Page 77 of Can't Help Falling

“Right,” Ty agreed easily. “When it comes to men.”

For some reason, when Mary said it to her, it had been illuminating. When Tyler said it to her, it was just plain annoying. “Oh, what do you know about it?” she huffed.

Ty pushed back from the table a bit and crossed his arms. “I know that you wrote me off the second you could tell I was attracted to you. Like it was some sort of fatal flaw. Right from the very beginning. It was like you pulled a big velvet curtain between the two of us. And the one time I tried to pull the curtain back, you just about katana-ed my head off. All because you could tell I wanted you.”

He stared down at his plate. The fire in his eyes sort of leached away and a kind of sheepishness took its place. He uncrossed his arms and scraped a hand over the back of his neck. Maybe, she guessed, he was wishing that he hadn’t brought up just how much he’d wanted her back then. “I’m gonna check on the kids.”

He was up and into the living room. Fin heard their muffled voices stutter to a stop when Tyler entered the room.

She tried to regain her equilibrium.

He was back in the kitchen a second later. “She’s sitting in the armchair, not on the couch,” he reported with palpable relief.

Fin laughed. “Really, Ty, I don’t think you have much to worry about there. He seems like a nice kid. And she doesn’t even realize he has a crush on her.”

Ty’s eyes narrowed. “He has a crush on her?”

“Didn’t you sort of have a crush on every girl whose house you went over to for school projects?”

Tyler looked for a second like he was going to argue, and then his face relaxed. “Touché.”

He polished off his remaining taco. “So, if you instantly reject any man who’s attracted to you, it leads me to this question. Which men actually do have a chance with you?”

“Only the ones who aren’t attracted to me, apparently,” she replied dryly with a lift of her eyebrows and a swig of her beer.

He batted his eyelashes at her. “Does such a man exist?”

“Anyway,”she said with a pointed eye roll, though internally she was relieved that he was playing around again, “After Mary said that, I’ve tried not to—”

“Use the velvet curtain?”

“What is it with you and this velvet-curtain metaphor?”

“I dunno. Maybe it’s because all your clothes look like an old lady’s curtains?”

He was grinning dumbly at her, and she couldn’t help but laugh.

“Ever since then I’ve tried not to be quite so blind when it comes to you,” she barreled on. “And, yeah, I guess it’s helped with a lot of the men in my life. Enzo, my client, said I’ve been different. Nicer, I think he meant.” She shrugged, wanting to make this seem like not quite so big a deal. “So. Thanks.”

When she looked up from her plate, his teasing expression was long gone. In its place was a contemplative look she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him make before. He was studying her. His eyes finished traveling her face and just looked directly into hers. It wasn’t a long moment, but it was a loaded one. His navy eyes were momentarily unguarded, open. She felt as if a braided steel rope connected them, as if all she’d have to do was give that rope a tug and he’d move toward her.

“Ty? Can we watch that gymnastics meet you DVRed?”

Tyler jerked his eyes away and toward Kylie, leaning in the doorway. “What? Oh. Sure. It’s pretty old, though. Probably a month or so.”

“That’s okay,” Anthony said as he came to appear in the doorway as well. “I haven’t seen it and I like gymnastics.”

“Do you do any yourself?”

“Used to when I was younger. But then I got more into this coding club and my mom said I had to choose one.”

Fin hid her smile. She liked the way Anthony said mom. There was nothing grudging or embarrassed in his tone. It spoke a lot about their relationship.

“Usually I only get to watch it during the Olympics because we don’t get very many sports channels.”

“Well, I get all the sports channels. Just have Kylie ask me and I can record whatever you want.”

Now the smile Fin was hiding became the grin that Fin was hiding.

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