Page 74 of Can't Help Falling

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“RACHEL,” FINSCOLDEDin a stern voice through the thin door that separated her client’s living room from the bedroom. She knew that Rachel was listening at the door instead of folding the laundry the way she’d claimed she would.

“Sorry!” Rachel shouted. “It just sounded like you two were really getting somewhere!”

Enzo, where he was sitting on an armchair, hands crossed over his gut and his feet propped up on his coffee table, laughed, low and guttural. “See what I mean?” He raised his voice to call through the door. “Woman can’t mind her business!”

“And that’s one of the things you love about her the most,” Fin gathered, from the way his energy had swelled toward the sound of Rachel’s voice.

Her sessions with Enzo had relocated out of the sterile office space to his fiancée’s homey brownstone in Red Hook when they’d moved in together last month. The setting change had made a big difference in Fin and Enzo’s sessions. They were really starting to trust one another, something that so rarely happened with her male clients.

Today, after a long session talking about Enzo’s relationship to his work and to the uncle who was his boss, the two of them stood up and stretched.

She felt energized.

She knew it wasn’t only her prowess as a spiritual counselor that was making this happen. She knew that at least some of the credit was due to the changes in her own life. Being around Tyler so much lately had...softened her.

“Your phone is buzzing,” Enzo said as he stretched.

“Oh.” She dug through her purse, her stomach giving that familiar electric jolt when she saw it was a text from Tyler.

SOS, was all it said. Her stomach went from jolting to dropping.

What’s wrong?she texted back immediately, her bottom lip caught between her teeth and a line of worry between her brows.

She’d never stared harder at a set of thinking bubbles in her entire God-given life.

“Something wrong?” Enzo asked, making Fin jump. She realized that she was only halfway into her coat, clutching her phone and scowling like a crazy person.

“I’m not sure. My friend just texted—” Her phone buzzed in her hand and she cut off, devouring the text. Immediately, her face relaxed, her eyes rolled and a groan, part annoyance and part relief, left her chest. “About something that is absolutely not a crisis.”

Kylie has a boy over and I need backup. I have tacos. Bring beer.

You’re ridiculous, she texted back. This is not an SOS situation.

I’m about ten seconds from going out there to sit between them on the couch. So for the love of God, come over here and stop me.

“Rachel totally called it,” Enzo asked, a smile on his face. “You’ve got a new man.”

“What? No.” She shoved her phone in her pocket and pulled her coat the rest of the way on, grabbing her messenger bag. “He’s just a friend.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Enzo said skeptically at the exact same time that Rachel did from through the door.

“In my professional opinion, you two need to get a life,” Fin called. She left them both laughing as she exited their apartment with a wave and jogged down their front steps to the train.

On my way, she texted and then paused. To save Kylie from the humiliation of having her older brother ruin a first date.

She came aboveground forty-five minutes later and gave the weekend doorman at Ty’s building a friendly wave.

She only got in one knock on Tyler’s door when it flung open. She hated the fact that her breath caught at the sight of his normally floppy hair that was standing on end from where he’d been tugging at it. It was ridiculous to find someone’s nervous side so freaking cute. “What took you so long? Bad weekend trains?”

“I was coming all the way from Red Hook.”

She stepped inside and tried not to freeze up when he reached for her messenger bag to help her out of her things. “What were you doing in Red Hook? Shit, I didn’t screw up Saturday-night plans for you, did I? Holy God, what do you have in this bag, rocks?”

She laughed at his rapid-fire questions, trying to let mirth dispel some of the tension from his nearness. “I was working with a client. And to answer your question,” she said as she flipped open the flap of her messenger bag to show him the ten rather large crystals she had inside, “Yes, I do have rocks in that bag.”

He laughed and carefully set the bag in his coat closet, eyeing the crystals with interest. She was kicking off her boots when he stepped back to her and, in a move she’d only seen him execute with Mary and Via, helped her off with her coat. It was a gentlemanly thing, something she wasn’t sure anyone had ever done for her before. It was brisk and practiced, there was no lingering, no crowding, no brushing against her neck and shoulders. He merely helped her peel her coat off and then hung it on a hook.

---