Page 34 of Can't Help Falling

They both laughed and Kylie looked out the window for a second. “I think it’s an image thing,” Kylie mused after a minute. “In order for him to feel like everything is okay, everything has to look okay.”

Fin wasn’t sure how to respond to that. But it kind of made sense.

Kylie swung her head back toward Fin, a sly, lighthearted expression on her face. “How much you wanna bet that he’s researching women’s soccer right this very minute?”

They both burst out laughing.

WHEN TYLERDRAGGEDhis ass into his house at 11:15, he half expected to see every drawer in his house turned over. He wouldn’t have been surprised to walk in and see Fin eating his fanciest chocolate and perusing his National Grid bills. It would serve him right for letting a woman who called herself a psychic alone in his house. No doubt she’d read every label in his medicine cabinet. Gone through his bedside drawer. Armed herself in every way for a whole new set of “insights” where he was concerned.

He was not, however, prepared, to walk in to a silent, mostly dark house to see Fin leaning quietly on his living room windowsill, looking out into dark Brooklyn.

“Hi,” he said, letting the confusion seep into his voice. He couldn’t help but glance around the room. Besides her shoes set up next to Kylie’s, there was absolutely nothing amiss.

His house looked as if she hadn’t even been there for the last hour and a half.

“Hi. Kylie went to bed about twenty minutes ago.”

“Okay. How was it?”

“Good. We chatted in the car a little, but she was pretty tired when we got back. She grabbed a snack and went to bed.”

“Cool.” He pulled off his sneakers and removed his phone and his notebook from the pocket of his coat. Both things he would need tonight if he was going to get this article down while it was all fresh in his mind. He grabbed at the zipper of his coat and the blood left his face. Not now. This zipper was always a little finicky. But please, not in front of Fin.

Whatever, it was fine. He’d just leave his jacket on until she left and cut himself out of it if he had to.

He turned back to Fin and saw that she’d risen up from where she’d been leaning. For the first time that night, he really noticed her outfit. Silver jewelry, and a big old crystal around her neck, her hair in a braid that had dried a little frizzy since it had gotten soaked in the rain. But her clothes were unusual for her. Black stretchy pants and a black tunic. How had he not noticed that before? Why was she wearing all black? It was very unlike her.

“So...did you like the game?” he asked, because apparently he was a glutton for punishment. He asked because at heart, he was just a curious little boy still. He asked because he really wanted her to say yes.

“Meh,” she said, her words splashing onto him like a shower he should have known was going to be ice-cold. “It was something to see, I guess. Kylie liked it, though. She told me.”

Oh. Well, that was good news.

Fin stepped toward his coatrack, sliding into her long red coat, not bothering to pull her braid out from under it. Tyler experienced the same jolt he always felt when he saw that braid. He couldn’t help but wonder if it would be tensile and slick, like glass, or soft and permeable, like fabric. He may not particularly like Fin, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to poke a finger into her braid.

“Are you headed out again?” she interrupted his thoughts, cocking her head to one side as she looked at him curiously.

“What?”

“You’re still wearing your coat.”

“Oh.” He frowned down at his coat and barely refrained from blushing. Tell her the truth and look like a child who’d gotten stuck inside his coat? Or lie and risk her knowing the truth anyway?

“I...can’t get the zipper. It gets stuck sometimes.”

He put a hand in his hair and tried to scratch away the chagrin. He expected judgment, maybe even just a touch of scorn in her expression. But all he saw was a slight purse to her mouth, like she was trying to keep from laughing. Her eyes were bright with something that looked suspiciously like humor, but Tyler knew that with Serafine St. Romain, one simply never knew.

To illustrate his plight, he tugged fruitlessly at the zipper. “I need another pair of hands.”

“You know, I’ve been known to have a pair of hands.”

He looked up at her but said nothing.

She sighed, rolling her eyes. “Let’s do this.”

“Okay.” He stepped toward her and held the zipper pull out between them, trying not to think of his coat as a shield. “The problem is on the inside. See? Right here? All the fabric got—”

She leaned forward and peered down the front of the coat. “Got it. Okay. You yank there, keep it tight across there, and I’ll get the zipper.”

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