Chapter 17 Maeve #2
The pasta is... doing something. It's all stuck together in a clump. I try to separate it with the spoon, but it's not cooperating.
Smoke starts rising from the saucepan.
"No, no, no," I mutter, stirring frantically. The bottom is burning. I can smell it. How is it burning? I just started!
I turn off the heat and move the pan, but the damage is done. The sauce is dark at the edges and smells acrid.
The pasta water is boiling over now, hissing as it hits the hot burner. I grab the pot to move it and immediately burn my hand on the handle.
"Ow!" I drop it back on the stove and suck on my burned fingers.
This is a disaster.
I try to salvage it. I drain the pasta—half of it clumps in the strainer, the rest tries to escape down the drain. I scrape the least-burned parts of the sauce into a bowl and dump the pasta on top, mixing it together.
It looks... awful. Brown and clumpy and nothing like what I was trying to make.
I stand there staring at it, at the sauce-splattered stove, at the pile of dishes in the sink, and I want to cry.
I'm useless. I can't even make pasta.
What kind of wife am I? I can't cook, can't clean, don't know how to do anything useful. All I know how to do is play piano and read books and look pretty at parties—except I can't even do that right, because people keep trying to kill me.
I hear the door open, and my stomach drops. No. Not now.
"Maeve?" Sean's voice carries from the entryway.
I don't answer. I'm staring at the ruined dinner, my burned hand throbbing, tears burning behind my eyes.
Footsteps approach the kitchen, and then Sean is at the edge of the counter. I can see him out of the corner of my eye, but I don't look at him. I can't.
"What happened?" His voice is carefully neutral.
"I tried to make dinner." My voice sounds small. "I think I killed it. Twice."
There's a long silence, and then I hear a sound I've never heard before.
Sean is laughing.
It's quiet, just a huff of breath at first, but then it grows into a real laugh, warm and genuine. I risk a glance at him and find him looking at the disaster on the stove, one hand over his mouth, his shoulders shaking.
"It's not funny," I manage, but my voice wavers.
"Maeve." He's still smiling, and it transforms his face, makes him look younger. Almost happy. "Did you burn water?"
"I don't know!" The tears are threatening now. "Maybe! I don't know what I'm doing. I've never cooked anything in my life, and I thought I could just... I wanted to..."
Be useful. Be a good wife. Be something other than a burden.
The smile fades from his face as he looks at me. Really looks at me, as if he’s studying me, trying to figure me out. "Hey. It's okay."
"It's not okay,” I insist, still on the verge of tears. “Look at this mess. I can't do anything right."
He crosses to me in two strides and takes my hand, the one I burned. He examines it carefully, his touch gentle.
"It's not bad," he says quietly. "Just a little red. Come here."
He leads me to the sink and runs cold water over my hand. The relief is immediate, and I let out a shaky breath.
"I'm sorry," I whisper.
"For what?"
"For ruining dinner. For making a mess. For being useless." Tears waver on my lashes, and I can hear my voice choking up.
His hand tightens on my wrist. "You're not useless."
"I am. I don't know how to do anything. My family made sure of that."
He turns off the water and dries my hand carefully with a towel. When he speaks, his voice is low and intense.
"Your family did you a disservice. But that doesn't make you useless. You’ve already proved you can learn. If you want things to be different, they can be fixed."
I look up at him, and he's closer than I realized. Close enough that I can see how green his eyes are, the deep scar on his jaw.
"How?" I ask, swallowing back tears.
"I'll teach you." He releases my hand and moves to the stove, surveying the damage. "First lesson: this goes in the trash,” he adds with a chuckle.
He dumps the ruined pasta in the bin and starts cleaning up. I move to help, but he shakes his head.
"Just watch for now."
I lean against the counter and watch as he works efficiently, wiping down surfaces, doing dishes. Then he starts pulling ingredients from cabinets.
"We're going to make this properly," he says. "Pay attention."
He shows me how to peel and chop garlic without crushing it. How to dice an onion into even pieces. How to tell when oil is hot enough.
"You want the garlic to be fragrant, not brown," he explains, stirring the pan. "Brown is bitter. Just sauté until you can smell it, then add the onions."
I watch his hands as he works—scarred, capable hands that I've seen hold a gun, throw a punch, and now move with surprising effortlessness as he cooks.
"Now the tomatoes. And we'll add some herbs—not too much, you want to taste the tomato, not just the seasoning."
The kitchen fills with the smell of garlic and tomatoes, so much better than my burned attempt. My stomach growls as he hands me the spoon. "You stir. Keep it moving so it doesn't stick."
I take the spoon, and he moves behind me, his chest against my back, his hand covering mine as he guides the motion.
"Just like this. Gently."
I can barely concentrate. He's so close, his warmth seeping into me, his breath stirring my hair. My heart is hammering, and I know he can probably feel it. His hips aren’t touching me, and I wonder if they did, if he’d be hard. If we could burn dinner for a second time, for a different reason.
If we were a real married couple, real newlyweds, we would.
"Maeve." His voice is rough. "The sauce."
Right. The sauce.
I focus on stirring, and gradually he steps back, giving me space. But the air between us feels charged, electric.
"For the pasta, you want to salt the water," he continues, moving to fill another pot. I glance over and see him add salt, then set the water to boil. He comes back to check the sauce, standing next to me now, our shoulders almost touching.
"Taste it," he says, holding out a spoon with a bit of sauce.
I blow on it carefully and taste. It's good—really good. Rich and flavorful, and nothing like the mess I made earlier.
"It's perfect," I say, biting my lip. "But you made it."
"You helped,” Sean insists, his eyes meeting mine. "See? Not useless."
Something warm unfurls in my chest. He's being kind. Patient. So different from the cold, angry man from our wedding night.
The water boils, and he shows me how to add the pasta, how to stir it so it doesn't stick, how to test if it's done.
"It should be al dente—you don’t want it mushy,” he explains.
We work side by side in the small kitchen, and it feels domestic.
Intimate. Like we're a real couple, not two people forced together by circumstance. It would be so easy to pretend that’s the case, that this isn’t just a momentary diversion from how things really are.
"Drain it, but save some pasta water," he instructs. "We'll add it to the sauce—it helps everything come together."
I follow his directions, and then we're mixing the pasta with the sauce, and it actually looks like food. Good food.
"We did it," I say, unable to keep the smile off my face.
"You did it." He's smiling too, just a little. "I just supervised."
We plate the pasta and sit at the small dining table.
I take a bite, and it's delicious. Sean pours a glass of wine for each of us, and I try to ignore the prickling feeling along my arms, the strangeness of sitting here alone with him in this small, ordinary space, without staff or a formal dining room around us.
"Thank you," I say quietly. "For not making fun of me. For teaching me."
"You don't need to thank me." He twirls pasta on his fork. "You want to learn. That's more than most people."
We eat in comfortable silence for a few minutes, and I find myself relaxing for the first time since we arrived in Dublin.
"Sean?" I set down my fork. "Can I ask you something?"
He tenses slightly but nods. "Sure."
"What was Dublin like? Growing up, I mean."
His expression clouds. "Not good."
"Tell me anyway. Please. I want to understand you." My throat tightens, and I realize that it’s true. He knows a lot about me; I want to know more about him, this husband that I was given and that I need to learn to live with.
Sean is quiet for a long moment. Then he speaks. “No,” he says flatly, and my heart drops. “It’s not a story you need to hear.” A beat passes. “And not one that I really want to talk about.”
My heart clenches. I feel tears prick at my eyes, but I nod, looking down at my plate. I can’t push him. There’s a fragility to how things are between us right now, and I know it could quickly go back to the way it all was before.
We haven’t been together all that long, I remind myself. He needs time. Patience. Tonight was already more than I’ve ever gotten from him before. I heard him laugh, for goodness’ sake.
When we’re done eating, our wine finished, I join him at the sink, and we wash dishes together.
His shoulder brushes mine, and I'm hyperaware of every point of contact. The kitchen is small, forcing us close together, and the tension from earlier is back, despite his refusal to talk. It seems like every time we’re close together now, that tension grows faster, my awareness of him more intense.
I'm drying a plate when I feel him go still beside me. I glance up and find him staring at me with an intensity that steals my breath.
"Maeve." My name sounds like a warning on his tongue.
My throat tightens. "What?" I whisper, the word suddenly choked. I can feel how tense he is next to me.
"You should go to bed."
"Why?"
Sean’s jaw ticks. "Because if you don't, I'm going to kiss you again."
My heart stutters. I don’t know what to say, what to do… but I don’t move. I don’t think I want to. I stand there frozen, and a moment later, Sean steps closer.
He takes the plate from my hands and sets it aside, his movements deliberate. Then he turns to face me fully, backing me against the counter. His hand comes up to cup my face, his thumb tracing my cheekbone. "I'm trying to do the right thing here."
“Maybe this is the right thing,” I whisper. The words come out before I can stop them.
His jaw clenches. "Maeve—"
He leans in, and I think he's going to kiss me, but instead his forehead rests against mine. We're breathing the same air, and the moment stretches between us, taut and fragile.
"You're going to be the death of me," he murmurs.
"Sean—"
The door opens.
We spring apart as Flynn's voice carries through the apartment. "Knock knock! Hope everyone's decent!"
Sean's expression is thunderous as he steps back, putting distance between us. I'm shaking, my whole body wound tight with frustrated desire.
Flynn appears in the kitchen doorway and stops, looking between us with raised eyebrows. "Did I interrupt something?"
"No," Sean says shortly.
"Yes," I say at the same time.
Flynn grins. "Well, this is awkward. I just came by to check in and let you know that I’ve got someone coming to trade off with me tonight to keep watch, but I can come back—"
"Stay," Sean says, his voice hard. He glances at me once, something complicated in his expression, then turns to Flynn. "We need to talk about security anyway."
He walks out of the kitchen, and I'm left standing there, burning with want and confusion and frustration.
Flynn gives me a sympathetic look. "Sorry, Maeve. I have terrible timing."
"It's fine." It's not fine. Nothing is fine.
"For what it's worth," Flynn says quietly, "he's fighting a losing battle. And I think he knows it."
I don't trust myself to speak, so I just nod.
Flynn heads into the living room where I can hear him and Sean talking in low voices. I clean up the rest of the kitchen, trying to calm my racing heart, trying to make sense of what just happened.
He almost kissed me. Again. He wants me, I know he does. But he keeps pulling away, keeps fighting it, and I know why, even if I don’t fully understand it.
He told me—he thinks he'll ruin me. He thinks he's not good enough. He thinks he's protecting me by staying away.
But what if I don't want to be protected from him? What if I want to see where this could go?
I finish the dishes and head to the bedroom, closing the door behind me. I can still hear their voices in the living room, and I wonder what they're talking about. Security, probably. The threats against me. Everything except what's happening between us.
I change into pajamas and climb into bed, but I know I won't sleep.
I'm too keyed up, too aware that Sean is just down the hall.
The apartment grows quiet as Flynn leaves, and I hear Sean moving around, getting ready for bed on the couch.
Part of me wants to go out there, to talk to him, to finish what we started.
But I don't. Because as much as I want him, I'm also terrified. This is all so new, so overwhelming. A month ago, I didn't know him. Now I'm falling for him, and I don't know if I can survive having my heart broken by someone I'm incapable of escaping.
I lie in the darkness, listening to the sounds of the city outside, and try not to think about the man sleeping down the hall, or how my body is still throbbing, remembering how he nearly kissed me again. I try not to think about how much it's going to hurt if he keeps pushing me away.
And fail at all three.