Six Feet Under (Mad Love Duet Book 1)

by Whitney Barbetti

  I swung open the door, meeting Six's hard eyes. He looked angry about something, but upon seeing me, a little bit of that left his face. “Hi.”

  “Wow.” I leaned against the door jamb. “A normal greeting from you. Wonders never cease.”

  He looked beyond me. “Are you alone?”

  I laughed and moved away from the door, ushering him in. “Always. Welcome back to my humble abode.”

  “So, you tossed the table and chairs?”

  I looked to the empty spot, where they'd once sat. “Sure did. Don't need them.” I stared at his leather-clad back as he stood halfway into my apartment and watched as his head turned and he looked at me over his shoulder.

  “Don't you need a place to sit?”

  I gestured to the one worn armchair across the room and then pointed at the floor. “These suit me just fine.”

  “Have you fed your goldfish?” He looked toward the kitchen, where Henry whizzed along in his little glass prison.

  “Just did.”

  He made a murmur of acknowledgment and then turned, as if taking in my apartment. “Have you fed yourself?”

  I shrugged. “I was thinking about it.”

  He stepped into the kitchen and opened my freezer. As if he'd memorized its contents during his last visit, his forehead wrinkled. “I see you've killed off your vodka.”

  It was at that moment that I remembered the shattered mug, which coincided with the moment that Six took it in himself. He stared down at the floor, and I hated that I couldn’t see him clearly enough.

  “Sorry, you caught me off guard. I didn't have time to prep for company,” I said, hoping to pull his attention away from the mess.

  “I don't think you're taken to cleaning up for company.” He gave me a wry smile, something that I recognized was rare from him. “But this appears to be more than just a matter of neglected housekeeping.” He met my eyes over the counter and his gaze was questioning.

  As if he could see right through me, I felt naked. Tugging on my sleeve, I made my way into the kitchen and watched as he picked up the tiny trash can under my sink and started dropping the bigger pieces of the broken mug into it. “You don't need to come in here and clean up after me,” I said, thinking of my mother. Bile turned in my stomach and I put my hand on him to push him away. “Stop.”

  He held up his hands in surrender, but no degree of pushing him had actually moved him away. He was a lot bigger than me, a fact I often forgot until I was facing him. He probably had more than a hundred pounds of muscle alone on me. His jaw was set, and his lips were in a firm line. The look in his eyes was angry but also curious.

  “Was it an accident?”

  “What do you think?” I blinked, hoping I betrayed nothing in my face.

  His head angled to the side as he took in the shards on the floor and the droplets of blood that he'd stepped in and smeared. He squatted on his haunches and picked up the piece of porcelain I'd used as a knife and held it up.

  I thought I'd felt naked when he'd looked at me from across my apartment, but the real vulnerability was in this moment, as he was seeing my own self-destruction and looking at me for answers. It was an invasion of privacy, a display of my shame, something I didn’t want him to have access to. It was nearly impossible to keep up my tough girl persona when someone could see the cracks beneath it.

  Angry, I ripped the shard from his hand and felt the sharp corners prick my palm before I dropped it into the trash. He stood up and I pressed my hand to his stomach. “Get out of my kitchen.”

  “I don't think you're angry with me,” he said.

  “Yeah, well then you're shit at reading minds.” I pushed him harder and he backed up a step, boots crunching on porcelain. “Move!” I yelled, not wanting him here for this, seeing my mess. I didn't need another mother, certainly not a Six-sized one. I let go of his shirt as he stepped past the threshold, into my living room.

  And then I saw the bloody handprint I'd left on his white shirt. He might not have noticed it for a while, except I couldn't move my eyes away from the detail of my palm imprinted so clearly on his shirt.

  In slow-motion, he looked down at his shirt and tugged the hem away from his body to see it more clearly. I waited for him to show disgust, anger, or something else.

  Instead, he looked at me with softer eyes, and I felt that uncomfortably familiar squeeze in my chest as he took my bloodied hand and pulled me toward him. Gently, he pulled my fist open so my fingers splayed out in his hand, and he pressed along each fleshy pad of my palm. I figured out that he was trying to find the wound, and when his gaze followed the trail from palm to wrist, disappearing under my sleeve, he met my eyes first. It was as if he was asking permission to pull up my sleeve, with his soft eyes and reverent hands. My heart had launched itself into my throat, so I couldn't do anything—shake my head no, nod a yes. But he must have seen permission anyway because the next thing I knew, he was tugging the sleeve up and staring at the damage I'd caused myself.

  I imagined him asking me why; why hurt myself? Why dig into my own skin? The thing about cutting that people didn't understand was that more often than not, the physical pain was much easier to endure than the mental anguish. And a physical representation of a mental hurt gave me a perverse kind of pleasure.

  The only times it became difficult for me were moments like this one, when others had to bear witness to my demons. My scars weren't liars; there was no use pretending they were caused by anything other than my own hand. The “why would you do that to yourself?” question was asked the most, as if it was more important to know why I put sharp objects against my skin than why I lived with hurt.

  But he didn't ask me why. He didn't ask anything. He shrugged off his leather jacket and led me to the sink and turned the water on before gently, as if I was made of glass, sliding my arm under the warm water. His thumb brushed on the tender skin right below the lowest cut, over scars that represented a hundred moments like this one, illustrating my weakness in a hundred ripples across my skin.

  He didn't look at me like I was a freak. He didn't look at me like I was weak. He looked at me like I was human, even as my blood stained his fingers like he'd caused this himself.

  It was in that moment, with his bare arms along mine, with his hands washing my skin, his eyes locking with mine and his mouth silent, that I understood intimacy for the very first time in my life.

  7

  November rolled into December softly, carefully, calmly.

  But every single atom in my body was anything but calm. It was starting. Again. That thing within that glued my soul to another. It wasn't drugs, though I was still using anything and everything I could get my paws on.

  Because I wasn't a fucking moron, I knew what the shift within was thanks to. Or, more specifically, who.

  Six.

  It came on gradually, like I was slowly gaining weight. But instead of fat, I was weighed down by things he was doing for me. Despite trying to avoid the intimacy growing between us, I would have to be blind and without feeling to miss the way my attraction to him curled my toes, the way it opened my lips in breathy anticipation.

  He intrigued me. He had a dozen things swirling behind his green eyes, but his lips remained resolutely shut. I wanted to see him crack, see the words he spoke with his eyes pour from his mouth. I felt like clear glass in his presence, and I wanted, for once, see him as transparently as he often saw me.

  “We could go out there, you know,” I said, watching Six observe his target slow dancing across the floor one night at dinner. It was a job we’d been working together for the last week.

  His eyes flew to mine and narrowed slightly, the candlelight casting shadows in his eye sockets. “To dance?”

  I cocked my head to the side. “Yes, to dance. What else would we do?” I licked my lower lip, and bounced the leg I'd crossed over my knee, dancing a little in my seat. With a slight smile, I lifted the wine glass and tipped it, letting the chilled white slide from the glass to m
y tongue and down the back of my throat, keeping Six's eyes on mine the whole time.

  I saw it in his eyes. What are you? I felt a little heady with the power of his ignorance and the wine.

  That night, I was Mira the temptress, in clingy red fabric and straight, glossy black hair. I hadn't missed the looks I'd received as Six had escorted us to the table, passing by the table where tonight's victim was seated.

  Six stood up and pulled off his dinner jacket, exposing the crisp white of his button up shirt to the soft glow of the overhead lights as he reached out to me. “Then let's dance.”

  I peered up at him, waiting for him to change his mind, but I was pleased when he pulled me from my seat, onto the floor, into his arms.

  Not easily distracted, Six's eyes found who he was looking for but kept coming back to mine.

  I watched his Adam's apple bob when my hand on his shoulder slid up the line of his white dress shirt, my thumb grazing his neck. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice low and thick.

  I shrugged and moved a step closer, subtly, not to scare him away. “Dancing.”

  “Mhm,” he murmured, not pulling me closer but not pushing me away. We moved along with the music, and at some point, I stopped thinking about the job we were supposed to be doing. He dipped me once, and I went lightheaded. “If I could only see what is going on inside that head of yours,” he whispered along my neck.

  I was parallel to the floor for that moment while Six held me. “You wouldn't like it.”

  He brought me back up, pulling me closer to his chest. He didn't say anything else for several minutes.

  I felt his pulse beating against my own and looked down at our joined hands. Six carried our bodies on the dance floor, our legs moving fluidly, as if the familiarity of our bodies was something intimate, something shared under silk sheets and surrounded by candlelight. It didn't take too long before whispers tickled the pockets of my brain, telling me that this was dangerous.

  I ignored them—as I often did when it was crucial for me to listen—and focused on Six's skin against my skin, on the graze of stubble on his chin.

  When the hand clasping mine opened, I expected him to let go, to bring us back to the table, back to reality. Instead, his fingers spread, inviting mine to slide into the spaces between them, weaving us together.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, throwing his question back at him.

  “Acting.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  He pulled back, meeting my eyes. “Neither are you.”

  In the middle of December, Six brought me to 256 Placer Street.

  His mom's home.

  “Reading mail that isn't yours is a federal crime, you know.”

  “Yep.” He didn't look up as he thumbed through the rest of the stack, quickly opening one envelope with a swift slide of his thumb. “Five years I think.”

  I snorted. “As long as you're aware.”

  That caused him to look at me, which he did with a narrowing of his eyes. “I'm always aware, Mira.” His gaze tracked over my face before they returned to my eyes. “If you can't tell, I often do things that aren't exactly legal.”

  A smile tugged my lips, but I crossed my arms over my chest as I looked up at the house, taking in its clean and tidy look and well-maintained garden beds. It was small but well-kept, on a corner lot in a safe suburb.

  Six pulled down the cover to the mailbox and grabbed a stack of envelopes, opening the first two in the pile.

  A shadow crossed over the picture window in the front of the house and I turned to Six. “Do you pay the bills here?”

  “Does it matter?”

  It didn't, but for some reason I wanted to know. “Yes.”

  The mailbox creaked as he shut it. “I do.”

  I looked up at the house. It was my first time meeting anyone in Six’s life, and the photo of the woman and the little girl sprang to mind. I’d meant to ask him about that, again, since he’d evaded my question before. Before I could, Six reached a hand out to me and tucked the envelopes into his back pocket.

  “Are you ready to meet my mom?”

  I placed my hand in his and felt that same, comfortable little thrill run through my skin. “Are you ready for your mom to meet me?”

  He leveled me with his gaze again and said, without any hesitation, “Yes. I am.” And then he pulled me along the walkway to the door where a woman with eyes identical to Six's waited, hands tucked into a paint-splattered apron. The apron gave me pause, because every other part of her was neat and tidy, graying hair tucked away from her face and secured with bobby pins, well-manicured hands reaching to shake mine. Her smile was wide and white, and her eyes crinkled at the corners.

  “Hello, Mira,” she said with a voice deeper than I'd expected from a woman who was almost laughably dwarfed by her son. “I'm Elaine.” She held my hand between both of hers and squeezed. “Come in. I have tea.”

  I looked at Six with a raised eyebrow, but followed him in regardless, past tidy rooms into a bright and welcoming kitchen.

  Six scraped a worn chair from a round table and gently pushed me to sit in it before he walked around the kitchen and grabbed cups from a white cabinet. Light flooded every space in the room, not letting a single shadow take up residence in any corner.

  I felt out of place with my dark hair, dark jeans, combat boots, and black sweater. I was a blight in this space, but Six's mom didn't treat me as such.

  Six and Elaine chatted about the plumbing and an issue she'd had with one of the showers getting hot water, as she poured lemony tea into pretty white mugs. “I'll check it out,” he assured her, and set a mug in front of me. “I'll be right back,” he told me as if I needed such a promise and raised a hand like he was going to run it down my hair, but he paused at the last second and curled his fingers in a fist.

  More than anything, I'd wanted him to touch me. And not just any touch, but that kind of absentminded touch. There was a certain beauty in absentmindedness and how it lived in your limbs and made you do the simplest, but most profound things. A glide of fingers through my hair, an act that wasn't just friendly, but something else. Something more. I wanted more.

  I wondered if he could see that kind of hunger in my eyes as he glanced back at me before walking down the hall to the bathroom.

  She set a plate of brownies on the table in front of me while she poured our tea. “Milk and sugar?” she asked, green eyes looking up at me from the top of her glasses.

  I smiled uncomfortably and nodded. As a child, I'd never played tea with dolls or with my own mother. And here I was about to have a grown-up tea time with a woman who intimidated me even in her turquoise fleece.

  With the first sip coating my tongue, I said, “There's whiskey in this.”

  Her eyes twinkled a little, and she winked, sipping from her own cup. “There is.” She placed it on the table and gave me a knowing look. “You looked like you needed it.”

  “Did I?”

  “Oh, yes.” She pushed the plate of brownies closer to me. “Tell me your life story.”

  I nearly choked but recovered with a light laugh. “I'm afraid we don't have enough whiskey for that.”

  She waved a hand toward the cupboards. “I have more.” She winked, and when I didn't take the invitation to drop my life story like a bucket of garbage on her table, she tilted her head. “You look like an artist.”

  “That's a random observation.” I had the thought to tuck my hair behind my ears but didn't want to appear self-conscious.

  “Ah, well, I'm an artist.” She gave me a knowing smile, like she had a hundred secrets and took pleasure in holding them so close. “Like recognizes like.” She splayed her hands on the table, and it was at that moment that I noticed the color staining her nailbeds.

  “Oh, you're a painter?” I'd dabbled with the paints my mother had given me over the last couple weeks, but apart from adding to the swirl I’d started after meeting Six, I’d done nothing else.

  “I
have a studio.” She angled her head to the room beyond the kitchen. “Want to see?”

  I wasn't sure that I did, but I agreed because for some reason, I felt a desire to make a good impression on Elaine.

  Who was this lady? Wordlessly, I followed her down the yellow hallway and into a room that threw my entire perception of her off kilter.

  The walls had originally been white, but now they were streaked with a hundred lines and splashes of color. In the middle of the floor was an easel with a canvas propped up, and a table to the right was lined with brushes and pens and tubes and bottles and not a single thing was where it should be.

  “This is my haven,” she said beside me, her hand running over the tools and paints. She looked up at me with a small smile.

  “It's a mess.” To anyone else, it might sound like an insult. But Elaine smiled wider and looked wistfully at all her babies on the table beside the easel.

  “You're a creator, so you understand it.” I doubted her creator comment. She walked toward one wall, fingers tracing the lines of color. “I thrive here.”

  It would be hard not to. I stared at everything in awe, even going as far as to pick up some of the tools I didn't recognize, holding them up and turning them around. “Palette knives,” Elaine said from beside me.

  “What do they do?”

  “Want me to show you?”

  I nodded eagerly and watched as Elaine picked up a tube and spun the cap off. “This is an impasto medium,” she said. She squirted a glob of it onto her glass surface and then grabbed a bottle of color, dropping a few blobs onto the nearly-clear medium.

  Using the palette knife, she pressed the flat side of it into the medium, mixing the color. “Here,” she said, handing me the knife. “Mix this up. I have an unglazed canvas we can use this on.”

  I took the palette knife from her hands and mixed the paint, watching as she walked over to the far wall and grabbed a canvas. It was an explosion of color, but in the center was a circle of red. It was similar to a sun in design, with its rays consisting of reds, blues, purples, and the occasional yellow. There wasn't a single space that wasn't filled with color.