My phone chimed, and I stared at the text from Six with equal parts anxiety and fear.
Just landed. Be home in about an hour.
Motherfucker.
I'd stopped on the sidewalk and stepped to the side to read his text, and with a quick glance at my surroundings, I realized I'd stopped right in front of a smoky bar.
You'll need a drink, the voice told me, so I entered.
The front door slammed behind me, the glass rattling in its casing. By the door were a pair of black boots, which I knew to be Six's. I felt pain pierce me then. I wanted him home, for weeks now. But not like this. Not with this news in my head. I stood in the foyer as I shook the coat from my shoulders, my ears open for sounds of where he was in the house. When I heard a drawer in the kitchen close, I nodded to myself and then stepped to the opposite side of the house, where my studio was.
A collection of half-finished paintings leaned against the back wall of the room, and I grabbed one of them—the “6” swirl—and put it on my easel. Over the years, I'd added to it little by little—colors that represented how I saw him. Black, when he was angry. Green, when his eyes were soft. Red, when I'd realized I'd fallen in love with him. There were a lot of red swirls, but there were others too. Our history, laid out in a rainbow of feeling.
I picked up a paintbrush and grabbed a black bottle of paint, shaking it even though it was fresh. I hadn't needed to use a lot of black recently.
Before I could open it and add to the swirl, I heard him enter the studio. I kept my back to him, even though I felt it tense up.
“Hey,” he said, not sensing my anxiety, as he crossed the room and his arms encircled my waist. His mouth fell to my shoulder from behind and he kissed the skin that was revealed from my tee.
Oh, fuck me. He was going to be so angry. I braced myself before turning in his arms and wrapping mine around him. “Hey,” I said back, nuzzling my face into his shirt. He smelled like spice—a scent that was more home to me than any other.
“You smell like smoke,” he said, before pulling his face back and cradling mine. “I thought you were cutting back?”
I nearly laughed, because that was precisely what I needed to do now. “I was at the Gold Room,” I told him, and then winced at the way his eyes narrowed.
“The bar? Did you...” he didn't really need to finish that.
I thought of the drink I'd ordered, and how I'd watched the bartender pour the vodka while saliva had pooled in my mouth. I needed to be honest with him and start with the smallest of truths in that moment. “I ordered a vodka soda,” I told him.
He moved away from me fractionally, but my hands gripped him so he couldn't get too far away.
“I didn't drink it,” I assured him immediately. “But, god, I wanted to. It scared me how badly I wanted to.”
The skin around his eyes crinkled in confusion. “Okay? But that's good. You didn't drink. Even with that temptation.” He didn't understand the anguish that was in my voice, the reason I was holding onto him so tightly. “Why don't you tell me why you wanted to drink?”
“That's the one thing I don't want to tell you.” I let go of him just so I could run my hands over my face. How did I tell him?
You're too sick to be pregnant.
What are you thinking?
He's going to be so angry with you.
“Shut up!” I said, hitting a fist onto my table. A canister filled with paintbrushes fell off the ledge, sending the brushes clattering over the place.
“You want me to shut up?”
I shook my head and dragged my fingers through my hair. I wanted to laugh. This was all so ridiculously absurd. That reaction right there was why I couldn't have children. They'd never be safe around me. “Fuck,” I said, as misery clogged my throat. I looked at him with burning eyes. “I fucked up, Six. I'm so sorry.”
I felt like I was standing in front of him with cuts around my arms again. He was watching me bleed without me even spilling a drop.
“I want to cut,” I told him, my voice breaking. “This is too much.”
He stepped up to me, placing his hands on my shoulders, squeezing, grounding me to the world, to him. “Don't. Talk to me.”
I shook my head and tried to free myself from his grasp. “I didn't want this. I didn't ask for it. I can do whatever you want, I don't want you mad at me. I don't—” I felt like throwing up. “Please, don't leave me.”
Six wiped away the tears that had pooled out of one of my eyes, and his eyes were that soft green again. I could tell he was worried about me, worried for me, but he couldn't physically force me to say the words that would change us forever. “I won't be mad at you,” he said, his voice soft but still firm.
“Yes, you will.” I sniffled, feeling my head clouding with fear. “You'll leave me.” There it was, my one fear. I couldn't have him leave me. I couldn't.
“I won't leave you,” he promised me.
“You can't say that with absolution.” I tried to break from his hold. “You don't know. I'm not good. I'm poison.” I shut my eyes tight, feeling the tears spilling over my cheeks some more. “Please let go of me,” I whispered. “I can't have you touching me right now.”
He did as I asked, but with much hesitation. “What is it?” Now he regarded me like I was a feral animal, and he didn't know whether to fight or flee. I ached, thinking that this could be the last time he looked at me with anything other than resignation for an obligation we now had together.
“I'm pregnant.”
The roles were reversed, and I felt like I was watching a potential threat. For once, the voices ceased, as if they, too, were held in suspense.
“You're pregnant?”
I swallowed and nodded.
“Okay.” He blinked and ran a hand over his clean-shaven head. I hated when he turned and I couldn't see his face anymore. I reached blindly behind me for something to steady me as I took him in, my hands finding purchase on the table and gripping on tight.
He walked toward the window that faced the front of the house, his hands on his hips. I watched a dozen different movements in his back, as he flexed and unflexed. But when he turned, I searched his face for feeling.
His face was in shadow as he looked at me, before he took five steps back toward me, the shadows slowly lifting from his body from his hips to his face, until I could see his eyes.
“Your eyes are soft,” I said, with wonder in my voice at the same time that his arms came around me.
“Mira,” he said, his breath ragged against my hair. “You're pregnant.”
I nodded, and his hands held me tighter, harder, not like I was fragile and he might break me. He pulled away from me just far enough to brush the hair from my face.
“You're not angry.” It wasn't a question. I'd known him for ten years, I knew his angry face.
“We're having a baby, Mira. Why would I be angry?”
“Because I wasn't trying to get pregnant. Because I'm crazy. Because you don't want to get married.”
“Let's tackle each one of those individually. I know we weren't trying to get pregnant. But you are. And I'm ...” he smiled, so rare for him. “I'm happy it's you.”
It seemed impossible that there was enough space in my chest for the size my heart swelled to. I knew I'd paint the swirl from this moment red.
“You're more stable now than you've been in a long time. Hell,” he said, waving a hand behind him, “You've kept Henry the Eighth alive longer than he should be alive.” I laughed, but it sounded watery from the tears clogging my throat. “I don't know what will happen, I don't know how this will change you, but you've been mine for ten years. I'm not going to walk away now.”
Love bloomed deep in my chest.
“We don't need to be married to have a kid together. We'll get through this, just as we've gotten through every other hurdle that's been thrown our way.” He gripped my waist, his thumbs brushing along my stomach. “You're having a baby, Mira. Our baby.”
It was the
first time in our relationship that I felt I was actually giving him something he wanted. And it'd only taken me ten years.
34
October 2010
One month later
Six had left again, but I was getting better at being alone. Having Griffin helped, for sure, and I didn’t know if maybe the hormones from pregnancy helped, but they certainly gave me something to keep my mind occupied.
Every day was a new challenge. Some days I was paralyzed by the fear of what this meant for us, what this would mean for the baby. She, or he, would be half of me. Would the madness I inherited from my mother be diluted enough to not be heavily present in this baby? I wasn’t sure. Six was always so calm and so steady, and I didn’t know how DNA was sorted, if it was a pot of mish-mashed ingredients poured into this human or if the ingredients were selected and added, without dilution or a combination.
I knew I was like my mother in the ways I didn’t want to be, but there were parts of me that belonged only to me. Having not known my father, there were definitely things that I knew came from somewhere, sharpened by the elements of my own personality. Were those things from the paternal side of my line? I’d never know.
But this baby would know their paternal line. It was one of the things that gave me comfort. Knowing that Six wouldn’t allow me to fail gave me another kind of comfort.
We were in a good place. The most solid place we could be in.
However, when Six called me one night while I was in the middle of poking my finger into the frozen middle of a mediocre microwaved meal, I knew that despite my progress, there were parts of me that wondered, parts that wouldn’t be sufficed until I satisfied that curiosity about Andra. Even if it meant doing things that Six wouldn’t like me to do.
“Hey,” he said gruffly into the phone.
“Hey.” I shoved my butter knife into the frozen center and heard an unpleasantly soft crunching sound as it worked its way through icy spaghetti. “What’s up?”
“It’s been a while since I’ve had you help me on a job.”
I waited a beat. “Yes…”
“How would you like to help me?”
“Doing what?” I put the frozen meal on the floor for Griffin to lap up with her dinner plate-sized tongue. I made a sour face as I heard her crunch through the frozen chunk.
“I need to break into Andra’s former home, where her uncle lives.”
I heard the sounds of waves. “Where are you?” I asked, interrupting him.
He paused and at first, I didn’t think he was going to tell me. “Oregon.”
“Really?” Even though it was only one state north, I’d never been. It seemed foreign to me.
“Yes, really.”
“Is it pretty there?”
“Do you want a photo or something?” he asked, but I could hear impatience simmering in his voice. He asked it sarcastically, but I ignored that.
“Yes. I never go on trips with you. It’d be nice to feel like I was there.”
He muffled a swear word and said, “Fine. I just emailed you one. But I want you to delete it, and then delete it from your deleted.”
I clicked open my email on Six’s laptop. “Is that your house, where you’re staying?”
“No. It’s the one across the street.” It was a ranch style, small, with yellow siding that was worn to white near the roof. “Did you delete it yet?”
“Hold your horses,” I told him, searing it into my memory before I did as he asked. “I hear the ocean,” I said, not seeing it in the photo.
“It’s behind the house I’m renting.”
I deleted the email and then deleted the email from my trash. “Where’s the uncle’s house?”
“Michigan.” Six was quiet for a moment. “I’m going to fly you here, and we’ll go to Michigan together. I assume you still remember how to do a little breaking and entering?”
“Is Andra with you?”
He sighed, and I knew he was annoyed that I wasn’t answering his questions. “Yes. She’s safe. She’ll stay here while we go to Michigan.”
“Will I meet her?”
“It’s not necessary.”
That was when it clicked for me. Andra was important to Six, and I wanted to meet her. He may not want the same thing, but Six and I weren’t just casually dating anymore. “I want to meet her,” I told him. He didn’t know it then, but it was a warning.
“I’ll fly you to Portland and we’ll fly to Indiana and then drive up to Michigan.”
“Doesn’t Michigan have airports?”
He sighed again. His patience was all but gone. “Yes, but depending on what happens with her uncle, I’d like to not have direct flights out of Michigan for the time being. Nothing to track my travels.”
It made sense. “When would we go?”
“Next week.” There was a muffled noise and I knew he’d tucked his phone against his shoulder. “I’ll buy your ticket, and we’ll go from there.”
“Where in Oregon are you?”
“Does it matter?”
“Sure.”
Again, I thought he’d ignore me. But instead, he gave me the name of a town I was already looking up on his directions website. Ten hours away by car. I’d never driven such a long distance, but if Six was buying me a flight direct to Portland which was two hours away, this would be the only chance I’d have to meet Andra.
“You’re flying here next week,” Six reiterated. “I’ve just booked the flight and emailed it to you. Okay?”
“I see it,” I told him, not confirming that I would be on that flight. I glanced at Griffin. I’d need to drop her off with Six’s mom. But I knew if I dropped her off early, she’d call Six. Not necessarily to tattle on me, but to confirm with him that she had Griffin.
It’d give him a ten-hour head start, so at least he’d know I was on my way. That was how I consoled myself for going against Six’s specific desire to have me come next week instead and bypass meeting Andra completely.
“Why me?” I asked him. “Why not take Andra back?”
“Because I don’t want her anywhere near him. Besides, she’s broken in for me once before and, well, let’s just say that I’d rather a professional do it this time.”
“Is he dangerous?” I wasn’t worried. I knew Six wouldn’t have me go if there was a chance I could be hurt.
“Potentially.” He waited a beat before continuing. “We’re going to look for papers. Remember how I thought her mother, Lydia, killed herself?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it turns out there may be a trust fund set aside for Andra, and the uncle may have killed Lydia to gain access to it. He was having money problems.”
“So I need to find paperwork for evidence then. That there’s a trust fund?”
“Yes. If there is, I need to figure out how to go about proving Lydia didn’t kill herself.” He made a grunting noise. “It’s a mess. But I believe this, Mira. I always had a hard time believing she’d ended her life. That wasn’t the woman I knew. That wasn’t the mom I knew her to be.”
I tried to process this information myself. I’d often wondered if Six was with me to save me, as he’d been unable to save Lydia. But if she hadn’t killed herself after all, would that change my relationship with Six?
Either way, I felt the need to stick my foot inside the door and force my way in, by any means necessary.
“It sounds like a mess,” I told him.
“And to make matters worse, her boyfriend, Julian, has found my mom’s house.”
“What?” That made my voice rise a bit. “Is he a threat?”
“No. I checked him out. He’s harmless, but he does care about her.”
“So he’s at your mom’s house looking for her?”
“Yes. My mom told me she saw someone sitting in a car down the street, looking toward her house.”
“Creepy much?”
“Like I said, he’s harmless. He has a hotel downtown—the one right next to that restaurant we first went
to.”
I thought about that for a minute, remembering its gold façade. “So he’s not exactly being sneaky about his presence here?” I asked.
“Maybe he thinks that his looking for Andra will get back to me and I’ll allow him to come here.”
“Sounds like he cares about her a lot.” I thought of the man I’d run into at Andra’s cabin, how frantic and persistent he’d been. “Does he have any inkling where she might be?”
“No.”
“Well, if he’s harmless, what’s the problem with allowing him to go to her?” I tried to picture Andra in my head, having her life in upheaval again and probably wanting some semblance of normality, something a boyfriend could provide.
Or, maybe I was just trying to justify the plan formulating in my head.
“It’s not that it’s a problem, necessarily. There are a lot of moving parts here. It’s not like we can have a giant slumber party at this house and wait things out.”
“Why not?”
He groaned. “You’re impossible sometimes. Listen. Her uncle, Hawthorne, is a dangerous man. If my theory is right, that he killed Andra’s mom to gain access to Andra’s trust, there’s little doubt in my mind that he’s looking for Andra right now. She’s the only thing standing in the way of gaining access to that trust.”
“But isn’t she missing?” I scooped up the licked-to-death clean microwaved container and carried it to the kitchen. “I guess I don’t know how things work, but wouldn’t she be presumed dead, and he’d have access?”
“I think, because he’s the only suspect in her disappearance, he’s not able to touch it until there is a body and he has been absolved from any suspicion.”
It made my blood run a little cold. “Okay.” I slid the fork into the dishwasher and hesitated before starting it. I didn’t know how long I’d be gone, but I didn’t want a dishwasher full of moldy food-caked plates and utensils when I returned. “So Andra has to stay safe in Oregon while you and I go to Michigan.”
“Right.”
“So, who’s keeping her safe in Oregon?” I was trying to make this easy on Six, for him to agree to my plan before I enacted it. But he was being stubborn. For good reason, sure, but it made more sense to me to have someone keeping her safe in Oregon while we were gone to Michigan.
Six Feet Under (Mad Love Duet Book 1) Page 38
