Six Feet Under (Mad Love Duet Book 1) Read online

  Six Feet Under

  The Mad Love Duet, Book One

  Whitney Barbetti

  SIX FEET UNDER

  The Mad Love Duet, Book 1

  By Whitney Barbetti

  Copyright 2018

  Cover photography by Max Eremine

  Cover design by Najla Qamber

  Editing by KP Curtiss

  Proofreading by:

  Christina Harris

  Amanda Maria

  Ginelle Blanch

  Epigraph Poem used with permission by J.R. Rogue

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The use of any real company and/or product names is for literary effect only. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.

  Contents

  Six Feet Under

  Author Note

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Afterword

  Pieces of Eight - Coming Soon

  Sneak Peek At Pieces Of Eight

  Acknowledgments

  More Books by Whitney Barbetti

  About the Author

  Six Feet Under

  Six wasn’t the hero I needed.

  But he was the man I wanted.

  And it was my selfish craving, the desire to own him, that would be our undoing.

  No one tells you that love is a disease. An infection that tears your heart apart, leaving you half the person you were before. A malady that leaves open wounds. An invisible disorder tracing scars in the places you couldn’t see if you weren’t looking for them.

  I was sick, but love didn’t heal me.

  Instead, it festered in my marrow, and drove me to unforgivable mistakes.

  Six was my first mistake, but he wouldn't be the last.

  Author Note

  Six Feet Under is a work of fiction but features scenes of real-life trauma. Triggers include self-harm/mental illness, but are represented in a fictitious manner. If you've struggled with mental illness, self-harm, alcoholism, or drug use this story may be triggering for you. If you are still recovering or are susceptible to relapsing, please reconsider reading. The very last thing I want is for any person to struggle because of this book.

  Six Feet Under is the first book in the Mad Love duet. Pieces of Eight, the sequel to Six Feet Under, concludes this duet.

  Characters in this novel have been featured in the He Found Me series, however it is not necessary to read those books in order to read this book.

  make way for

  the voices,

  they speak to me—

  their slithering seduction

  rolls off my scorching skin

  make way

  for the marring,

  the scarring,

  the brutal beatings

  I lay upon myself

  make way for

  ruining hands,

  make way for

  my raging heart

  make way for my

  deafening silence,

  only I can exist here,

  only I can survive

  myself

  J.R. Rogue

  To those who suffer from mental illness.

  You’re not alone. You never, ever are.

  Prologue

  The first time I listened to the voices in my head was when I was seven years old.

  It wasn't the first time I'd heard them. But it was the first time I'd obeyed their command.

  Lean over the railing, the voices taunted as I hung, black hair like wild streamers, over the side of the playground slide.

  It was this massive, yellow monstrosity, and the weather was windy, and rain pelted the back of my purple windbreaker as I leaned over, more and more, until my body was parallel to the ground at the top, my hair whipping me in the face as I stared at the ground below me. Black gravel speckled by rain drops, loose rock kicked across, as small children ran through the parking lot.

  Let go, the voices said, and I did. I stretched my arms to my sides and closed my eyes. The voices of children waiting their turn were drowned out by the echo of the voice in my head. It shouldn't have sounded as seductive as it did, not to ears as young as mine. But I'd seen a lot in my first seven years of life, and I'd see a lot more.

  On the top of the slide, balancing like a teeter-totter over the railing, I'd never felt so invincible. The high of the moment surged through me and I gnawed on my lip to stay in it.

  It seemed like hours, but it was actually only seconds before I was accidentally pushed by an impatient fellow student, tumbling, weightless, through the air. I had the last-minute foresight to cross my arm over my chest, which I'd later learn had protected my internal organs from being crushed by concrete and ribs.

  The impact of hitting the gravel below me knocked the breath out of me in a way that wasn't undesirable, nor was it unwelcome. The pain was there, of course, but it was a pain that still chased the high of being weightless, suspended above the world.

  A teacher pulled me upright and I heard her say words that sounded like we were underwater as she led me to the nurse's office. And as my arm was wrapped in a splint and ice was pressed over my face, I felt the first smile creep across my lips.

  “What's so funny?” the school nurse asked, her brown eyes crinkling at the corners in confusion as she pulled the ice pack from my nose and looked me over.

  Shhh, the voices warned, and so I did. Because I knew—as the daughter of a woman who was a slave to her own demons—to keep the dark pleasure I'd acquired from falling off a piece of playground equipment and busting my nose and arm, to myself.

  It wasn't the last time I listened to those voices when they crept in.

  Take a shot, they whispered at a high school party, which I did right before sliding down the resident rich kid's banister with just my underwear on, as I was cheered on by everyone who had seen me as invisible before.

  Take a puff, the voices whispered as a joint was passed around in a circle, and as the boy I had been crushing on blew smoke into my face. Later, I gave him a blow job in the back of his mom's car, in her garage. Like Titanic, but a lot less romantic. Still, the incident solidified my place in high school as the number one bad ass, a spot that belonged to me—the only thing that belonged to me.

/>   Snort it, the voices tempted me when I was eighteen. I obeyed, dragging my nose across a Playboy magazine spread as the coke rushed into my bloodstream. That night, I jumped off a friend's shed into her pool and broke my jaw when I hit, face-first, into the bottom of the pool. It was the first time I actually regretted following the voice, until I lost all the baby weight that had clung stubbornly to my hips, during recovery.

  The voices never steered me wrong, because I always got something I didn't know I needed as a result. A high, fame, attention, and most of all: a sense of belonging.

  Every story has a “but” though, and he was mine. The voices did me a favor until they told me to talk to him.

  1

  October 31, 2000

  I stumbled out of the bathroom into a room that spun in circles. It was like being on an amusement park ride, where you're stuck to the walls while your entire world spins around and around.

  Someone bumped into me from behind, sending me into an awkward pirouette, twirling until I met the wall, hands on cold brick, my eyesight blurring the faces around me into a lazy watercolor painting.

  I'd snorted something off the dirty bathroom counter, something I paid ten bucks for. Ten bucks. In hindsight, I had likely sniffed expired narcotics, cut with maybe a little cocaine. Probably some other garbage, too, since the dealer was new to me and surely suspected I wouldn't be a repeat customer anyway.

  Still, my nose burned and my eyes watered just like they normally did, as my fingers clutched cinderblocks, the tips of my nails tearing a little as I dug in, holding on for balance. My head held a hundred voices, all telling me something different.

  I’d only snorted the shit to silence the fucking voices, but now they were even louder. It’d backfired, and I was pissed.

  Find something stronger.

  Where am I?

  The scab from the last cut is nearly gone.

  How soon will this knock me flat?

  My skin is crawling with bugs.

  I can't feel my tongue.

  Chase this with some shots.

  I looked toward the bar, and mentally crossed out the last suggestion. Two of the bartenders who had booted me out previously were on shift. I couldn't see their faces, but I saw the neon pink mohawk on one and shiny shaved head belonging to the other as colors and faces blended together like a mixing of paints.

  Two unfamiliar hands closed in on my shoulders, and I swore I felt every fine line of their fingerprints pressing into my skin. “Hey,” a male voice said, as hot breath hit my neck. I shook away from him, knocking into multiple people in the process as I squinted, trying to make sense of which direction to go.

  I needed air. I laid my head on the concrete wall nearest me and turned my head to the exit. The familiar green fluorescent letters were fuzzy, but I moved to them as quickly as possible, feeling my heart boom in my chest, over and over, asking me to finally relieve it of everything I put it through.

  My fingers found the door and pushed hard enough to knock someone who was on the other side out of the way. I could barely see outside in the dark, the light post having been broken months before and the parking lot devoid of any headlights.

  This bar was my haunt, the place where I usually got my thrice-weekly drug refill. But with my dealer on some version of her maternity leave, she’d passed me off to another dealer.

  As I stared around the parking lot, I thought about how I'd get home. I didn't have a car, and I knew even if I did, there was no way I could drive home, not with my eyes twisting and turning and my limbs going numb. My lips formed the word “fuck,” but the word couldn't come, bogged down by a thick tongue and immovable lips.

  I was going to vomit.

  I turned toward the building and opened my eyes just as the vomit purged from my throat, onto brick.

  I don't know how long I leaned there, against the wall, pushing sweaty hair from my face as I opened my lips in a soundless groan repeatedly, until my stomach was a raisin. I laughed, but it was maniacal. I'd had some shitty experiences with coke in my life, but whatever I'd snorted had not been coke. But I'd be lying—not necessarily unlike me—if I said vomiting against a grimy bar wall was unusual behavior.

  Spitting the last dregs of vomit, I backed away clumsily, my knee-high boots scuffing on concrete and broken glass before my back hit something warm, solid. My first thought was, “Shit,” as I lost balance and nearly fell into the upended contents of my stomach.

  “Steady,” a distinctly male voice said, rumbling and warm. I smelled leather and spice, comforting scents.

  I wanted to let go, I wanted to sink into the arms that cupped my own. Exhaustion sat on my eyelids like lead weights.

  “Hmm,” was the only sound I made. My hands came up and pushed away the hair that hung in my face, scrubbing down my skin. Only when I opened my eyes did I finally take a step away from the stranger who held me still.

  I stumbled to the side when I tried to turn to face him.

  “Whoa,” the voice said. Hands gripped my upper arms again.

  Instantly, my body went cold. I'd felt hands on me many times, and most of the time they were hands filled with vulgar intentions. I didn't let men touch me without an invitation. I ripped my arms free and opened my eyes, my face warming with anger. “Don't touch me!” I yelled.

  His eyes were shockingly bright green, surrounded by deep shadows. Tired but alive, the eyes said. They were narrowed as they scrutinized me. But his lips said nothing.

  I took in his dark hair, like he'd shaved his head for so long and was starting to grow it back in. I traced over the facial hair that climbed down the sides of his face to his jaw.

  He was a man whose face you didn't forget, I knew that much.

  Talk to him, the voice in my head encouraged.

  Still glaring at him, I reached into my pocket for my cigarettes, strangely unsettled by his presence and his singular concentration on me. As I pulled the cigarettes from my pocket, my hands—slicked by sweat—dropped the box right into my vomit.

  “Look what you made me do,” I said angrily, shooting him a look.

  He again said nothing, just stared at me. I wished I had a car. I didn't like how he looked at me as though his eyes were digging into my skin. I tried to step away from him but fumbled again. When he steadied me this time, I wrenched my arm from his grasp.

  Whatever I'd snorted had given me only a thirty-second high—whatever chems that were used to dilute that line of coke had been all bark but no bite. I felt the numbness in my arms, but my head was clearing, a light fog lifting. He stared at me still, as if he was waiting for something.

  “What is your problem?” I asked, taking in my surroundings and realizing how very alone I was then. Before he could answer, someone exited the bar. I flipped my head to stare at them, seeing the man I'd bought the garbage snort from. “Whatever you gave me was crap,” I yelled, pissed at having spent my taxi fare on garbage blow.

  “It was ten bucks,” he said, shrugging, as if it was my fault for thinking I could get something of quality for such a low price. He wasn't wrong. He eyed the man in front of me before turning and walking away.

  “Do you want a cigarette?” the man in front of me asked, ignoring my question completely. He reached long fingers into the front pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a pack, offering it to me.

  Warily, I looked at him. In my experience, people didn't do things to be nice. They always had an ulterior motive. I didn't trust him, but my fingers itched for tobacco.

  He pulled out a cigarette, held it up in front of my face. Still, I eyed him cautiously. He stepped closer to me, putting himself less than a foot away and my skin prickled.

  “Do you know that man?” he asked, with an incline of his head in the direction the dealer went.

  I shook my head. “No. Why?”

  “Why won't you take one?” he asked, holding it up higher so it was at my eye level and once again ignoring my question.

  “Because I don't trust you.�
�� Internally, I laughed at my hypocrisy.

  “Because you don't know me?”

  “What is this, twenty questions?” I asked. I licked my lips, practically tasting the tobacco he held like a bribe.

  “You don't know him either. But you're refusing my free cigarette when you spent ten bucks on cheap crack from him.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I didn't snort crack.”

  “You're a liar,” he said calmly. He put the cigarette between his lips and cupped his hand around it as he lit the end. He reached a hand toward my face. My eyes got big, round, but he flicked a finger over my nostril. He came away with white powder and held it up for me as if I didn't know what it was.

  “I don't know what that is,” I lied again.

  His lips moved almost imperceptibly. Just a hair of a lift, but it was enough to let me know that he knew I was lying, but he found it strangely amusing. He blew the bit of powder off his finger and glanced at me. “What's your name?”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “Do you really think I'm going to answer that honestly?” It didn't surprise me that he was talking to me. What surprised me was that I talked to him. I didn't hold court with strange men outside of bars. I merely snorted their drugs off of dirty countertops inside of those bars.