Can't Help Falling

by Cara Bastone

  Tyler could have kissed Via when he saw a bit of tension leave Kylie’s shoulders. The woman was pure genius. Making sure Kylie knew that she wasn’t plunking down into the middle of a years-long tradition. That they were all as new to this as she was. Genius.

  “How’s it going?” Sebastian asked in a low voice as Via led Kylie into the kitchen, a shy Matty scampering along after them.

  Tyler waited until they were definitely out of earshot. “Seb, I didn’t understand teenage girls when I was a high-schooler. I certainly don’t understand them as a forty-two-year-old man. I—I have no idea how to do this.”

  “She seems...all right,” Seb said. “I mean, a little shell-shocked. But she’s not like you described her, all mad at the world.”

  “Yeah, she only saves that for me. When we’re alone together I swear she’d melt me into scrap metal with her eyes if she could.”

  Sebastian hummed thoughtfully. “Well, this whole transition was never going to be smooth.”

  Tyler said nothing. He’d kind of thought that if he got her to Brooklyn, everything would just sort of smooth out.

  Oh, you sweet, naive little idiot.

  “All you have to do is get through this weekend, Ty.”

  Tyler narrowed his eyes at Sebastian. “Actually, all I have to do is get through the next four years, until she’s eighteen.”

  “I mean that after this weekend, she’ll start school and you’ll both start to get into the swing of a schedule. Things will normalize a little bit. The problems you’ll have to fix will be normal problems. Math homework, cliques at school, that kind of thing. Normal problems.”

  “Normal problems,” Tyler repeated. Though, to a man who hadn’t thought about math homework or high school politics since he’d been in high school himself, those problems seemed just as unsolvable. But still, he could see Sebastian’s point. Right now, Kylie’s issues were that her entire life was on its head and she felt completely abandoned and lost. Algebra was apple pie compared to that.

  “Beer?” Sebastian asked, gently shoving Tyler toward the kitchen.

  “Yeah.” That sounded like heaven. But then a thought struck him. “But only if you’re having one.”

  He didn’t want to be the only one with a beer in front of Kylie.

  They stepped into the kitchen and Tyler took in the scene. Matty sat at the kitchen table, shyly showing Kylie the puzzle he’d been working on. The put-together parts were assembled on one cookie sheet while the mixed-up parts were on another. More evidence of Via’s genius, he was certain, so that when dinnertime came around, the puzzle could be removed without destroying it.

  This was the kind of thing that experienced guardians and caretakers thought of. Cookie sheet ideas. He could do that. Give him a few days to get on his feet and he could cookie sheet the crap out of his life for Kylie.

  Muriel and Art, Seb’s in-laws, rose to greet him, Muriel’s hug smelling of Chanel No. 5 as she always did and Art’s handshake bone-crackingly assertive as it always was.

  And then there—yup, music meet Tyler, Tyler meet music—was Fin, standing with her back to the sliding glass door. She had one hand tucked up under her chin and a thoughtful expression on her face as she watched Tyler. When their gazes clashed, absolutely none of her demeanor changed. She didn’t acknowledge that she’d been staring at him or that now the two of them were looking into one another’s eyes. Most people’s faces would either have brightened or fallen at the sudden eye contact. Hers was as impassive as always.

  Why had he never noticed before that the woman was like a brick wall? Oh, yeah. Probably because he’d been too busy hubba-hubba-ing. But with his crush on her firmly mummified, he saw that she could be both unnerving and disconcerting.

  It was a freeing feeling, to be able to pass a quick judgment on the woman who’d fishnetted him so soundly when he’d first met her. He was no longer under whatever spell she’d cast and it made him feel like dancing, just to test the freedom of it.

  “Hi, Fin,” he said, dipping his chin to her from halfway across the room. He was over his crush, sure, but he wasn’t about to go on the suicide mission of a casual hug.

  “Tyler,” she said with that same impassive expression.

  He turned his back and rubbed his palms together. “All right. Somebody gimme a job.”

  Via rushed in, perhaps sensing his sudden, all-consuming need for something to do. “I set up two TV trays in the other room for you and Art to chop stuff for the salad while you watch the football game. Is that all right?”

  For what felt like the twentieth time, he felt overwhelming gratitude rise up in his gut for Via. He strode up to her and took the tray of salad veggies she was handing over.

  “If you weren’t my best friend’s girl, I’d tip you over and give you a movie-star kiss right now.”

  “Just trying to make this a little easier on everybody, Ty,” she said, giving his shoulder a quick squeeze.

  Without waiting for a response, Via walked quickly to Kylie. “Kylie, would you prefer to help me with the cranberry relish or Muriel with the pumpkin pie?”

  “I wanna do the pumpkin pie,” Matty said immediately, glancing quickly at Kylie. “I always do the pumpkin pie.”

  Kylie shrugged. “Relish sounds fine to me.”

  Knowing for sure that he was leaving his sister in Via’s capable hands, Tyler ducked into the next room, where he had vegetables to chop and Art, who wouldn’t talk through a single play of football. This was as close to perfection as his life was liable to get for quite some time. All he had to do was ignore Fin’s eyes on his back.

  * * *

  FIN TRIED VERY hard not to watch Tyler leave the room, but her eyes were glued to the back of his neatly ironed button-down. For the first time since she’d met him, his blondish hair was a bit too long and there was a thick layer of short stubble on his face. Normally, he’d be immaculately shaved and groomed. It had always added to his preppy, boyish appeal.

  He still looked preppy, with his pressed slacks and mint-colored shirt. But he didn’t look boyish at all. He looked tired and sad and every day of his forty-odd years. He looked like an actual human instead of an animatronic J.Crew mannequin, which is how she used to think of him.

  She frowned. The uncomfortable chill she always got when she thought of Tyler was intensifying, and she didn’t like it one bit.

  Just now, she’d felt the walls of protection and ice that he’d put up between them where there used to be rivers of nervous desire.

  His lust had made her plenty skittish. But now that it was gone, it only intensified the chill of her own guilt.

  She couldn’t ignore this forever. Regardless of her reasons for rejecting Tyler so intensely last summer, she felt bad about it. If she didn’t apologize, her eyes were just going to keep getting stuck on him, like a dam in a river. She’d tried, at Matty’s basketball game. It was the whole reason she’d gone. But then he’d gotten that phone call.

  And this situation wasn’t any better. A crowded Thanksgiving dinner where there was so much funky juju flying around, Fin had taken her place at the very edge of the room to avoid the superhighway of emotions that ran through the house.

  Especially from the newest member of the group.

  Kylie.

  In all of Serafine’s years reading people’s energy, she’d rarely met someone as guarded as the young girl was. For just a moment, Serafine got the image of the magic rose in Beauty and the Beast. Beautiful and fragile, and encased on all sides by thick glass. Serafine didn’t even know how someone could go about hiding themselves so thoroughly. Secretive, guarded people generally let their true selves show in some way or another. But there were almost no cracks in Kylie’s guard. Which made Serafine think that hiding herself was pretty much effortless at this point. She’d probably been doing it for a very long time.

  Even so, Kylie was
polite to Via and Muriel. She laughed when Via convinced Matty to try a raw cranberry and Matty made a face like a betrayed gremlin.

  “Traitor,” he said, pointing a finger at Via and making Kylie laugh again. But still, there were no cracks in her guard, even when she was laughing.

  “Don’t you have a turkey to baste, sister?” Fin asked Via.

  The timer dinged just then and Via slanted Fin a knowing look. “Thanks. Take over for the relish, will you?”

  Fin smoothly stepped in beside Kylie, not bothering to reintroduce herself. She guessed that Kylie was the sort of person who absorbed everyone’s names on the first go-round. Serafine made an educated guess that on her first night in NYC, Kylie had most likely spent a great deal of time looking at Google Maps, attempting to figure out the lay of the land.

  “You know,” Fin said, eyeing the cranberries that Kylie was mincing, “I always liked cranberry relish from the can better than homemade.”

  Both Kylie and Muriel spoke up at the same exact moment. “Me too.”

  Fin laughed at the shocked expression on Via’s face. Via made absolutely everything from scratch. Even peanut butter.

  “Muriel! I’m shocked!”

  “What?” Muriel shrugged one shoulder, sniffing regally as she adjusted her perfectly clean apron. “Everyone just puts a small scoop on their turkey to offset the flavor. And you always end up throwing most of it away after turkey sandwiches the next day.”

  “Mmm,” Matty said in a blissed-out voice. “Turkey sandwiches.” He grinned up at the ladies around him. “Nothing better than stuffing on a sandwich.”

  “That is the gospel truth, nephew,” Fin said, reaching out for a high five.

  “But cranberry relish from the can is so sweet!” Via insisted.

  “You just have to mix in some horseradish,” Kylie said. “It cuts the sweetness and makes it really good.”

  “That’s how our dad used to make it,” Tyler said quietly from the doorway, a tray of sliced vegetables in his hands.

  Kylie froze and Fin caught the bright burst of emotion from her. It was a flash of lightning that the girl couldn’t control. There was a streak of camaraderie in there, but it wasn’t welcome. Almost like Kylie didn’t want to be feeling it for Tyler. All this in a flash before Kylie firmly fixed her guard back over herself and her light was dimmed unrecognizably.

  “Your dad cooked Thanksgiving dinner?” Matty asked, oblivious to Tyler’s subdued sadness and Kylie’s discomfort. “Dad never cooks around here anymore. Not since Via moved in.”

  Fin watched Tyler set the vegetables aside and stride over to swing Matty up so that his little butt was perched on Tyler’s shoulder like a prince on a throne. “And you’re a lucky duck for that, aren’t you?”

  He deftly ignored Matty’s question about their father.

  “Muriel, is Matty an indispensable part of the pumpkin pie operation or could he be spared for a little backyard football?”

  “Go, go,” Muriel said, waving her hand. “Burn off some energy and get nice and hungry before dinner.”

  The boys were out the door in a flash and it was only when Tyler was gone that Fin saw Kylie relax again.

  As she helped her dump the cranberries into the simmering water, a thought occurred to Fin. She wanted to get to know Kylie better. There was something about the girl that waved a little colorful flag at Fin. It was a feeling that Fin generally acknowledged when it came around. The universe was telling her that there was something special about Kylie and that they were meant to know one another.

  Right before dinner, Kylie disappeared to wash her hands and a few minutes later, Fin found her lingering in the front hallway, looking at the myriad photos of Matty’s life that Via and Sebastian kept there.

  Matty sandwiched between his parents as a baby. Matty and Via’s backs as they sprinted, holding hands, into the water at Coney Island. Matty and Sebastian snoozing together on the couch.

  Fin could guess what Kylie was thinking without any effort.

  “Lucky kid, huh?” Fin asked quietly where she leaned against the far wall of the hallway.

  Kylie twisted her head, a wry look on her face. “Yeah. I thought this kind of stuff only happened on TV.” She nodded her head toward a photo of Tyler teaching a four-year-old Matty to swing a fat T-ball bat.

  Fin chuckled and nodded. “My guess is that this is the kind of childhood a kid has when the people who love him know how to love him. Know how to take care of him.”

  Kylie cocked her head and turned back to Fin. “Your guess?”

  Fin shrugged. “Not a ton of pictures on my wall growing up.”

  “Me either,” Kylie admitted after a minute. She looked down at her feet, back up at the wall, her eyes ricocheting off Fin. Her nervousness was bright and sour between them. “Are you, uh, as uncomfortable with sitcom Thanksgiving as I am?”

  Fin laughed again. “Sometimes. But I promise that as cheesy as it all seems, nobody in there is faking it. It’s just the way they are.”

  Kylie’s shoulders came back an inch. The word they drew a line through the people under this roof. It put Fin and Kylie on one side and everyone else on the other. Fin found she liked being on the same side as Kylie.

  Fin tipped her head back toward the dining room, where everyone was waiting, inviting Kylie to head there with her. And when Kylie fell into step beside her, it felt right.

  Thanksgiving dinner passed in the expected way: too much food, deft avoidance of politics and lots of moaning and groaning over distended tummies once the dishes were cleared away. Fin, the only one there without a buddy, excused herself early and headed back to her own neck of the woods.

  It wasn’t until much later, when Fin, full and exhausted, climbed into her own bed, relishing the dark quiet of her apartment, that she realized the other half of her inclination to get to know Kylie.

  When she’d been talking to her in the hallway and then later, seated next to her at the dinner table—the meal loud and laced with the complicated energies of each person stuffing their faces with stuffing—Fin hadn’t felt that guilty chill. It was almost like interacting with Kylie had canceled out the bad things she’d said to Tyler. Maybe, karmically, if she could help ease Kylie’s transition to Brooklyn, she could erase some of the pain she’d caused him with her harsh words at the ball game.

  She knew that there was a kid out there, a few neighborhoods away, who needed her help, and there was a man whom she’d been feeling guilty over for months. And maybe there was something she could do about both.

  CHAPTER SIX

  AFTER DROPPING KYLIE at her counselor a few days later and returning home to get some writing done, Tyler’s first hint that something was amiss was the fact that his doorman was bright pink and blushing like a tulip. His second hint was that as he walked through the lobby of his building, all the hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up.

  There was only one phenomenon that made that happen.

  The Fin Phenomenon.

  Tyler turned, hoping he wasn’t about to find spooky, sexy Fin sitting in one of the visitor’s chairs in the lobby.

  His skin tightened when he saw her lounging there, sparkly silver rings on the one hand she held under her chin. Her face was carved with shadows and gorgeous, her clothes ridiculously ugly yet somehow still alluring. Her legs were crossed, one foot bouncing, and, dammit...she wore her hair down.

  In general, he had a weakness for ponytails. The high, swinging ones that women wore to Pilates classes. But there was something about Fin’s inky dark hair in a solid sheet against her back that made Tyler think of getting into bed with her after a long day.

  He frowned.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I didn’t let her upstairs, sir.”

  Tyler turned halfway back around to his doorman. “Thanks, Benjy. That’s a good thing. I
wasn’t expecting her.”

  “I might not be a guest of yours,” Fin said in that accent of hers. Smoky Louisiana sage that made Tyler have to clear his throat, no matter if he was over her or not. “But I might be a guest of Benjy’s from now on. We’ve become great friends.”

  It figured she’d plant herself in his lobby and charm the crap out of his doorman. Based on the bubblegum pink of Benjy’s twenty-two-year-old cheeks, Tyler considered it a holy miracle that the kid hadn’t let Fin charm her way all the way upstairs. In fact, he wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that Benjy had made her a copy of Tyler’s key. But apparently the kid was made of stronger stuff. Tyler made an internal note to tip him even more than usual for the holiday season.

  “That doesn’t surprise me in the least, Serafine.”

  Something flared in her eyes at his use of her full name. “Where’s Kylie?”

  “I just dropped her off at her weekly court-ordered counseling session.” He considered withholding information just for the hell of it, but that sounded like a hell of a lot of work. His shoulders sagged a bit. “Her case worker is coming to meet with her right after that. So, I don’t go back to get her for another three hours.”

  “You’re picking her up in a cab?”

  “No, we’ll take the train home together.”

  “Has she tried to do the trains by herself yet?”

  He shook his head. “No. She’s definitely nervous about getting lost in the city. I’ve been riding with her until she gets used to it.”

  Fin rose up from the chair, and Tyler resented it.

  Stay over there! he wanted to shout at her. He was being too nice, volunteering too much information. He was giving her an opening, dammit!

  He imagined himself with a chair and a whip. In his head, Fin wasn’t a lion, but that same bejeweled tiger he’d pictured her as before. Stunning and deadly.