I didn't feel like I could take enough deep breaths to satisfy my body. I tried again before he spoke. “I'm sorry,” I said again. It wasn't enough, I knew that. But I tried to put myself in his shoes, tried to imagine coming home to somebody that I missed, only to find them engaging in self-destructive behavior again. It was new for me, trying on another's emotions. But we'd come to a fork in the road, and I couldn't be selfish anymore, not about this.
I stood from my chair and my knees were cool in the cold, but I walked across the room toward him wrapped my fingers around his wrist and lifted it so that I could slide between his body and the counter he was braced against, so that he was pinning me there. So that I was trapped.
He smelled so good. It was all I could do not to bury my face into his chest. For that sense to fill me from the bottom up. But he hadn't made a move to touch me back, so I knew that my apologies had not sufficed.
I loved him so much. I knew I loved him. I knew I’d missed him. I knew more than either of those things that I needed him. But then, in that moment, everything was all encompassed by how much I loved him. It amazed me that love couldn’t bottom out, that there wasn’t an end to it. That the space allocated for love was infinite.
I thought of the eight Six had traced onto my skin. Was this what he meant?
I’d put him through so much. And still, he stayed.
A glint of light out of the corner of my eye had me turning my head. My fishbowl was on the counter, a tiny little orange thing swimming around in the tank, happily. There were purple pebbles on the bottom. “Henry,” I said, reverently.
“The fifth, I think.”
My stupid fucking fish. He’d found my empty tank, he’d filled it with Henry. He’d filled me in the process, too. My skin stretched as I tried to contain all the warmth he’d just given me.
“Six.” I waited until he was looking into my eyes. “On a scale of one to ten,” I watched him draw in a breath and I mimicked the movement before continuing. But, unlike Six, how I delivered it wasn’t playful. It was serious. It was significant. “How much do you love me right now?”
Well, he wasn't going to make it easy on me. He waited a solid ten seconds before he opened his mouth. I watched as his lips formed a small circle, before they relaxed again. “Seven.”
All the breath I couldn’t hold any longer rushed out of me instant.
I didn't deserve this; I didn't deserve him to love me as much as he did, even when I did things I knew he hated. I thought the first time I'd answered that same question for him, and my number had been eight. And he was just one below that, even after we'd gone so many months not seeing each other. Even when he'd come home expecting one kind of Mira and encountering another. How could he love me so much? And why did that make me want to love him even more?
“I can work with that,” I said, tossing his words back to me, but once again my delivery sucked. Because my words were weak, spoken with relief.
When he had left me months before, I told him I was at a four. I was at a four, when he was angry with me for something wrong that had been my fault. I almost couldn't wrap my head around the kind of love that somebody would possess for me, to be at a seven when I didn't deserve a one.
“Can I touch you now?” I whispered then because everything about me was more fragile than it’d been seconds before.
He waited three full beats before nodding once. My arms went around his middle before he even finished nodding, pulling him tighter to me, pinning me harder against the countertop. The pain bit into my back, but I was glad for it. I didn't want to be numb anymore.
“I love you,” I told him, and I knew it was the first time I’d told him so frankly, the first time I hadn’t echoed it in response to him saying it first.
He sighed and then he reciprocated the hug.
Six made mother fucking bacon and eggs and I burned some toast. Our Christmas dinner wasn’t traditional, but it was us. I even sat at the chair at the table he’d built, scooted as close as possible to him.
“What do you normally do on Christmas, you know, pre-me?”
“I go to my mom’s.”
“Oh.” I thought of Elaine, felt a little guilty—but not too much because I was still me—for stealing her son from her on the holiday. “What does she do when you’re at my house,” I picked up a piece of black toast, “eating such delicacies as my buttered bread?”
“I’m not sure this still qualifies as bread.” But he humored me by eating a bite of it anyway. “She goes to her sister’s in Colorado.” I watched him swallow and then immediately reach for his coffee to wash away the black ash he’d just consumed. “I saw her already.” His eyes met mine briefly.
“So.” I nibbled on a piece of bacon. “Are we going to talk about Cora?”
“Andra, now.”
“Come again?”
“She’s known as Andra now. Wipe Cora from your brain.” He stopped, gave me a crooked smile. “I know that’s probably impossible. But, it’d be better if you’d think and refer to her as Andra.”
“An-dra,” I said, trying the name on in my mouth. “Weird name.”
“She picked it.” He picked up a piece of bacon just as I noticed I was out of bacon. I watched him hesitate for a second before he placed one end of it just between my lips.
“Wow,” I said, after I’d thoroughly chewed the piece of bacon. “If I doubted your love before, that sold me on it.”
“But did you doubt?”
I had many doubts, but I wanted to be honest with him. “I’ve never had a single doubt about you.”
He held my stare, quiet.
“I feel like I learn a lot about how to love someone by the way you love me.”
“Oh?” His jaw ticked.
“You don’t love me because it’s easy. It’s not an easy love, what we have.”
“What kind of love is it?”
I pursed my lips as I looked at him, mentally examining all the feelings I had for him. Lust and love battled with rage and heartache, but every time they fought, love won. “Mad love.”
He took that in, his eyes looking me over as he considered. “That’s right.”
He was looking at me in a way that was almost painful though, like he could fix every part of me if I let him. But I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want to be a project he could fix, because when he did—there’d be nothing left between us.
“So,” I said, swallowing. “Andra.”
“Andra,” he echoed. “There’s a lot that I want to tell you about her, but a lot of it is private.” He rubbed a hand over his head.
“Your hair is longer than usual.” I reached over, cupped his chin in my palm. “This too,” I said as I rubbed his facial hair. “You look like you just chopped down a tree and carried it into your cabin.”
He laughed, a rare and beautiful sound from him. “Anyway. The gist is that her uncle is an abusive piece of shit. He had custody of her after her mother’s sister died. She tried to get away from him by using the proper channels, but, well, it didn’t work out.”
“So, you got her out.”
“I got her out.” His hand closed over my wrist, bringing it to the table in front of him so he could play with my fingers as he talked. “Everything I tell you stays with us, Mira. Do you understand?”
“I’m not a snitch.”
“I know.” He rubbed his thumb along the lines of my palm, one of his many techniques to relax me. But I didn’t need relaxing then. Maybe he was relaxing himself. “But this is important.”
“I know,” I assured him. “You care about Co—Andra.” I corrected her name at just the last second.
“I brought her to Colorado.”
“That’s when you saw your mom?”
He nodded. “She’s safe there. It took a while to get everything sorted out, but it’s good now. She’s in a good place. And more than just physically.”
“That’s good.” I forced a happiness in my voice that I didn’t fully believe. It was hard
for me to feel genuine relief when I’d never met the girl. But because I knew she was important to Six, who was important to me, and because he was finally fucking home, I was happy. “I’m guessing you’ll have to visit her from time to time.”
“Yeah.” He stared down at my hand, which looked so small when cradled by his. “I had a place in Michigan, it’s for sale now.” He lifted his eyes. “Just thought you should know.”
“Okay. You used to live there?”
“Yes. I spent a lot of time with Lydia and Andra. When Lydia died, I started coming to the City and staying here more and more. And, after I met you, I stayed here long enough that this became my main place of residence.”
“How can you afford to support both of your places and mine? San Francisco isn’t cheap real estate.”
“I do well enough. But the house in Michigan was my mom’s. I lived in it after she moved here.” He shrugged. “The weather is better here than there. For her, at least.”
“Was it your childhood home?”
“It’s just four walls,” he said. “A home is only a home if the people you love live there.”
“And now, there’s no one you love in Michigan.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Well,” I said, standing and stretching. “Selfishly, I’m glad that Andra is in Colorado.” I pushed him lightly, encouraging him to back away from the table while still in the chair. When he was far enough away from the table, I slid into his lap. “Because that means, hopefully, you’ll be gone less than you have been. And when you do have to leave, you’ll be closer to home.”
“Are you saying this is my home?”
I looked around my apartment, lifting my shoulders noncommittally as I wrapped my arms around his neck. “I’m saying I’m your home.”
“I already knew that.” He glided a hand down my spine. “Why don’t want you us to move in together, again?”
“Because I like having my own space.”
“I kept your apartment while you stayed at my house.”
“But that’s because me staying at your house wasn’t the long game. It was short term. It made sense to hold onto this place.”
“And it wouldn’t if we moved in together?”
I shook my head. “No. Because if I were to move in with you, I wouldn’t want you to give me an easy out.”
“Why not?” He looked perplexed.
“Because giving me an easy out means I’ll take it. I’ll leave, because—unlike you—I like easy. I get scared and I run from you or push you away and if—big if—we do this, I need to not have an escape plan. Because I know myself, and I know what I’ll do.”
“Leave me.”
“Yes.” I leaned into him, savoring his spicy scent and the way his hair grazed against my cheek. “And I don’t want to leave you.”
“You want to fight.”
“I do.”
“Good.” He leaned back and tucked my hair behind my ear. “You’ve grown a lot since I’ve been gone.”
“I haven’t grown a single inch. Still short.”
“You know what I mean.”
And I did. But this was unchartered territory for me, and I didn’t know how long it could possibly last.
25
Christmas 2004
One year later
Henry the Fifth swam in his tank and I watched him dance as my own foot tapped along to the beat of Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree. Six was practically mother fucking Santa Claus, for how much he’d sprinkled Christmas cheer in my apartment.
I tossed a bit more food into the tank and turned, taking in the lights he’d strung around my apartment like the place I lived in wasn’t actually a dump but something worthy of lights. If anything, the lights only illuminated some of the uneven plaster on the wall and the many Mira-caused holes. But it was charming nonetheless.
I couldn’t even believe I was charmed by Christmas. A holiday that had long ago been commercialized, it wasn’t ever even on my radar before Six. But every time, every fucking Christmas, he went all out with the enthusiasm of a child. It was incongruent with his normally serious personality, which was probably why I was so dazzled by it myself.
By the front door were my bags from my last long-term stay at Six’s house. Though Brooke had been my first project, she hadn’t been my last. I’d had other girls I’d helped transition on, but none as long as I’d had Brooke.
Thinking of Brooke reminded me that I had her address in the bottom of those bags. Being at Six’s while I’d helped a girl get back on her feet after being assaulted had given me unlimited access to his computer, and through that, the internet. So, maybe I’d done a bit of snooping.
So far, after Brooke, I hadn’t found myself quite as attached to the other girls. I was simply a stepping stone, and Six’s home a refuge for the days or weeks that they transitioned to greener pastures. But Brooke—or, rather, Norah—had stuck on me like a scab that kept coming back, no matter how many times I picked it off my skin.
It was unethical, I supposed—not that I was gravely concerned with ethics—but I knew that looking up Brooke’s address in Six’s super fancy searching program had produced a result.
I wasn’t going to do anything with the information. Certainly not stalk her and her daughter. But they’d been the only ones on my mind while helping the other young women that I had helped.
The address was buried anyway, there in case I felt like doing something irrational—like walking by. Not…breaking in. Not that. Just checking on her.
I hadn’t heard a peep since she’d moved in with her mother. Not one word. She hadn’t been back to the Dry Run either. I knew that, because I went there almost every night.
The front door opened and in poured a shit ton of cold air and Six.
“No garbage bags this time, Mr. Claus?” I asked when I noted that his hands held a small box that he set down by the door.
“Not this time.” He closed the door, but hesitated on locking it. “Are you ready for your presents?”
“Multiple?” I asked, coming out of the kitchen and greeting him with a kiss at the door. “I must have been a very good girl.”
He smiled indulgently down at me. “You have. But, this gift is just as much for me as it is for you. A selfish gift.”
“I don’t think you could ever be selfish,” I said. “But fine. Gimme.” I held my hands out and scrunched my fingers.
“Sit on the couch. I’ll be back.”
“Should I close my eyes?”
“Only if you really want to be surprised.”
The thing was, I was always surprised. Whenever Six brought me gifts, the fact that he did was a surprise in and of itself. I’d gone through a Christmas gift-less childhood. Gifts as an adult were a novelty.
So, I parked my ass on the couch and covered my eyes with my hands.
I heard the door creak open again, felt the cool air tease my bare legs. And then it closed and Six’s creaky footsteps approached me.
“Remember what I said, about this gift being one for you and for me.”
“Okay,” I said, not having the slightly idea of what it could be.
He set something hard in my lap. “Open your eyes, Mira.” Why did he sound like he purred my name?
I opened them, looked at the box on my legs and then at him with a question. “This is the one I saw you bring in.”
“Yes.”
“But you just went outside?”
“Is this twenty questions? Just open it.”
I sighed but pulled at the foil wrapping on the side of the box until I could see where the lid met the rest of the box. I couldn’t begin to guess what was in the box, but Six gave me an encouraging nod, telling me without words to go on.
I lifted the brown lid and peeled away the white tissue paper until I was looking at … well, I didn’t know what I was looking at.
“What the fuck is this?”
Six said nothing in response to that. I picked up something rubber, tub
al-looking, with ridges and a hole that stretched from end to end. “Is this some kind of sex toy or something?”
He made a face of disgust. “What? No. You don’t know what that is?”
I shook my head and he reached into the box, pulling out a stuffed animal.
“Jelly fish?” I didn’t really do stuffed animals, so I was confused by the one in my hands. “I mean, it’s cute.” If I was a child, it’d probably be wonderful. But it made an annoying crinkle sound when I squeezed it, so I dropped it back into the box.
Six pulled one more thing out, the thing that made me stare blankly at it for a few seconds.
“Why are you giving me this?” I asked cautiously, holding up the purple collar. My heart sped up at the glittering metal of the nametag as it shone in the light. I didn’t want to look at it. I sucked in some air. “Why are you giving me a collar?”
He had a smile that I did not fucking trust, as he bent over, behind the couch, and produced another box, a larger one.
A moving one.
“What the fuck is that?” I asked, leaping off the couch and backing away like he’d just handed me a bomb.
The larger box made a whimpering sound and I started furiously shaking my head.
“Are you out of your goddamn mind?” I asked him.
“It’s possible.” He had a half smile and his eyes were lit with amusement.
“What the fuck is that?”
“Open it and see.”
“Nope. Not doing that.”
“Are you afraid?” he taunted.
But I wasn’t up to proving I wasn’t—because I definitely fucking was. The sex toy-looking thing, plus the noisy stuffed animal, plus the collar, plus the box that moved back and forth and whimpered—it all added up to the one thing I’d told him not to do.
“Come on, Mira. Don’t be dramatic.”
“Me? Not being dramatic? I think you’ve forgotten who you’ve hooked your wagon to, Six.”
“I haven’t forgotten. That’s why I got you this present.”
“You must have forgotten who I am, and the fact that I called this very thing a scam two years ago.”
Six Feet Under (Mad Love Duet Book 1) Page 29
