Page 68 of Can't Help Falling

“Yeah, but it’s really your style. And I like your style. It works.” He took a big swig of his coffee. “Some people have these outrageous style choices, and you can just tell that they’re doing it almost to convince themselves that it’s who they are. But you? Nah, this is the genuine article. It works because it really is who you are.” He paused. “When we first met, I didn’t get it.”

“What didn’t you get?”

“Well, I guess I didn’t get why a woman who looked like you wasn’t trying to get famous somehow. You never wear makeup, you have, like, pirate princess hair, you don’t wear designer clothes. I’d...never met anybody like you. I thought you must have an angle, and it drove me nuts trying to figure out what it was.”

“Pirate hair?” she asked, her eyes widening with insult.

He laughed. “I said pirate princess hair. You know, long black hair all the way down your back. Hasn’t seen a pair of scissors in about a decade.”

“I get haircuts!”

He laughed, dropping his face into his hand. “I’m botching this. I’m trying to pay you a compliment. I like your hair. It suits you. In fact, your whole life suits you. And I like that about you.”

When her affronted posture melted back into a relaxed one, he continued on. “There’s no game. What you see is what you get, all the way down to your mismatched socks.” He grimaced and shrugged. “It’s rare. Everybody else cares about their image too much.”

Fin took another bite of her bagel and glanced at Tyler. The bongo drum in her chest made her want to look away immediately. Because there was something about his long face, the easy way he chewed, the shadow of dark blond stubble.

Everybody else cares about their image too much.

An unexpected truth came through the parted clouds, one that surprised Fin, even as she said it out loud. “You don’t care about your image any more than I do.”

Tipping her head to one side, she analyzed him through new eyes. He wore a collared shirt, as usual, his face shaved, his blond hair long enough to flop onto one side, but cut stylishly. She could see the muscles in his forearms peeking out from the folded cuffs of his shirt, the sharply ironed line in his trousers. Everything about his appearance implied that he deeply cared about his image. Yet...

He looked at her in surprise. “I thought you thought of me as James Spader, image-obsessed ’80s villain.”

“I did,” she said thoughtfully, her chin on her fist.

He laughed at her candor but she continued on.

“But now I think I’m wrong. I think that this whole thing you’ve got going on, it’s more for the socks reason than it is for what other people think.”

“Socks reason?”

“Yeah. You present yourself this way because it lends order to your life. There’s rhyme and reason, and that reassures you. I think you look like this more for yourself than for anyone else.”

His face quirked down, the corners of his lips pulling into a frown as he considered her words. “Maybe you’re right. I hadn’t really thought about it that way. I definitely like things the way I like them. And, yeah, I guess what other people think about it doesn’t bother me too much.” He chewed and swallowed the last bite of his bagel thoughtfully. “My dad was über image-conscious. He was always talking about how this or that would reflect on him, on the family. He always had the newest, sleekest stuff. But it was all ugly. No style, just money. I think that gave me sort of an allergy to the whole image thing. Besides, if my childhood didn’t do it, then Kylie’s would have. Our father’s precious image was the reason he kept Kylie a secret.”

“He didn’t want people here to find out about his second family?”

“I guess. Lorraine is...not like my mother. I mean, my mother’s no peach, but her blood is blue. You can drop her into any rich, hobnobby Long Island room, and she’ll swill vodka martinis and make eyes at the pool boys with the best of them.”

“But Kylie’s mother isn’t like that?”

“No. She’s crass. She hits on everybody.” He grimaced. “Including me.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope.” He popped the p. “After I found out that I had a sister per my dad’s will, I went to Columbus on the first plane I could catch. Unfortunately I spent the entire trip warding off Lorraine and barely got to know Kylie. Ky and I would text or email a little bit. And we had a weekly phone call. I visited a few more times. But I really didn’t know her before this fall. Not in any way that actually ended up mattering.”

Tyler sighed and dropped his head, his palm smoothing over the back of his neck. Fin had noticed this tic of his and had wondered over it before.

“You’re getting to know her now.”

“Yeah.” Ty’s head came back up, his navy eyes lit with something like satisfaction. “I think we’re actually in a pretty good place. I just wish...”

“You could stop worrying about Lorraine.”

“God...” Ty stared at her. “I know that you do this for a living, but it’s freaky how good you are at knowing what I’m thinking.”

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