“This is probably the worst day of the year to move,” I grumbled, slapping tape on boxes and carrying them to the door.

“It's fitting,” Six replied, with no frustration, no anger. In fact, he seemed as high as a kite. Not the drug-kind of high. But an emotional one.

I'd been sober for an entire year now. And I'd finally agreed to move in with him. We still fought, often, but Six had been right since the very beginning; I was fighting for him, for this. For us. And in my head, that seemed to make everything all right.

I exhausted him, I knew. My emotional highs and lows and all my impulsive decisions impacted not just me, but him too. But he never said anything, always holding me through it all.

Six had his own things going on in the background, with his life before me. A life I tried not to envy, a life that knew nothing about me.

We didn't talk about his life, about the obligations he had outside of me, outside of our bubble. I knew he had work stuff mixed with personal stuff and tried to be content in knowing that it wouldn't touch me. Six had told me once that the people who needed him called him Six, and I knew that I wasn't the only one who needed him.

Six had been helping Cora, as she adjusted to her new life. In what little I could pry from him, I knew she was still a teenager.

It was stupid to feel jealousy toward her—she was an orphan, after all, a girl that Six felt responsibility for. He never made me feel less than, even when I pressed him.

I carried the last box from his truck into the house he'd purchased for us.

Purchased. He actually owned it. When I’d realized the listings he was showing me weren’t rentals but homes for purchase, I’d balked. I hadn’t agreed to that. But Six and his stupid romantic comments had persuaded me into accepting it.

“I want to give you a place that no one can take away. If we rent, there’s always the chance they’ll sell. Besides, I have that cash from the sale of the Michigan home. I should invest it wisely.”

I hated that he’d charmed me. But eventually, I’d agreed to it and the next thing I knew, Six was tossing me a set of shiny keys. “I had it rekeyed. Here are the keys for the front door and the back door.”

And that was how I found myself standing in the dining area of the new place he’d bought for us. It was overwhelming when I sat to think about it, so I tried not to do that too often.

On the counter was a bottle chilling in a bucket and I stared at it blankly for a moment before he came up behind me and wrapped one solid arm around my waist.

“It's sparkling juice,” he explained. “It's our sixth Christmas together,” he continued when I just stared at the bottle. “I wanted to celebrate in an appropriate way.” He twisted the lid off the top of the bottle and poured bubbles into two waiting glasses. “Toast with me.”

“What are we toasting to?” When he opened his mouth, I blurted, “Don't toast to me again.”

“What about to us?”

I took the glass he held out to me and eyed him over the rim. “What about us?”

His smile was easy, humoring me. “To us. To your successes with the self-defense lessons and to my luck at nabbing this place.”

I clinked glasses with him and took a sip. It gave me a little shock to be drinking something so close to wine, but I drained my glass anyway and set it on the counter.

In the corner of the living room was a naked Christmas tree. I stared at it longer than what was probably normal, but it was, itself, so normal, that seeing it in the place where I'd be living felt ... strange.

“What's that?”

“It's called a tree. They live outside most of the time.”

I gave him a look. “I've never had a Christmas tree.”

“I know.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted you to have one.” He stepped up beside me and moved my hair away from the side of my face. “I'm ready to start something real with you here. I want you to see it as real too.”

It made me itchy, to have promises like a home that couldn’t be taken away, and an undecorated Christmas tree filling our—our—space with the scent of winter. “Something real?” I turned into him and his arm came around me.

“I know it's always been real to you, in here.” He touched my head and slid down to cover the side of my neck with his hand. “But I want you to see it's real outside of us, too.”

I wondered when I'd stop feeling equally elated and scared when he said things like that—but I guessed I'd be spending the rest of my life getting used to it.

The rest of my life.

We hadn't talked about marriage not once, but mostly because I was one breakdown away from disaster. And I think we both knew that and tiptoed around it carefully.

“I didn't wrap your present,” he told me, pulling me from my thoughts.

“Funny, I don't hear any more dogs?” Griffin was with Six’s mom so we could move in without worrying about her escaping and terrorizing all the trees in the neighborhood.

“I think Griffin is enough for us both. For now. Maybe next Christmas.”

I elbowed him in his ribs, but he caught the elbow before I could make a connection and steered me out of the open kitchen and living room to the study off the foyer.

The first thing I noticed were the drapes across the floor, covering up the hardwood. “Are you painting the walls?” I asked before lifting my eyes to the window that looked out over the side of the house. Right there in front of that gorgeous monstrosity of glass and wood was a sturdy-looking easel with a blank canvas already set up. To the side was a table covered in paints, bottles filled with all sorts of paintbrushes. There was a stool right in front of the easel with tentacle-looking legs.

I looked at Six for a moment, just blinking.

“Do you like?”

I turned back to the room, taking in the extra canvases leaning against the wall behind the easel, to the various pieces of furniture covered in an assortment of tools and palettes. I selected a palette knife from one of the tin cans and ran my finger over the blunt edge. “You did this?”

“My mom and I did. You needed more space, better stuff.” He stepped up to me and covered my one hand with both of his. “You're talented, Mira. I mean it. I don't want you to help me with jobs anymore—not because I don't think you're good. You're damn good. But you're not meant to steal and lie—even though you’re very good at both.” He gave me an amused look. “You're meant to create. And I'd much rather see you spend your hours with a paintbrush in your hands than watch you act a part that isn't you.” He picked up a brush with a fluffy end and opened my palm to rub it along my skin. “I want to watch you create. Will you do that for me?”

I closed my hand around the brush and slid my fingers along the handle until they met his. “I will,” I promised him as my lips hovered an inch from his. “Thank you.” Those two words were wholly inadequate, but they were all I had to give him. Six was a hundred things, and I felt like I wasn't even ten things in comparison. Why he loved me, why he wanted me to move in with him, were questions I constantly wondered but was too afraid to ask; too afraid to upset the balance of who we were by holding a mirror up and asking him to explain why.

“Turn on the music,” I said after pressing the softest kiss to his lips. “Let me create for you.”

What I couldn't say with words, I'd say with paint. And so I began.

It started with a woman's torso, marked with sets of two punctures repeatedly across her body. Six watched me in silence, bringing me water and snacks, but saying nothing as he watched me bleed onto canvas.

Shortly after midnight, I started on the serpent. It wrapped around her torso six times, a green boa constrictor squeezing her from belly to neck.

Around three in the morning, I painted her hand. Six had watched me paint the serpent with great interest, sitting on my stool when I'd needed to stand. He stayed awake the whole time, even as I added the littlest bits of detail to the scales. Then I drew the serpent's head, resting in the woman's hand. She wasn't holding it with fear, but rather she was caressing it. With her other hand, she was holding it close to her body, even thought it was squeezing the life out of her.

And on the scales of the serpent, a design of repeated sixes, I'd written one word: love.

When I was finished, dawn was cutting through the front window, pouring yellow light across the cloth-covered floor. I set the paintbrush down and Six took my hand, pulling me toward him. He turned me, so we looked at my painting together, a fusion of greens and blacks and reds, and then he pressed his lips at my ear. “Thank you,” he whispered, sending a shiver through my limbs. And I knew he wasn't thanking me for the painting but thanking me for what I'd shown him.