Chapter 11: The Window Seat Room

At eight o'clock exactly, somebody knocked twice on the door at the top of the iron stairs.

I had been dressed since six.

I had changed my shirt three times.

In the end I wore the soft gray one with the neck that slid off my shoulder, the one I wore when I wasn't trying.

I opened the door.

Conor stood on the landing in his pickup-truck coat with a thermos under one arm and a loaf of bread under the other.

He'd shaved again.

There was a thin nick under his jaw.

"My mother's chowder," he said. "It's better the second day. I've been told it's not a romantic meal."

"It's the most romantic thing anyone has ever brought me."

"That's a low bar," he said.

"It's an honest bar."

We ate it at my little table, on the two good bowls, with my father's cast-iron pan hanging above us on its nail.

He told me about his mother, who had taught high school Latin and cooked for a crowd every Sunday.

I told him about my father, who had never said I love you in his life and had left me a pan.

We were both careful not to look at the bed.

When the bowls were empty I stood and took them to the sink, and I felt him behind me before he touched me.

"I owe you a balance," he said.

"Do you," I said.

"You told me to put it on your tab."

"I did."

"I'm settling it tonight," he said, his voice very low. "I'm going to pay it all."

I turned around.

I hadn't known I could want anything this plainly.

"Come here," I said.

He came.

He kissed me slowly, one hand at the back of my neck.

The other lay flat against my spine, where it had been on the studio couch.

I pulled him closer by his coat.

"Take that off," I said.

He did, and the sweater under it.

I put my hands on his chest and felt his heart going as hard as mine.

"Tell me what you want," he said against my mouth. "Exactly. I'll do it."

"Everything."

"That's not an instruction."

"Slowly," I said. "Don't be careful. I don't want you careful."

He laughed, a low, surprised sound, and picked me up.

I wrapped my legs around his hips, and he carried me over to the bed.

He set me down on the quilt my father's cousin had made.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The DNA Matched My Cousin, Not Me, So They Kept Me Anyway from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.