Page 32 of Can't Help Falling

He growled low in the back of his throat, grateful he was sitting on an aisle and there was no one next to him to get freaked out by his weirdo behavior. Seriously. I invited you to an event that is obviously not your thing. You shouldn’t pay. At least let me venmo you.

This time the text came back quickly. Oh, good grief. Cut it out with the tired, antiquated rules on who pays for stuff. I’m happy to buy dinner. This is not a date, so quit making it weird by insisting on paying for stuff.

He glared at his phone, feeling like he’d just been slapped across the hand by a nun with a ruler. He pictured Fin in a nun’s outfit and absently wondered if she was wearing her fur bikini under there.

Whatever, so she was an excruciatingly hot nun with a ruler; still, being chastised sucked. She’d even slapped him with a “good grief.” She couldn’t have had the decency to just swear at him like a normal woman?

His mood officially soured, Tyler did nothing more than stare at the court, watching the pregame commentators chatter into microphones and stare into insect-like cameras.

His phone buzzed in his hand. He looked down at it almost trepidatiously, and sure enough, another text from Fin.

And she’s got issues around money, so don’t tease her about it until you’ve actually figured out what they are.

He shook his head, reading the text again. Fin was telling him that Kylie had issues around money? What issues could she possibly have? Though their father had been an asshole while he was alive, he’d been a very rich asshole. He’d left behind plenty of money for both Tyler and Kylie. And Kylie’s mother had been left in a very nice position when he’d died. It wasn’t like she’d been keeping it from Kylie either. He’d seen the evidence of that in Columbus. Their house was spacious and well-furnished, Kylie’s clothes and belongings were all new and expensive. She had that straight-teethed, trimmed-hair look of a kid who’d had the best of everything her whole life.

He was still puzzling out what the heck her money issues could be when out of thin air, a basket with fries and an Italian sausage with peppers, onions and yellow mustard landed in his lap. He looked up to see Fin shoving a cold beer in his hand as well. Kylie followed behind with two burritos in her hands and two soft drinks pinched between her elbows and her ribs.

“I didn’t realize you were getting me food too,” he said in surprise. “I would have at least helped you carry everything!”

Feeling like a tool to the nth degree, he scrambled up and took some food from Kylie’s arms, helping them scoot past and get settled into their seats with their food and drinks. It wasn’t until they were all sat back down that Tyler really looked down at the meal he was balancing on his knee. It was the exact meal he would have scrounged up for himself. Right down to the Bud and the yellow mustard.

He glanced up at Fin, sitting on the other side of Kylie, and she instinctually turned to look back at him. “How did you know my order?”

She just raised an eyebrow at him—the same one that the emoji had—as if she were asking him if he really needed to ask.

“Right,” he grumbled. “Psychic.”

He accepted the napkins from Kylie and laughed when the lights clicked out and heavy bass rolled through the center, making both girls beside him jump. He was used to the before-game dramatics. He often even brought earplugs to drown out the din and allow himself to think. But tonight, he appreciated watching it all through new eyes. The eyes of two people who’d never seen this particular spectacle before.

“Wow,” Kylie murmured as fire shot out of cannons on either end of the court while the home team was introduced.

Tyler felt his chest puff out, knowing it was ridiculous, considering he hadn’t actually had anything to do with it. Nevertheless, he was proud to have brought Kylie here. Proud to show off one of the perks of his job. Proud that she was, finally, having a good time, and he’d been responsible for it.

After that, the game started and Tyler found himself actually relieved that Fin was there. He’d never really noticed before how insular his attention was when he was at work. He was glad that Kylie had someone to talk to while Tyler went back and forth between taking notes in his old-school notebook and muttering voice memos to himself on his phone.

He ran down to get a quick quote during halftime from an assistant coach who never told him no. The girls still seemed interested, if a little tired, by the end of the third, but they were definitely flagging in the fourth quarter.

The event was a dramatic spectacle, sure, but the game, unfortunately, was not. It had been a blowout from the beginning, and Brooklyn fans were streaming out in droves, eager to beat the rush and get on their trains home.

“Are you going to have to talk to people after the game?” Kylie asked when there were about five minutes left in the fourth.

He knew what she was really asking. How much longer am I going to have to sit through this massacre?

“Yeah,” he said ruefully. “It’ll probably take me an hour when all is said and done.”

He glanced at his watch. That would put them in a cab home at eleven. Kylie’s eyes widened with momentary dismay that she immediately couched behind her normal, blank expression.

“Oh. Okay.”

Tyler looked back at the game. In a perfect world, the event would have knocked Kylie’s socks off. She would have been so enamored by the sport, by the energy, by the buzz of Barclays, that he would have had to pry her away at the end of the evening. He’d been certain that she’d enjoyed the first half of the game and he was a man who knew when to fold ’em.

He was officially counting this as a win.

Which meant that he wasn’t going to drag his fourteen-year-old sister along while he cajoled tired, disappointed players into giving him quotes for his column.

He sighed. What a pushover he was.

Not two days after he’d told himself that he was never leaving Kylie alone with Fin, he was turning to the two of them. “If you guys are tired, maybe Fin could take you home?”

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