Paint It Black Page 8

  Blake nodded and gave a weary smile. “We appreciate it. That’s why….” His eyes sought out Cheever’s. “We brought you a hard case, sir,” he said, his eyes moving restlessly like he was trying to see inside Cheever for a word to put to what had brought him here. “He’s not an addict, I don’t think, but….”

  The doctor turned toward Cheever and took in the bandage on his wrist, the handcuffs, and Cheever’s appearance.

  Cheever wagered he looked like he’d climbed out of hell to speak of horrors, judging by the kindness he saw in Cambridge’s eyes.

  “Troubled,” Cambridge finished gently, walking toward the bed. He extended his hand, and shook Cheever’s free one. “Pleased to meet you, Cheever. How are you feeling today?”

  “Tired,” Cheever said, which was nothing but the truth, because that thing he’d been doing with Blake had about exhausted him. Being honest was brutal. “I’m sorry to trouble you. I… you know, this isn’t really me.” He looked at the bandage on his wrist as if he hadn’t been planning that move for eight years. “I was stoned out of my head—never been on a bender like that, you know? Maybe, maybe if I detox a little, you can let me go home, you think?” He smiled winningly, the smile that had always worked on his mother when she seemed about to fuss, or to worry, or to insist he stay at the family thing when he was ready to run screaming with repressed rage.

  Cambridge regarded him with an expression of stone. “Oh, he’s cute,” he said to Blake. “He thinks that’s going to work with me.”

  Blake gave Cheever a sour look. “’Course he does. It’s been working on his mama for eight years now. He’s had practice.”

  “Yeah, these Sanders kids—art and emotional repression. It’s like their best things.” Cambridge turned back toward Cheever, his eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. “Do we want to try that again?”

  Cheever closed his eyes. “After my nap?” he begged.

  “Sure. Mr. Manning and I will just take our lea—”

  “Not Blake!” Cheever’s eyes popped open, and he searched wildly for Blake. “He said he’d stay. He promised.” He tried to still his breathing, his panic, and Cambridge’s eyes opened wide.

  He looked at Blake as if for explanation, and Blake shrugged and looked away.

  “I ain’t broken a promise to him yet,” he said, his self-deprecation so strong Cheever wanted to smack him until he… what? Coughed up to being a knight in shining armor? Admitted that Cheever’s brothers loved him like family? It didn’t matter. Blake’s ability to “aw shucks, I ain’t nothin’, folks” was making Cheever every bit as crazy as… as….

  As Cheever was making Blake.

  Cambridge turned his attention back to Cheever, just as Cheever swallowed and fell back against the bed. “Your family is going to break me,” he said pleasantly. “But at least I won’t be bored. Very well, then, I’ll leave you in Mr. Manning’s capable hands for the night. You two try not to kill each other, yeah?”

  Cheever glared at Blake, who rolled his eyes.

  “No promises,” Blake said sullenly.

  “I hate my job,” Cambridge retorted. “I’ll have the orderlies bring you both some food. Mr. Manning, we can get you a cot, but tomorrow you may want to go home and get some clean clothes—and maybe some for Cheever, as well. I suspect he’s going to be here longer than he expects.”

  “Unless he’s like Mackey and tries to leave fifty-dozen times,” Blake muttered.

  “So much. I hate my job so much. Have a good evening, Blake.”

  “You too, sir.”

  And Cambridge left.

  “Are you happy, kid?” Blake asked, throwing himself into the chair and lifting his foot over his knee.

  “I tried to slit my wrist,” Cheever retorted. “Apparently not.”

  “Good. Because you just pissed off the best shrink in Los Angeles, and I might have broken my toe.”

  And that—that right there—was when Cheever realized he might be in some serious trouble. Because that mattered.

  “I’m sorry about your toe,” he said, feeling like shit.

  “I’m sorry about your heart,” Blake said back softly. “Because whatever’s going on inside you, it’s gotta hurt a damned sight worse than this.”

  Cheever closed his eyes and hoped for sleep.

  THEY ATE dinner quietly, without much conversation, until Blake took a message on his phone. “Marcia’s all done being admitted,” he said. “Maybe she can keep you company tomorrow while I go pack up your dorm room and bring you both some clothes.”

  Cheever stopped in the middle of pushing his vegetables around on his tray. “Why is she here? Wasn’t she in some place by the school?”

  Blake shrugged. “She was a stand-up kid. You don’t remember, but she was there when I found you—took me to the hotel and everything.” His face grew bleak. “She got me there just in time.”

  Cheever bit his lip and shoved his tray aside. “Why’d she do that?”

  “Because you were her lifeline and she was worried about you,” Blake said softly. “Because you matter. And she… she needed someone. A friend. So I thought you two might want to do your time together. It made brothers out of Mackey and me, you know. Doing rehab together.”

  Cheever remembered Marcia, that terror of finding her unconscious, his grief that she’d felt so bad she thought that was the only way.

  “We were… coffee buddies,” he said roughly. “That’s what I thought. I didn’t realize… you know….”

  “You were friends,” Blake finished. “It’s a big deal, having a friend.”

  Cheever’s eyes flashed to him. “Mackey?”

  Blake snorted. “As. If. No—Mackey and me are brothers, but Kell’s my best friend.” He grew pensive for a moment, and Cheever looked closer.

  “Did you… did you love my brother?”

  “I love all of them,” Blake replied smartly, and then let out a sigh. He muttered to himself, something like, “I’m supposed to be mature….” And then spoke out loud again. “I did have me a hell of a crush on Kell, back before he and Briony got together. But he doesn’t swing that way, and I swing both ways, so I kept it to myself so shit didn’t get awkward.”

  Cheever regarded him, thoughtful. “Why’d you tell me that?”

  “’Cause…. ’Cause you’re going to be expected to shed all your secrets here. And it’s going to feel invasive and painful and fucking infuriating. And I told the guys I was bi—once I figured it out, because for a while, I was that asshole who protested too much about gay porn, right? ‘Good for you guys, but not for me….’ I even came out to the press, but it didn’t blow up because Mackey did it first. But I didn’t tell anybody how I felt about Kell, although I’m sure Mackey figured it out. So here we are. Now you know something about me that I ain’t—didn’t—tell anybody else in the world. And you can see it didn’t break me. So now, when you have to talk to the doc, you know it can be done.”

  Cheever nodded and swallowed, thinking about Marcia’s surprisingly sly sense of humor, and the way she liked silences when two people were working, and her secret love of all things kawaii—cute, like Hello Kitty and Pokémon Go.

  And how Blake had just told him something special so Cheever wouldn’t feel alone.

  “Thank you,” he said softly. “You’re… you’re kind. You’re so kind. I… I hope my brothers know how kind you can be.”

  “I wasn’t always,” Blake said, shoving his own half-finished food away from him on the little porta tray. “Sometimes I think you have to have a reserve, you know? When your soul is stretched thin, you don’t have kindness to give. Lotta years there, my soul was tight as a drum. No give.”

  “I’m glad you got your soul back, then,” Cheever said. He wanted to ask then, what had sucked so much out of a man who seemed to have so much to give. But he was tired, and Blake was right. He had just enough strength to worry about himself right now. “You put it to good use.”

  “Eat, kid,” Blake said gruffly. “Foo
d isn’t half-bad here.”

  “You first.” Cheever had noticed.

  Blake sighed and pulled his tray back. “Fine. On count of three, both of us will eat. One, two—”

  Cheever took a bite of potato buds and gravy and gave a small smile. Blake swallowed a forkful of chicken.

  Three.

  Can’t You Hear Me Knocking?

  SOMEONE GOT Blake a blanket and a cot. He dozed, watching over Cheever’s sleep, and he pulled that soft blanket close as dawn crept around the blinds drawn over the windows.

  Restless and exhausted, Blake stood and worked the blinds, opening the room up to some sunlight and not that grim fluorescent crap.

  Cheever looked young. So young. Pretty—God. The only Sanders boy who’d missed out on “pretty” was Kell, and he knew it. It didn’t matter once Briony saw through his caveman exterior, though. His wedding picture—Briony with a six-month baby bump, Kell with a look of utter besottedness and bafflement—was one of the most beautiful things Blake had ever seen.

  But Cheever had the pretty gene that Kell missed out on. Delicate bone structure, that striking coloring. When his eyes were open, he looked like an anime character, and when they were closed, with those long red lashes fanning his cheeks, he looked like a sleeping prince.

  His lower lip had a sort of fullness, a ripeness to it that left Blake feeling uncomfortable and awkward about being in the same room while he was sleeping.

  But dammit, the kid had begged.

  Blake wasn’t sure how he felt about telling Cheever about his long-ago crush on Kell. It was almost laughable now, because Blake wouldn’t have deprived Kell of his life with Briony for anything. Not even those half-imagined kisses he’d yearned for.

  But it was such a small thing, that crush, compared to the big thing, whatever the big thing was, that had sent Cheever looking for a razor blade. Yeah, sure, he might never have gone for it if he hadn’t been a screaming tornado inside from all that coke, but still.

  That urge had been inside him, somewhere, just waiting for a chance to cut its way out.

  Blake wondered if he was going to have to tell the kid more, about the times he couldn’t make rent, or the times he’d needed a hit of something, anything, to make him forget the shit that happened after he ran away from home.

  Or the reasons he’d run away in the first place.

  He’d come clean about most of it, at one time or another—to Mackey, to Doc Cambridge, to Kell. It wasn’t any big secret. Blake Manning had been young and desperate and addicted and sad. His ass had been for sale, and he’d learned to give a mighty fine, tip-worthy blowjob to boot.

  But dammit.

  That kid… that kid looked at him like he was something.

  He hated to admit it, even to himself, but the way Cheever looked at him, talked to him, called him kind—that shit meant a lot to Blake, who, for most of his life, had never been really worth all that much.

  To have a kid—pretty, smart, hurting—think Blake was important made his chest tight and his eyes burn.

  God, it would be something, wouldn’t it? To be that kind of man?

  For a moment, Blake’s hands shook, and like that horrible room full of sex and drugs and despair hadn’t done, the thought made him crave his first hit in nine years.

  Closing his eyes against the sunshine coming into the room, against the craving in his gut, he asked himself why. Why now?

  I could let him down.

  Blake took a deep breath against the want.

  I could. But I’ll definitely let him down if I go that way. I know that. The only way to let him down is not to even fucking try.

  Another deep breath and the craving subsided, a gentle snarl and it was gone. Blake turned back to the room and found Cheever’s eyes on him.

  “What just happened?” he asked softly.

  Honesty. That needs to work for us. “I got scared,” he said. “Your family’s in Seattle—”

  “Not yet!” Cheever begged hoarsely.

  “I know. Right now, I’m it. I might not be enough, kid. But I’ll definitely fuck it up if I run away now.” Blake yawned and walked toward the bed, folding up his blanket as he went. “I’m going to take off, visit Marcia and get permission to get her stuff. I’ll be back, okay?”

  Cheever’s eyes were dark and shadowed, and Blake sighed. “Kid, you’re still recovering. You’ll probably sleep all day, but I’ll make sure Marcia’s in here before I leave. How’s that?”

  Cheever nodded. “You won’t leave—I mean, not permanent, will you?”

  Blake rested his hands on the bed rail and was unsurprised when Cheever grabbed the one nearest his handcuff. Absently, Blake soothed the skin underneath the padded cuff and used his other hand to smooth the hair back that had fallen in Cheever’s eyes.

  “I been in your life for nine years. I ain’t—haven’t—left yet.” Goddammit. He had a BA in humanities—he did. Yes, it had been mostly online courses, but he had a diploma that said he was more than a trailer park kid from Lancaster. And Cheever, with his 4.0 at CalArts, needed to see him as something other than a dumb-fuck hick.

  Why is that important?

  Fuck off, little voice, I don’t got no answer to that.

  “Good,” Cheever said softly. His mouth twisted. “I can tell when you’re upset, you know. Your grammar slips. Me and Mackey do it too.”

  “Can’t take the trailer park out of the boy,” Blake said, his voice still tense. He was going to leave then—going to back away and go back to the house and get a shower and then start what looked to be a busy day, but Cheever… Cheever raised his face a little, expecting something, and Blake wasn’t sure what happened next.

  He smoothed Cheever’s hair back one more time and lowered his head to kiss Cheever’s forehead, but he saw the disappointment in the boy’s eyes, and….

  And he brushed his lips instead.

  Cheever arched his neck and parted his lips, and Blake lingered. A breath. A heartbeat. He used his tongue to barely tease the seam of Cheever’s mouth, taste his skin, and Cheever opened on the inhale and brushed his tongue along Blake’s own.

  Blake pulled away, his heart hammering in his ears.

  “What was that?” he whispered. Cheever’s breath was awful—and he imagined his own wasn’t arctic cool either—but that touch of lips, of tongues, of breath, that was… so damned….

  Sweet.

  “I just….” Cheever’s brow knitted unhappily. “I coulda died. I ain’t—haven’t ever been kissed as a grown-up. Wanted to see if it’s worth living for.”

  Blake grunted. “God, kid, don’t judge life or death on me, on my—”

  “It was perfect,” Cheever said, and it was like the sunlight hit his eyes then, those remarkable shadowed green eyes. “I can stick around waiting for a kiss like that.”

  Blake’s skin ran hot and cold, and he had trouble catching his breath. “I… I….”

  Cheever nodded toward the door. “You got shit to do. Don’t worry, Blake. I’ll be here when you get back.”

  Blake had no answer to that. He turned and fled, making it to the front desk by sheer accident, and making arrangements for Marcia to visit Cheever on automatic.

  It wasn’t until he got out to the parking lot that he remembered he’d sat in the ambulance with Cheever on the way there and his truck was at the hospital, twenty minutes away.

  Gah!

  He was so fucking undone by one goddamned kiss!

  THREE HOURS later, after he’d showered and changed—thank God, because those other clothes had been in his pits since Seattle!—he was looking at Cheever’s room, at a loss again.

  Someone had cleaned up the little bonfire, and the mostly intact stuff was stacked in a box. Blake figured he’d start with clothes and the computer, and maybe some books and art supplies.

  He was halfway through packing when a woman appeared in the doorway.

  “Oh,” she said, sounding surprised. “I guess they’re right. He’s gone.”
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  Blake turned toward her, scowling. She wasn’t a student—being around fifty or so—and had a head full of gray corkscrew curls and skin the color of fired clay. Blake wondered if she was a teacher.

  “He’s… at a retreat,” Blake said with dignity. Was it easier to say “rehab” because he’d been or because it was such a thing in LA?

  “What… what happened?” she asked, staring at the burned art and flinching.

  Blake felt a little bit of his own rage and confusion boiling up. “I don’t know, lady. You tell me. The kid wanted to be an artist, so his brothers sent him to art school. He poured his soul into it. I know he did, because there wasn’t that much soul left for the rest of us. Then someone told him he wasn’t good enough—and worse than that, that he was mediocre. I’ve been a mediocre musician my entire life, and I have to tell you, it takes a certain amount of steel in your balls to live with something like that. Anyway, the kid had other wounds to heal, so he had to take a fucking breath.” Blake took his own fucking breath. “I’m only guessing about some of this, so you’ll have to excuse the fuck out of me if I’m wrong.”

  The woman took her own deep breath, and Blake watched her eyes get red and spill over. “He did this because I gave him a C in Mixed Media?” she asked, sounding stunned. “I… I didn’t see that much passion in his art. I could have sworn he didn’t have any to—”

  Something in Blake snapped, and he lunged for one of the pictures of Tyson/Hepzibah, with the off colors, the bleak sky, and held it up to her. “No passion?” he snarled. “You thought he had no passion? What do you see here, lady?”

  She gaped at him.

  “What do you see? Because I’ll tell you right now, I’m not an artist, but when I look at this picture, I get a whole fucking lot of rage and death. Now I’m just a mediocre musician and an ex-junkie, but I think, I see a kid painting—what? Seven of these little masterpieces? Seven pictures that look like rage and death? I see a kid painting fucking rage and fucking death and you know what I don’t do?”