Page 26 of Can't Help Falling

But the man standing next to her in this elevator was plenty hurt. She could feel the murky cloud of his lostness practically filling the space. His life had been flipped onto its side. And he didn’t deserve to be manipulated.

“Um. Good guess?” she said, answering his question.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Either you really are a psychic or you were snooping through my mail.” His eyes narrowed even further. “Probably both.”

She laughed at that one. “Snooping through your mail? People come up with the wildest theories to explain me.”

“Some people make a good living with the use of nothing but smoke and mirrors.”

She smirked at him. “Tyler, if I were cheating people out of their money using smoke and mirrors, trust me, I’d be charging a hell of a lot more for my services.”

His face went long, his lips pulling down and his head bobbing to one side, as if he actually considered that to be a reasonable explanation.

“Here we are.”

She thought it was actually kind of nice the way he put out one arm to hold back the elevator doors, as if there were some head-chopping danger he was valiantly keeping at bay. It was an absent and polite gesture, one she was certain he’d performed a thousand times.

He led her down the hallway, though she could have picked his front door out of a lineup of a hundred. There was an expensive plaid welcome mat laid neatly out in front of it.

It was as ugly as her hippie pants were but in a completely different way.

Blue blood.

She couldn’t help but look at his neatly pressed slacks, his fresh-from-the-Hamptons hair, wondering if she and he could possibly be any more different than they were. Before he even opened the door, she knew just how hard it was going to be to convince him to let her into Kylie’s life.

He swung open his door, stepping aside to let her in and Fin braced herself for the inevitable onslaught of male energy that was sure to assault her. She hated going to men’s homes for this very reason.

Though she was able to ignore and/or block most male energy that emanated from a man’s person, his vibes were usually so strong in his own home that there was no shielding herself from them.

She imagined the scent of expensive cologne, “Eye of the Tiger” played by a string quartet, carafes of disgustingly overworshipped scotch, Cuban cigars. She imagined plaid lampshades and fur rugs picked out by some hot little interior decorator he’d been banging.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped inside and looked around.

“Oh,” she couldn’t help but say out loud.

“What?” he asked, obviously already on the defensive.

Fin slipped off her clogs and stretched her socked feet into the thick blue carpet of his living room. His walls were a pretty white, obviously chosen with intention, not the usual landlord beige. She spotted many pieces of Sebastian-made furniture, including a coffee table, an end table and a bookshelf along the far wall, which held more books than she’d expected of Tyler.

The couch was a gray herringbone pattern and looked comfortable and unique. She suspected that Tyler had chosen it from Mary’s shop in Cobble Hill. There was, of course, a horribly gigantic flat screen taking up one wall, like the unblinking eye of Sauron. But Serafine didn’t hold that against him. As she looked at it, she could almost hear the whistles of referees, the roar of crowds, the familiarly cadenced drone of the color commentators on football Sundays.

There were a pair of large windows on one side and morning light slanted lazily across the floor, a few dust motes looking right at home in the bright blur.

“I didn’t know you owned.” It was rare in New York not to rent.

“How’d you know I owned this place?”

“It seems obvious. Most people who rent aren’t able to make this many modifications to their places. You know, they have the broken light fixtures or cracks in the drywall because they can’t get the landlord to come fix them.” She thought of her leaky, unusable bathtub. She liked to soak long enough for the water to turn cold, her hair floating around her like seaweed. But she hadn’t gotten around to calling her super yet. Something kept stopping her, getting in the way, and each night, toothbrush in her mouth, Fin found herself glaring at her useless tub, another opportunity to get it fixed setting with the sun.

“Right.” He seemed uncomfortable. “Well.”

He led her into the kitchen. If she’d been surprised by the living room, she was downright floored by the kitchen.

“You cook?” she asked him, picking up on the vibes of a well-used kitchen immediately.

He raised his eyebrows at her. “Is there even a point to asking how you can tell that just from looking at my stove?”

She shrugged ruefully. “It’s just...obvious. I don’t know. You have all the spices lined up and a whole set of knives. And look, three different cutting boards. People who don’t cook don’t need three different cutting boards.”

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