Page 5 of Can't Help Falling

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but just barely. He really hated all this psychic bullshit. “You got chili cheese fries.”

“So?”

“So, I assumed you were, like, a vegan or something.” He’d eaten with her before at Sebastian’s house but had been too distracted by her presence to pay attention to what she ate.

She lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”

He couldn’t help but laugh as he finally turned to look at her. He took her in from her dark, complicated braid over one shoulder, to her makeup-less face, the silver-and-gemstone rings on her fingers and bangles on her wrists. He looked her over from her loose, embroidered top to her equally loose, embroidered pants and all the way down to what looked like a pair of velvet slippers. She carried with her the scent of sage and something else earthy. As painfully gorgeous as she was, her look screamed earth child.

“Because you’re all...” He rolled a hand in the air, searching for the right word. “Organic-looking.”

To his immense surprise, she actually burst out laughing. He was used to making people laugh. It was one of his favorite things on this earth. But he’d yet to make her laugh like that. He’d thought she was most likely one of those people who never laughed, merely smirked instead. But here he was, blinking down at a row of white teeth, her lips, so full in repose, almost disappearing in the stretch of her smile. He got that solar eclipse feeling again and when he tore his eyes away from her, a faded echo of her smile followed his vision for a moment, like he’d burned his retinas on her laughter.

“I also happened to grow up in Louisiana,” she reminded him. “They run vegans out of town down there.”

So, she was a meat eater. He couldn’t say why that pleased him. He couldn’t say much of anything, really, as befuddled as he was by her smile, her laughter. Why did he let this woman throw him off his game so much? It was annoying. She wasn’t actually magical, regardless of what she told people. There was no reason at all for him to treat her any differently than he would any woman he happened to be attracted to. He could do this.

Determined to prove it to himself, his heart banged hollowly in his chest like a rock clanging against the side of a bucket. Holy crap. He was gonna do it. He was gonna finally do something about the hairs that, even now, were rising on the back of his neck. He’d been an athlete his entire life, and Tyler instantly recognized this feeling. This at-bat, at-the-free-throw-line, let-the-muscles-do-their-thing sort of feeling.

“Let’s go out,” he suddenly blurted to Serafine, his voice a little too loud, his eyes on the ground instead of her face.

Shit. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten to factor in the whole clown-shoes effect she had over him. Could that have been any more clumsy? He wasn’t even facing her. He couldn’t seem to be able to tear his eyes away from the girl in plastic gloves brushing salt off his pretzel. Stop watching that, dumbass!

Serafine turned to him, and, unfortunately, so did the woman next to them, obviously extremely curious to hear how all of this was going to pan out.

“Uh,” Serafine said, her bright eyes on the side of his face. It became immediately clear to Ty that he’d just clicked on a swinging light bulb in a dark room, tied himself to a chair and begged a concessions line’s worth of Cyclones fans to mock him.

Tyler made himself meet her eyes. He was an eye-contact sort of person, dammit! He believed in introducing oneself with his full name, in firm handshakes, in looking a person full in the face when talking with them. He’d been doing it his entire life! Why was this so hard with her?

“If you want to,” he added on lamely. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Because I want to. Go out with you, I mean.”

She just sort of stared at him for a moment.

“I mean that I want to take you out,” he tried one more time. “I mean that if you’re into it, I’d love to take you out sometime.”

“Order’s up,” the kid with the food called. Ten seconds later, Tyler found himself with two arms full of food and drinks and no answer yet from Serafine. He looked down at the hot pretzel and popcorn, the beers balancing in a tray and felt like he was tumbling through the air with his arms too full to catch himself as he fell. He wanted to toss the food in the trash and bike home.

She stood there, the water bottles under one arm and her fries in the other hand. “Tyler...”

Yikes. He could practically see the dot-dot-dot lingering in the air after his name. She’d dot-dot-dotted him. Not a good sign, my friend.

FINHADTHEdream last night. Which generally meant that today would be a foul day, no matter how flirtatious the June sun was.

It had come at dawn. Fin, twisted in the sheets of her bed, found herself trapped in a dream world with the last person she ever wanted to see again.

Her mother, painfully beautiful, smoking a long, seductive cigarette and obscured by thick layers of smoke and otherworldly blur, sat in a chair in the corner of Fin’s bedroom. She looked exactly as she had the last time that Fin had seen her, over eighteen years ago.

Long black hair, just like Fin’s, bright eyes that laughed cruelly at the world. Her mother, vividly gifted with clairvoyance, had always made it seem as if she knew absolutely everything.

She said the same thing she always said to Fin when she met her in her dreams. A man will bring you down, Serafine. Just the same as he did to me. Think of the thing you want the most in this world and then sail it down the river. That’s what a man will do for your life. Trust me, daughter. Trust me.

Serafine couldn’t remember if her mother had actually ever said that to her in real life or if this was her subconscious’s way of telling her that time was running out for her to get what she wanted the most.

All Fin knew was that her mother had truly believed that a man had robbed her of everything she’d ever wanted. The man in question had been Fin’s biological father. And the way he’d robbed her had been by getting her pregnant. With Fin.

It was ironic to Fin that a child was what had ruined her mother’s life when a child was what she herself wanted more than anything.

Think of the thing you want the most in this world.

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