The Spare They Came Begging For novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Sir

We drove to Southie with Sir standing up in the back seat, his nose stuck through the gap in the window.

Conor drove the speed limit the whole way.

"You never drive the speed limit," I said.

"I'm transporting precious cargo."

"Sir?"

"You." He glanced at me and back at the road. "Sir can take care of himself."

The Virgin Mary in her bathtub shrine had a string of Christmas lights around her now, blinking red and green.

"She came with lights?"

"I put those on her. She looked cold."

He carried Sir up the last flight because the stairs were steep for three legs.

The top floor smelled like old wood and radiator heat.

He'd cleaned. I could tell, because there was nothing on the couch except the dent shaped like him.

"I'm making dinner," he announced.

"You told me you can't cook."

"I can't. I've been practicing. I made this four times this week and the last one was almost food."

It was spaghetti with garlic and olive oil and too much red pepper.

He stood at the stove in his navy scrubs with a dish towel over his shoulder, very serious, reading the recipe off his phone.

I sat on the counter in my gray sweater and jeans and watched him burn the garlic.

"It's supposed to be golden," I said.

"It's golden-adjacent."

"It's black, Conor."

"It's very dark gold."

He scraped it into the trash and started again.

Sir lay on the kitchen floor with his chin on his one front paw and watched every move.

The second batch was golden.

He drained the pasta in the sink and the steam came up around his face and fogged the window.

He tossed it with the garlic and tasted it off the fork.

Then he held the fork out to me.

I ate it off the fork.

It was too hot and too spicy and almost good.

"Well?"

"It's almost food."

He grinned and put the fork down on the counter beside my knee.

He didn't go back to the stove.

He stood there between my knees with his hands on the counter on either side of me.

The pasta was getting cold in the pot.

Neither of us looked at it.

"I've been waiting six weeks to cook you this terrible spaghetti," he said.

"You've been waiting six weeks for something."

"Yeah." His voice dropped. "That too."

I hooked one finger in the V-neck of his scrub top and pulled.

He came.

The kiss started slow, like the one on the roof, and then it remembered how the one on the roof had ended.

He made that low sound in his chest.

I wrapped my legs around his waist and he pulled me to the edge of the counter, right up against him.

He was hard against me through two layers of cotton.

I felt it up my spine.

His hands went under my sweater and spread across my bare back, warm and huge.

"Your hands are warm," I said against his mouth.

"I've been standing at a stove."

"Complain to the stove."

He laughed into my mouth and kissed me harder.

I got my hands under his scrub top and dragged it up.

He pulled it off over his head and dropped it on the floor next to Sir, who sighed loudly and moved away.

His chest was broad and freckled and had a scatter of red-brown hair going gray in the middle, the same as his temples.

I put my palm flat over his heart.

It was going hard and fast under my hand.

"Clare." He caught my wrist, gently. "Tell me you want this. Out loud. I need to hear you say it."

I looked at him.

At his broken nose and his messed-up hair and his face, which had never once asked me for anything I didn't want to give.

"I want this," I said. "I want you. Yes."

He closed his eyes for a second.

Then he lifted me off the counter.

I kept my legs around him and he carried me down the short hallway, past the bathroom and the books, to the bedroom at the back.

He kicked the door shut behind us.

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