised himself he’d visit her in rehab and text her too. If Cheever had been her lifeline, well, he was sort of out of fucking commission, wasn’t he? And Blake thought this girl needed more of a family approach.

  Gi
ven the way she’d shaken her head when he’d asked about her parents, Blake was wondering if maybe he should take her to the house in the hills after rehab. She could go running with them same as everybody else, right?

  She was a stand-up kid. Cheever had been standing up for her—and he’d apparently been doing a really good job—but the boy had his own shit to sort.

  And fuck. So did Blake. He needed to deal with the family now.

  As soon as she was asleep and Blake could claim his hand back, he pulled out his phone.

  “Blake?”

  Travis Ford might have been out of the military for over fifteen years, but that snap to his voice wasn’t ever going away.

  “Yessir.”

  “How’s Cheever?”

  Blake took a deep breath. “Better and worse than we expected,” he said honestly.

  Trav’s response was a waiting, unamused silence.

  “Well, me and Kell, we thought the little bastard’s been doing everybody’s drugs through college, right?”

  “He doesn’t go through that much money,” Travis said, his voice measured. “His grades are impeccable.”

  “Well, yeah. You would know that.” Trav knew fucking everything. “He was a cold little asshole to us, and we were thinking it was rich kids and cocaine, but it wasn’t. Anyway, he got a C on a project, and it, like, ended his world. Like… ended it. Like… like he bought a round of drugs for the whole school and did them until he couldn’t do no fuckin’ more.” Blake’s voice was rising, semi-hysterically, and he didn’t think in a thousand years he would ever be able to explain the horror of seeing Cheever, crouched in the corner, trying to leave the rest of his blood on that mangy carpet.

  “Oh my God.” Trav’s horror echoed Blake’s own. “Is he okay?”

  “No.” Blake couldn’t contain his shudder. “I mean, I think he’s going to survive this round but… but it was like Mackey, right? If he didn’t spill his guts to someone, he was never gonna be okay.”

  “Or you,” Trav said gently. Well, Blake’s problems had been garden-variety bullshit. Mackey’s had just cut deeper.

  “Well, now it’s Cheever,” Blake told him, his eyes burning. “I…. Look. He’s got a friend who pretty much escaped her own rehab to come help me find him. He’s not really an addict, I don’t think. This was… this was—”

  “Suicide by coke?” Trav asked, voice grim, and Blake broke.

  “And the coke razor,” he said, wiping his face on his shoulder. He just couldn’t stop remembering that kid, the way his face had emptied out when he’d been a little shit at thirteen. Talking about not sharing his own hell. Blake had thought he had your normal garden-variety hell, nothing like Blake’s own bullshit in rehab, right? But still—there wasn’t anything special about Blake Manning’s problems either—they were probably in every shrink textbook known to man.

  Maybe Cheever’s problems were special to Cheever and nobody had told him that was okay.

  “Oh, dear Lord—”

  “He couldn’t find the vein,” Blake said, needing to spill it now so it couldn’t destroy his reason in the next few hours. “But… God, Trav. That was a bad fucking moment right there.”

  “Shit. Shit, shit, fuck. I’ll tell his mother—”

  “Not yet.” God. Blake hated to interfere like this, but… but he remembered him and Mackey stuck in their own hells together like it was yesterday. “Look, me and Mackey, we got a chance to control it, okay? The boy needs his mom—I’m not gonna lie. But maybe right now, tell her we found him. I’ll call back and tell you if… when… he can talk. But in the meantime, he needs… like rehab, but—”

  “We’ll call it a mental health retreat,” Trav said. “We can even use the same doctor.”

  Blake brightened. “Doc Cambridge? I love that guy!”

  “I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to hear from us again.” Trav’s voice had that dry little sandpaper sound in it that meant he was being sarcastic as fuck.

  “Well, Mackey was sort of a tough nut to crack,” Blake admitted.

  “Yeah, well, he told me he wanted the entire band in his office so he could shrink their heads. I told him Jefferson, Stevie, and Shelia would break him and that would be a shame.”

  Blake let out a badly needed laugh. At that moment, the nurse from admitting came in, looking at Marcia in question.

  Blake held his finger to his lips and stood. “Trav, I’m putting you on speaker.”

  “Who’s on the phone?” she asked.

  “Cheever’s brother’s husband. He’s sort of… well, he takes care of the lot of us. You’ll be sending your bills to this guy.”

  The nurse’s eyebrows climbed. “Okay, then. That doesn’t sound weird at all. Anyway, your friend is ready for recovery. He nicked the artery on his wrist, so there are a couple of stitches there, a few in his, uh….” She looked at the phone and blushed.

  “His other injuries,” Blake supplied.

  “Yes, sir. And we gave him a sedative to counteract the effects of the cocaine. Now, we require a seventy-two hour suicide watch after seeing injuries like that—”

  And Trav’s voice came from the little box. “Can I send an ambulance for him? I’ve got a room booked for him at a psychiatric center nearby. It’s usually meant for rehab, but they’re set up to take patients with depression and other problems as well.”

  “I need more information about this place, sir, and I need to consult with the doctors working on him, and—”

  “Blake, give this nice woman your phone.”

  “Yessir.” Blake handed it over. “You can bring Cheever here while we’re waiting for the ambulance?” he asked the nurse, whose name badge proclaimed her to be Nurse Crandall.

  “We were planning on that,” she said.

  “Oh, hey, Trav? Can you book another room for his friend? She’s going through rehab, and she could sure use a buddy. I think she’ll do Cheever good too. He can see how much he scared her, yeah?”

  “I can do that. Nurse Crandall? You and I need to exchange insurance numbers.”

  With that, the nurse took off with Blake’s phone. No sooner had she rounded the corner than Cheever was wheeled in.

  He looked… young.

  He was lying on his side, his cheek on the hand handcuffed to the bedrail. His vulpine features—a little longer in the jaw, but much like Mackey’s—stood out in stark relief against his tanned skin, pointed and vulnerable.

  Blake double-checked on Marcia and moved his chair, waiting for the nurse and the orderly to settle Cheever’s monitors and medication before he got all cozy.

  Cheever opened his eyes blearily as he heard the scrape of the chair across the floor.

  “Blake?”

  “Yeah, kid.”

  “Mom?”

  “Do you want me to call her?”

  He watched then, the struggle over Cheever’s face, and his heart constricted in his chest. God, this boy wanted his mama so badly. But a room full of blow and his ass torn open for good measure—what kid wanted his mama to know that?

  Not to mention that big incriminating bandage on his wrist.

  Blake couldn’t hardly look at it.

  “No,” Cheever whispered at last, his eyes filling.

  Blake stood. He hadn’t seen this much emotion in the kid since the day Mackey had lost his shit at him for grabbing Briony’s boob. He came near the bed and smoothed Cheever’s hair back from his forehead like he had for Marcia.

  “That there is the biggest fucking lie I’ve ever heard in my life,” he said mildly, as Cheever’s shoulders started to shake.

  “Not like this,” Cheever sobbed.

  “Son, that woman loves you—”

  “Not like this!” he begged. “God, please. Not like….” More sobs filled the room, big and loud and noisy. He kept trying to cover his mouth so nobody could hear, but hey, he was handcuffed to the bed because he’d tried to hurt himself, so there they were, his messy emotions, pouring into the empty air.

 
; Blake just stood there, smoothing that curly red hair back, and thought it was about fucking time.

  The sobs died eventually, and Blake brought the chair close to the bed—and grabbed a box of Kleenex too, so he could clean the boy up.

  “Blow,” he murmured automatically. He hadn’t known kids until Mackey brought Grant Adams’s little girl home. But first with Katy and then Kell and Briony’s kids, Kyrie and Kansas, and the triplets’ kids, Kyla and Kale—Blake had spent the last eight years becoming everybody’s favorite uncle, and loving every kid as the blessing he’d never been.

  He knew how to get a kid to blow into a Kleenex, and how to clean up traces of tears, and even how to sing a kid to sleep if he was too keyed up to let his brain relax.

  “I am not this person,” Cheever said, his voice lost, like a kitten in the rain. “I don’t cry. I don’t…. Oh God, I don’t do what….” His body started to tense up again, like he was going to lose it, and Blake wasn’t sure he had anything left in him to lose.

  “Sweetheart, I need you to take a deep breath, okay?”

  Cheever did, bless him, and nodded.

  “’Kay. Now I’m going to talk, and if I bore you to sleep, that’s fine. But you start out listening, okay?”

  A small nod, and Cheever’s enormous green eyes focused on Blake’s face like he held the magic keys to the kingdom.

  “Good. Now here’s the thing. In eight years, we been seeing a stranger show up where Cheever Sanders was supposed to be. He said all the right things, and he did all the right things, but he never seemed like he wanted to be with us. So in eight years, I ain’t ever known who you were, Cheever. But today, I know you’re the kind of person that would make that little girl break out of rehab in her Eeyore slippers and stand in the middle of a cocaine tornado because she missed you and was worried. I know you’re so hurt inside, you don’t want to show your mama, when you want her here more than you want anything in the world. And I know there is shit in your heart—probably ugly, festering shit—that you ain’t shown nobody, not your brothers, who would lay down and die for you, and not your mama, who would bring you back to life. So now, I’m real fucking curious. Who in the hell is Cheever Sanders, and why was he hiding behind that shitty rich kid for the last eight years?”