Page 89 of Can't Help Falling

“All right,” Kylie said with a yawn. “I’m gonna hit the hay, I think. Remember that we have to be at school early tomorrow.”

“Right.”

She gave Fin and Tyler a quick hug each and then her door closed down the hall.

A few excruciating seconds ticked past as Tyler’s hands found their way into his pockets. They both looked anywhere but at one another, and Tyler fought the almost irrepressible urge to whistle something. Anything.

“I...guess I should go?”

She was asking?

Hold on. He’d been waiting for her to bolt out of here. He could practically already read the text he fully expected to receive sometime in the next twenty-four hours: That was a mistake. Let’s be friends.

Shouldn’t she have left a Roadrunneresque trail of dust in her wake already?

Yet, here she was, shifting her weight from foot to foot, her eyes pointedly looking at his chest instead of his face.

Was this what a nervous Serafine St. Romain looked like?

Tyler felt like he’d walked into a room only to find all the furniture had been glued to the ceiling.

Was she nervous because she regretted the kiss but didn’t want to get kicked out of Kylie’s life? Was she nervous because she was just as confused as he was? Was she nervous because she’d liked it?

Was there any chance in hell, even an ice cube’s worth, that she wanted to do that again?

“Um. Okay?” was his genius response. He turned it into just as much of a question as she had, hopefully letting her know that he had just as little idea what to do next as she apparently did.

She nodded, once, twice and then walked through his living room to where her coat and boots were.

“I’ll walk you down,” he said to no one. Just talking because it seemed like the thing to do.

It wasn’t until they finally had their coats and boots on that Tyler cracked a smile. “You look like Red Riding Hood in that coat,” he informed her, letting his eyes snag on hers.

“I get that a lot.”

She was smiling too, just a little bit, and Tyler felt a miniwave of relief wash over him. At least he had that tiny buoy to cling to while he figured out just how bad the damage was.

They walked silently down the hall, endured a painfully quiet elevator ride and then they were out on the sidewalk. It was warmer than he’d thought it would be on a random February night. And a thin sheaf of clouds had pulled over the sky, almost like a veil separating the earth’s face from the eyes of the moon. Tyler felt oddly protected by it, even if it was only a thin layer of cloud.

He dragged his eyes down from the sky and onto Fin, who stood, her breath in misty puffs in front of her, her hands in the pockets of her red coat.

“Crap,” Tyler said, making her eyebrows rise in surprise. “I didn’t call you a cab.”

“Let’s just hail one.”

“At this hour?”

“There’s one right there.” She pointed down the street.

“But its light is off, it’s probably off duty—oooooofffff course.” He laughed to himself wryly when the second Fin put her pretty hand in the air the cab driver flipped his light on and pulled a U-turn to get to her side of the street.

She gave him a sideways smile, with just enough smugness for him to know that everything was going to be okay eventually. Their kitchen kiss hadn’t ruined anything.

They’d have to talk about it at some point, of course. He just hoped that this time she’d let him down easier than she had at the baseball game. That wasn’t exactly something he was clamoring to endure again anytime soon.

He opened the cab door for her. “Well...”

He expected her to duck down into the cab but instead, she turned in the circle of his arms, went up on her toes and sucked his bottom lip into her mouth again, as if this were merely a continuation of their kiss upstairs. She made that soft little “hmm” again and then his tongue was in her mouth. He banded an arm around her waist and yanked them together, stepping her back until she was flush against the cab. He tasted and tasted her, feeling instantaneously drunk, like he’d slugged back a cup of what he’d thought was water but had turned out to be tequila.

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