Six Feet Under (Mad Love Duet Book 1)

by Whitney Barbetti

  He pulled back and waited a breath, maybe two, before pressing a light kiss to my mouth.

  I knew then, something that he couldn’t know. That one day, Six and I would kiss for the very last time. He wouldn’t know it then, but I would. This was inevitable. This was our future. Me making messes and Six cleaning them up.

  I found it ironic that Six was trying to fix me, to fix the part of me that had forcibly removed the pain from my body. The cuts would heal, as they always did. But the memory of the way he'd looked at me when he'd found me covered in blood, and the pain I'd seen in his eyes had been deeper than my own—that was something I would never forget.

  30

  December 23, 2008

  One year later

  Alcoholics Anonymous was hell.

  I wasn't one for sharing, but Six had insisted upon me going to an AA meeting for a long time. After another slip up, smaller scale than the last epic relapse in our entryway, I’d finally agreed.

  Six and I were on shaky ground as it was, though we both felt the pull to one another just as strong as when we'd first met. Something had changed the night he found me. Something we both carried in our own ways. For me, it was something I thought about constantly. Six, on the other hand, tiptoed around it. Like he was afraid of setting it off with a small comment. I missed who we’d been before I’d fucked everything up. I missed Six looking at me with love instead of concern.

  And because he insisted, I went to Alcoholics Anonymous. I listened to the stories I'd heard a hundred times before, from a hundred different people. Each time it was my turn, I said, “Thanks, I'll pass.”

  I didn't want to tell my story. I just wanted to stop feeling so much at once.

  While the rain pattered on the windows outside the basement where we held our meetings, I was delivered a reprieve.

  The host of our meetings passed out pens and papers in preparation for our discussion.

  Feeling the loneliness creep up on me, I picked up my pen and held it against my wrist, pushing its tip into one of the jagged scars that raised my skin.

  I imagined the pen piercing the flesh, imagined the blood running down my wrists as I pushed, harder and harder, waiting for the skin to give.

  A hand closed over mine, squeezing. “You want to use this pen to hurt yourself.”

  I looked up into compassionate eyes for a moment, waiting for his judgement to come. “It'll only hurt for a minute,” I said. I looked back at my wrist. “And then I'll feel relief.” I glanced around, but no one else was paying attention to us.

  With only a moment’s hesitation, he picked up my hand and brought it to the paper on my lap instead. “Here. Write.”

  I shook my head and resisted, wanting to tug my hand back. I wasn't a writer. I still couldn’t call myself an artist.

  “Write what your voice can't say.”

  It made me think of my paintings.

  “What's your name?”

  I licked dry lips. “Mira.”

  He smiled softly and put a hand out to shake mine. “Welcome, Mira. I'm Cody.”

  When I walked in the door of our house that night, I was armed with notebooks and pens. I threw them down on the coffee table and plopped next to Six on the couch.

  “What's that?” he asked, glancing at the colorful notebooks and pens. I could almost see what he was thinking: Impulsive Mira buying a bunch of random shit.

  “I thought I'd take a break from painting and practice drawing,” I said, not telling him the full truth of it. “What's that?”

  He turned his head back to the papers he'd been pouring over. “Work.”

  I wasn't an idiot. I looked at the papers when I sat down. Lydia's name was all over them. I pushed the jealousy that bubbled then, pushed it far from my mind. I couldn't be jealous of a ghost.

  But it was easier said than done. “Do you still love me?”

  Six whipped his head to me, surprise in his face. “Of course.”

  “On a scale of one to ten?”

  He thought for a moment. “Eight.”

  It wasn’t a nine and definitely wasn’t a ten, but it wasn’t the four I’d once given him. And considering all the shit I’d put him through, it was practically a miracle he loved me at all. “Did you love Lydia at an eight?”

  He put the papers aside. “I don’t think you really want to talk about that.”

  I didn’t. “You thought you might marry her one day.” To me, in my mind, that meant he loved her at a ten.

  “Yes…” He narrowed his eyes. The line between his eyes had grown deeper, so used to forming in my presence.

  “I just think to love someone enough to want to marry them, you’d have to be pretty high on the love scale.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this.” He paused. “About Lydia.”

  I couldn’t push him on this. “All right.”

  I picked up a notebook and drew lips. Six's lips. I snuck a few glances to be sure the curves were right, but I knew those lips.

  Off to the side of his lips I wrote the words I felt.

  You kiss me with lips that have loved another,

  And you tell me words that you've said before,

  And I let myself pretend for a moment that you are not the sum of your memories.

  I tell myself these lies so you don't have to.

  I thought about those words throughout the rest of the day. They were exactly how I was feeling. About Six, about Lydia, about our relationship. And long after the sun had gone down, I painted.

  Cody had been right. I needed this, needed someone to see that there was a voice inside of me, a voice I was suffocating in order to ignore the dozens of other voices in my head, all clamoring for me to listen.

  31

  December 24, 2009

  One year later

  The date would be imprinted on my brain as the best Christmas we’d ever have together. It was the Christmas I would later choose to remember, the Christmas when everything was good and right, when loving Six wasn't scary or daunting.

  He took me to the restaurant of our first job. “This isn't bacon and eggs,” I said, biting into lobster and sipping water.

  “There's always tomorrow,” he replied, eyes warm above the candlelight. And I realized I needed that; needed the promise that tomorrow was waiting. That this wasn't our end. So many times I had pushed him away only to pull him back, and for the first time, things were feeling balanced, not just in my life, but also in my head.

  A lot of it was thanks to painting, to having an outlet for everything I couldn't say. And part of it was Six, who'd taken fewer jobs out of state to be with me.

  I needed him still, and I knew I'd need him always. And I'd accepted the fact that maybe he needed me too, even if it was to assuage guilt over not saving the first woman he'd loved, years before us. Maybe I was Lydia’s replacement. But if so, maybe I could become more.

  This was our cycle. I fuck up. Six fixes. Over and over, we rode that merry-go-round. It was familiar for us. There was a season to my fuck ups and we were back in the season of normalcy.

  After dinner, Six took me on a walk down to the water. It was freezing cold and nearly deserted due to the late hour, but Six took his dinner jacket off and pulled me against his chest, holding my body firm against his as he cloaked the coat against my front.

  The moon glittered off the waves and the world, in that moment, was absolutely still. It was peace, that moment.

  “What are you thinking about?” Six asked, warm breath at my ear.

  “How peaceful it is out here.”

  Six murmured his agreement.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “How dark it is.”

  “You'll have that, after the sun goes down.” It was said with the slightest trace of sarcasm, and Six knew it because he squeezed my arms inside the coat.

  “It's nice.”

  “You like the dark.”

  He pulled me tighter to him. “You do, too.”

  I hummed. �
�It's peaceful.”

  He blew out a breath, fluttering my hair. Against my back, his body eased, no longer tense. “It doesn't have an ending—you can’t see its beginning or its end. It’s the sum of all of those things.” He pressed his lips to my hair and I melted into him. “We only get to enjoy it briefly.”

  “The peace?”

  “Peace isn't forever.” He wasn’t wrong. Peace with me lasted in longer and longer spurts, but it was never forever. He shook his head against mine. “There’s a certain kind of safety in the dark, though, isn’t there? It’s infinite. Once you’re in it, you’re in it.”

  I rubbed my cheek against his coat. “It’s constant.” I looked up at him. “Unlike my moods.”

  “That’s okay,” he said, his warm breath grazing the top of my ear. “Because I know now. I know you.”

  I snuggled deeper into his jacket. “That should probably scare you.”

  “It does.”

  I pulled away to look up into his face, and he brushed hair from my eyes.

  “It scares me, because I know how much you want to leave. I know how hard it is for you to stay. And yet, you do. You stay.” One side of his mouth lifted just barely. “I’m ready for this. It took me a bit to get ready, but I am.”

  Something in my chest fluttered. “But I keep fucking up.”

  “When I met you, you didn’t feel remorse for your fuck ups. Now, you do. You’re trying, Mira. And all I’ve ever wanted from you is for you to try.” He pressed a soft kiss to my forehead. “I’m not with you seeking perfection. I’m with you because I love you. I want to see you fight, to try, to take care of yourself. And I see it. I see you stumble, and still, you get back up. You try. And it’s one of the most admirable things about you—that you try so hard to function in a world that failed you.”

  I squeezed his wrists as hard as he was squeezing my lungs. “How can you see these things in me?” I asked, when all I could see was the damage I caused myself and others.

  “Because I actually look at you. Because you can hurt me.” His voice lowered and was softer when he spoke the next words. “Because you have hurt me. And I’ve hurt you too, I know I have.”

  “Love shouldn’t hurt, though, should it?”

  “Says who? Let me tell you something, Mira. I’ve learned two things over these nine years with you. The first thing is that if someone isn’t worth your suffering, then you can’t really love them as much as you think you do. If they don’t have the power to hurt you, do they deserve a place in your life?”

  “And what’s the second thing?”

  “That those who have hurt more, who have suffered more, have more capacity to love. And that’s what makes you a miracle. You’ve been let down by those who loved you so many times. And still, you have the room to love again.”

  I digested his words. Pain had tunneled through me, that was true. Created holes I didn’t know how to feel. And then there were moments where the love I felt for Six filled me so completely that it felt like I didn’t have the capacity to contain it.

  “You love deeply, Mira. Because you’ve hurt deeply. That makes me all the more honored that you love me the way you do.”

  “And I hurt you—on purpose sometimes—and you still love me.”

  “The fact that you can should tell you how much you mean to me.”

  It did. And it didn’t scare me.

  Back at the house, Six fed Henry and took Griffin out back for some exercise while I worked on the swirl painting. It had carried me through the last nine years, unknowingly beginning as a way to translate my feelings and, over time, becoming an agglomeration of thoughts. The swirls were varying colors and if I could have guessed, I'd put the number around a hundred, evenly spaced curved lines.

  Six came up behind me, and I turned around, blocking it, hoping to distract him. The painting wasn't finished, probably never would be, and I didn't want him to see it until I was ready for him to have it.

  I slid my hands up his chest, over the ridges of hard muscle under his shirt. My hands met his neck and climbed higher, over stubble and under a knit cap he wore in the winter, to keep his newly-bald head warm.

  “I miss your hair,” I murmured, my fingers lightly scratching the smooth skin of his scalp.

  Six didn't say anything; he just leaned in. He brought his mouth to my temple and pressed. As with every other time he kissed me, my heartrate jumped. I wondered if he could feel its beat against his lips.

  “Merry Christmas, Mira.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned into him. “It's your favorite holiday.”

  He made a short humming noise and rotated his head, dragging his face down the side of mine. Stubble bit into my skin, and I opened my mouth on a sigh.

  “Do you think we'll always feel like this?”

  He didn't ask me to clarify. “I know we will.”

  I opened my eyes and, with a hand on his chin, pulled his face to look at me. “Why?” Why me? Six could be with any woman who wanted him, any woman at all. And yet he chose to spend his days and his nights with me.

  “Because you're wrapped around me. Even if I wanted to let you go, I couldn’t.”

  I should have been offended, should have objected to Six saying that he couldn't leave me because I trapped him. But what I should feel and what I did feel were two separate things, and I couldn't force myself to feel otherwise.

  “I'm like a tumor.” It was accurate enough. I knew that as much as Six loved me, there were parts of him that were afraid of me, afraid of what I could do. To him, sure, but mostly to myself.

  “If you're a tumor, what am I?” he asked gently.

  Our conversation, though darkly humorous, was also a little sobering. Love was the vehicle for my madness, and Six was in the driver's seat. It wouldn't take much for my sanity to tip and roll downhill into the next season of my moods. “You're my disease, and my cure.”

  Six cupped my cheeks in his hands and leaned in close. I breathed in his scent and slid my hands to his neck. We breathed evenly in the little space that separated us.

  “I love you,” he said, his words soothing the ache that lived in the space around my heart.

  “I love you,” I echoed, because he needed to hear me say it. Because I needed to say it.

  “Mira,” he breathed, air on my lips. Before his lips could close on my name, I leaned in and captured them with my own. With my lips, I tasted. With my tongue, I hunted. With my fingers, I burrowed into his skin. I hoped my touch burned in him a memory.

  He picked me up, carrying me across the room. We didn't make it from the living room to the entryway. He backed me up against the wall, pressing his hips against mine, pinning my lower body to the wall.

  Pulling back, his eyes met mine in the muted light. Green eyes that meant a million things to me. My hand climbed up his neck and yanked off his beanie, tossing it behind him.

  “What do you want?” His voice was the only thing I could hear.

  “You,” I replied. “Just you.”

  He dipped his head forward, placed his thumbs on my chin. “Just,” he said, elongating the s sound into my mouth.

  “Just,” I sighed as his lips kissed mine again.

  He set my legs down and pushed the straps of my dress off my shoulders. The silky fabric kissed my skin as it slid down my arms, over my hands, and to the floor where it pooled at my feet. Six didn't bother to look at what I wore underneath, just unsnapped my bra and yanked it off until I was completely naked before him.

  I wondered what he saw when he looked at me, pale skin, and black-as-night hair. My arms and my legs were more defined from all the self-defense training I was still doing. My scars were fading.

  “A witch,” he murmured, his eyes completely shadowed from his body blocking the light. “That's what you are.”

  My hands moved to the buttons of his shirt and instead of unbuttoning them gently, I grasped the sides of his collar and pulled, hard. Buttons scattered everywhere, making music of their own across the
floor.

  I slid the tips of my fingers into his waistband and yanked him toward me, unsnapping the top button and sliding the zipper down almost immediately.

  When he was finally as naked as I was, I leapt on him, arms wrapping around his shoulders, legs wrapping around his waist. He carried me around the corner, pushing me against the door jamb, the staircase, before my ass finally landed on something solid, smooth.

  His lips grew erratic then, bruising kisses across my chin and down my throat. My neck fell back, and my head hit the wall behind me as his lips kissed, his tongue licked, and his teeth bit all the way down my front. My hand reached out and grasped his skull, fingers tightening and digging into skin. Pain bit into my skin with his touch, but it was a good kind of pain, sending me up to the edge.

  As his lips came back up my body, they slowed in pace, offering comfort instead of pain. My stomach muscles clenched when his hands spread my thighs. When his body joined with mine, his cheek scraped against mine.

  When we were both spent, Six pulled me into his arms and lay on the floor with me tucked close. I looked at what I'd been sitting on: the table that Six built. It wasn't as pretty as it used to be, broken in some places and glued back together with my remorseful and shaky fingers. But it'd held up to us.

  I looked to Six, who was looking at me. He reached up and pulled something out of his coat pocket. “You're not a jewelry kind of girl. I know.”

  “Are you already giving away what's in the box? You're a terrible gift giver.”

  He chuckled and handed me a box that had a simple white ribbon around it. “I saw this and thought of you. And even though you don't like wearing jewelry, I hope you'll consider wearing this for me.” I slid my finger under the ribbon, unraveling it. “And to remind you of what I've told you, always.”

  I scrunched up my nose, trying to guess what it could be, when I lifted the lid of the box. Nestled in foam lay a white gold figure eight on a chain. I looked up at him with a question in my eyes. “An eight? I would've taken a six.”