Page 39 of Can't Help Falling

CHAPTER TEN

“HEY, SEB? YOUHOME?”

“Back here!” Sebastian shouted from his place at the stove.

“Oh, is Tyler coming for lunch?” Via asked, a hostess’s panic in her tone. “I don’t think we have enough food.”

Sebastian chuckled at the look of pure horror on Via’s face. “Baby, it’s fine. I didn’t know he was coming so there’s no way he can be offended that we didn’t make lunch for him.”

Fin, watching all this with a raised brow, shuffled the cards and waited for Tyler to burst into the room, bringing his ridiculously loud energy with him.

They heard him wrestling with his shoes in the front hall. When he entered the kitchen, Fin’s hands stuttered on the cards.

He was...very sweaty.

It was brisk outside, probably forty degrees, but sunny, and he’d obviously gone for a jog.

Well, from the looks of things, it had been more of a sprint than a jog. His pale blue T-shirt stuck to his chest. She could see straight through it to the chest hair underneath. He wore joggers and a stocking cap, his earbuds draped over one shoulder. She’d never seen his color so high, his chest heaving in and out. She’d seen Tyler enjoy himself before. She’d seen him tease, she’d seen him loose. But she’d never seen him quite so relaxed before.

To her own chagrin, for just the flash of a second, Fin wondered what Tyler might look like right after he was finished having sex. It was only an instant, not longer than the irregular heartbeat it elicited from her, but the image was potent. She, for some strange reason, could perfectly picture him on his back in a bed, sheets askew, his hair damp with sweat, his eyes blurry and blissed out, one arm flung over his head, the other hand firmly clamped over the ass or breast of whoever he was with—

“Oh.” His eyes landed on Fin and again her hands stuttered on the cards. “Hi.”

“Hi.” She wondered briefly if he was thinking about the zipper of his coat.

“Didn’t mean to interrupt your tarot card reading, Via,” Tyler said, snarky, but not unfriendly.

She let her irritation at Tyler rush through her, a welcome, grounding feeling. This was how she was supposed to feel about Tyler. Irritated.

Via laughed. “These are just playing cards. Fin doesn’t do tarot. We’re about to play gin rummy. Did you wanna stay and play?”

To Fin’s surprise, Tyler actually looked a little regretful when he said no. “I can’t. I’ve gotta get back, shower and get some lunch together before I go get Kylie from her meeting with her social worker.”

“You could eat here,” Seb suggested.

“No thanks, I—Hold the phone, are you cooking?”

“I can cook!” Sebastian insisted. “How come no one thinks I can cook? I fed Matty for years before Via came along.”

Via and Fin made eye contact, both of them hiding their smiles.

“Right,” Tyler said soothingly, as if he had no interest in poking the bear. “Even so, I’m going to have to decline. I just came by to see if you still had that external hard drive I loaned you? I need to back up my columns. Haven’t done it in a while.”

“Sure. It’s in the closet somewhere.”

Tyler went to follow Sebastian and then paused in the doorway. “Where’s Matty?”

“Joy’s house,” Via answered.

“And Crabby?” Tyler looked around in confusion.

Fin cleared her throat and pointed down at her feet where Crabby, usually spastic and so excited about the world he could barely live, slept peacefully.

“Figures,” Tyler mumbled, rolling his eyes to the sky. “Traitor,” he said to Crabby, winking at Via.

In a move that she hadn’t performed since perhaps age six, Fin couldn’t help but stick her tongue out at Tyler. He blinked at her for a moment before his eyebrows rose and he stuck his tongue out right back at her.

“Here you go.” Sebastian came back and slapped the three-inch hard drive into Tyler’s hand. Tyler, who’d still been looking at Fin, his navy eyes strangely clear to her, even from across the room, broke the eye contact and zipped up the hard drive into his pocket.

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