Page 28 of Can't Help Falling

CHAPTER SEVEN

SHEDIDN’TFOOLhim for a second with those big, guileless eyes and innocent set to her mouth. Tyler could still feel the way she’d looked at him down in the lobby. He had almost been able to see the hypnotizing spirals circling in her pupils. He needed to keep his footing here.

He’d let about a thousand different vulnerabilities slip out already, so he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to strategize his way out of this conversation. He was man enough to admit that he was certainly outgunned when it came to an argument with Fin. He figured he had only one route. Blatant, unflagging honesty.

He gave in to the urge and scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. Her eyes tracked the movement.

“Regardless, Fin, you’re not nice to me. I’m uncomfortable around you. And most of all, I don’t trust you.”

“Tyler, if I could go back and be nicer to you at that baseball game, I would. I swear. I’ve wanted to apologize for months now. It’s not like talking to you that way made me feel good. But I can’t change what happened.”

In the first crack of her impassive expression, he thought for one moment that he saw something like guilt flash across her face. But that couldn’t be right. The woman was self-righteous and aloof and haughty. There was no way that she could possibly feel bad about the way she’d treated him. He was certain that he was merely one in a long line of men she’d chopped up into dog meat and fed to her pack of hell-chihuahuas.

He narrowed his eyes skeptically at her. He’d been imagining her laughing to herself about the baseball game for weeks after it happened, regaling her girlfriends with the story while she sucked away on a Cruella De Vil cigarette.

As if to prove his point, she kicked out one delectable hip, raised that imperious eyebrow and spoke again. “Don’t punish me for not wanting to date you.”

Rage ignited in his gut like a flamethrower being kicked on in a dark room. “You think I’m punishing you because my ego is bruised?” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t even know why it surprises me anymore, how little you think of me.”

“Tyler, I don’t want to fight with you.”

He scoffed.

She took a deep breath and rolled her eyes to the ceiling, like she was praying for strength. “What happened, happened. And either we move on from it or we don’t.” She took a step toward the table. He automatically stiffened in his chair. “I’d like to get past it, Tyler. And if we can’t get past it, at least ignore it. Because what I’m asking for here, would be good for all of us. Trust me.”

Trust her?Not as far as he could fly her like a kite. “What exactly are you asking for, Fin?”

“I’d like to get to know Kylie. Spend some time with her. I could teach her about the city a little bit. I was a transplant to Brooklyn at almost the exact same age as she is. I know a lot about what she’s going through.”

“You want to...mentor her?”

Fin shrugged one shoulder. “In a way. I want to be her friend. Talk to her. I feel a connection to her, Tyler. And look, I know things aren’t good between me and you. But I’m just asking for a chance to create a relationship with Kylie.”

Tyler pursed his lips. “Kylie ignores me enough already. I’m not sure I want her buddying up with someone who wouldn’t care if I fell off a cliff.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Tyler! Will you please shelve your wounded male pride for a moment?” Her hands came up into the air in a rare show of temper. He seemed to have found the end of some rope of hers. “I’m trying to explain that I have a connection to her! This isn’t about you and me! It’s bigger than that!”

“Connection?” he scoffed again. “You don’t know her! You met her once. What kind of connection could you possibly have? The unbreakable bond of how much you both enjoy gravy on your turkey?”

She huffed out a furious breath. When she spoke, it was with dangerous slowness to her sagey, southern lilt, a deceptive laziness where an East Coaster might have overarticulated. “I’m trying to tell you that literally the exact same thing happened to me as just happened to her. My mother couldn’t take care of me when I was thirteen years old and she signed me over to a family member. Just like that, she was gone from my life, and I was plunked headfirst into Brooklyn.” She crossed her arms again. “See the connection now?”

Tyler had no comeback for that. He’d heard the word connection and pictured Fin waving her hands over a crystal ball with Kylie’s face reflected in it. He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck again, at a loss for what to say.

“I could actually help you, Ty. Her. I’m not just sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong. The girl and I have a kinship. Or, we could, if you don’t stomp all over it.”

Even with the indisputable facts right there in front of him, Tyler didn’t concede the point. He felt ornery and exhausted. Frankly, he was sick to death of not understanding Kylie. Of being so constantly in the dark with someone he truly loved. He didn’t understand teenage girls. He didn’t understand what it felt like to have no parents in his life at all—though his hadn’t exactly been an after-school special. He didn’t understand how scary learning Brooklyn might be, and he was starting to suspect he didn’t understand women at all.

It irked him that Fin, just by dint of who she was and how she’d been born, might have a speedy little highway of a shortcut to understanding and bonding with Kylie.

Honesty, he reminded himself. It was his only course of action.

“Fin, please try to understand my perspective here, all right? I have no idea how to do any of this. As in, I barely know how to talk to her, and here I am, charged with making all sorts of decisions for the girl. Case in point, who I let spend time with her. I have no experience with that at all except for my own gut.” Which he was barely trusting these days. “I’m not trying to be an ass. I’m not trying to hold what you said to me at the baseball game against you, but tell me. Why, why, would I let Kylie spend time with someone who I’ve already decided is bad for me to be around? That makes no sense at all! This isn’t wounded male pride talking here. This is me making a judgment call. I’ve decided not to let my little sister spend time with someone who is capable of cutting others to shreds with just a few cruel words. Call me crazy, I guess, but my decision actually makes sense to me!”

Fin’s mouth opened and closed for a moment in a way that Tyler had never before seen. She looked utterly flummoxed. Her usual impassive, all-knowing expression was wiped clean from her face, replaced with this gaping-fish thing she was doing. It was incredibly satisfying. If he’d had the energy, Tyler might have snapped a photo for his fridge.

“I don’t treat other women that way,” she eventually said.

Tyler had to laugh at what he deemed the sheer ridiculousness of that proclamation. “Oh, so it’s only half the human race that you treat like shit? That’s supposed to make me feel better about you spending time with my little sister?”

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