Page 120 of Can't Help Falling

“And what was the full picture?”

“That I just wasn’t ready.” She laughed, but it was a complicated sound, filled with so much more than humor. “The universe knew. I mean, if I’d gotten a kid thrown my way, I wouldn’t have screwed anything up too badly, I don’t think. I have good judgment and a big heart. But all the reasons I wanted to be a foster parent, well, I was ignoring the biggest one.” She looked up at him and for the very first time, Tyler thought of her eyes as more than light or ice. They were warm and open and inviting, like a blanket of sand seen through two feet of the clearest water. What color were those eyes of hers? It struck him then that he’d never even tried to figure it out before. This woman had so many ways of keeping others just one step farther away than they’d like to be. Her tiger eyes, her sharp words, that emoji eyebrow. He understood then, as clearly as he could see her, what she meant.

“You didn’t want to be alone,” he whispered.

“Exactly.”

He tipped her chin up, had her meeting his eyes again. “You don’t have to sound quite so ashamed about that, love.”

“I’m not ashamed about wanting a family. I’m ashamed to have been so sure that that wasn’t the reason I was doing all this. To have transformed it into this wholly selfless desire in my head.”

“Do you still want to be a foster parent?”

“Yes. I’m positive that it’s part of the reason I’m here, on this earth.”

Tyler knew better than to ask, “Then what’s the problem?”

“You want to know what the problem is, then?” she asked, emoji eyebrow in full force.

He laughed and kissed her lips and then that eyebrow. “God, you’re freaky. Yes. I do want to know what the problem is.”

“It was two things, actually. Via’s logjam theory and watching you talk through that fight with Ky last month.”

“What’s the logjam theory?”

Fin played with his hand, tracing the lines there. He wondered if she could tell his date of death. “That you can’t expect to fully love with any part of your heart if some of it is dammed up.”

“You’re not dammed up!” he protested, instantly irritated on her behalf.

She smiled at his reaction. “Not anymore. Not since letting you in. Loving you. But I think I need to get used to it for a while. Loving you and Kylie. Using my whole heart. I have to build my muscles. It’s like not having used my left arm my entire life and then suddenly someone hands me a firehose and says, ‘Hold on!’”

“A firehose, huh?” He kissed her knuckles. “That’s how much you love me?”

She rolled her eyes. “Listening to you fight with Kylie... Tyler, it was masterful. I know you don’t want to be a parent. And that’s fine. But as a mentor? A guardian? Jeez. I was blown away by how you handled that. With compassion and anger and honesty and so much love. You had all these tools in your toolbox. And it just hit me. Tyler uses the whole toolbox. And he has his entire life. You’re equipped to deal with Kylie because you love with your whole heart, Ty. I accused you of being stunted at that ball game. But I should have pointed that finger at myself.”

“Quit calling yourself stunted,” he said grumpily. “You’re perfect. End of story.”

She laughed and shook her head. “Whatever you say.”

“Is this your way of telling me that you’re not sure you want kids either?”

“Biological kids?” She gave him crazy eyes. “Ah, no. We have that in common. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I wasn’t really raised by either of my birth parents, didn’t even know my father. But yeah. Not interested. There are so many kids in the world who need a hand and a home. That’s what I want.”

He was quiet for a long time and, somehow, they found themselves seated against each other, Fin’s head tipped back onto his shoulder, their eyes watching the sky, using the other’s body to keep their own upright. “Fin?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not asking you to go full psychic on me or anything. But if you had to wager a guess, based on how well you know me, am I gonna be into fostering a kid with you at some point?”

“I don’t see the future, Tyler.”

“I know—”

“But, sometimes I get these images. Other people might call them visions, but everything in the future is so subjective, always prone to change, that I don’t usually put any stock in them.”

“Do you have one about me?”

“I can see you a few years older, hanging up after a call with Kylie. She’s at college, I think. Or maybe some kind of abroad program. You miss her so bad you kind of slump down over the kitchen counter. I’m there, and I ask if everything’s all right. You give me this look like, I have all this energy and love and time and nowhere to put it. And we both kind of know that it’s time to talk about fostering again.”

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