Page 10 of Can't Help Falling

“You wanna tell me why you’re here?”

Via’s lips quirked. “You mean to tell me that you don’t already know?”

“You’re here to drag me over for dinner, of course.”

“Glad to see you’re not slipping in your clairvoyance.”

Is Tyler going to be there? Fin didn’t ask it aloud.

In the past, it had been a fifty-fifty chance as to whether he’d be there or not. But this would make it five Fridays in a row that Serafine had attended dinner at Seb and Via’s and five Fridays in a row that Tyler wasn’t there. “Sounds like a smash.”

Tyler had been MIA recently. Fin could feel Via’s worry over him. It had Fin leaning forward, searching for a trace of him in Via’s energy.

Via’s familiar form filled Fin’s vision. She slightly blurred her eyes until her best friend was merely a silhouette. And there was Via’s energy, mixed with and illuminated by the natural light surrounding her. Fin read the happiness there, the relaxed, eased love that Via felt on the daily. Like the tartness or sweetness of the first sip of wine, she could read, first and foremost Sebastian and Matty mixed into Via’s energy. They were always prominent these days. The very first page in Via’s book. The oak trees planted firmly in her heart.

With just a moment more of looking, Fin located Tyler. He was as distant as he’d been for months. Still bright, like a far star, but distant.

Almost the second she’d located him, Fin dropped her reading and turned away. “Let me just change my clothes, sister.”

Via wandered out to the living room to wait. Fin closed herself in the bedroom and shed her clothing.

She always felt chilled after she went digging around after Tyler. She could liken the sensation to prodding at a paper cut that she already knew was sore. So she kept doing it, because frankly, she felt guilty as hell.

She pursed her lips. “I’m not the only reason the man is lost,” she reminded herself. “Hell. I’m not even the main reason.”

But she was part of the reason. Her words to him at the ballpark had been as cruel as they’d been necessary.

Him asking her out that day had been the equivalent of suddenly finding a stray dog sitting in her kitchen. She’d known the pup had been lurking around the yard, but to actually see him sitting there, blinking up at her like an expectant mongrel, waiting for some belly scratches...

The last time she’d seen him had been at Seb’s end-of-summer barbecue. She’d stepped out into the backyard to see Tyler gunned down in a blaze of freezing water-gun water as Matty and Joy had cackled like maniacs. She’d smiled at the scene but ended up frowning when Tyler had looked up and seen her. You didn’t need to be a psychic to sense the ice that had immediately formed around him.

Apparently she’d not only kicked the puppy out of her kitchen—she’d made an enemy.

She shivered and dressed herself against the chill. She didn’t want Tyler as an enemy. She just didn’t want to screw up her life over a man.

Fin pulled on leg warmers up to her hips, and over top of that, she donned a long, swishy dress that fell to her ankles. It was a deep red in color, bolstering and passionate. She took a few minutes to braid her long, dark hair. And finally, finally, her jewelry.

She traded out a peridot ring for a silver garnet one. Amethyst earrings and finally, a hideous necklace with large wooden beads that Matty had made for her. She’d sensed, immediately, how much love he’d put into making it, and she considered it one of her strongest and most potent forms of magic.

Dressed and ready, they made their way from Fin’s Lefferts Gardens apartment to Seb and Via’s home in Bensonhurst.

“Auntie Fin!” Matty shouted from inside the house the second Via’s key hit the outer lock. Still on the porch, Via laughed and stepped back and let him scrabble with the locks from the inside. He flung open the door, one hand firmly on the collar of his exuberant dog, Crabby.

Boy and dog broke the threshold of the house and immediately got tangled in her long red skirt.

“Crap!” Matty yelled, dragged to his knees as he attempted to keep his dog from escaping into the dimming Brooklyn evening.

Fin laughed and held still, knowing that if she moved she’d trip over the pile of excited mammals at her feet.

Fin grinned when somehow Crabby ended up under her skirt. She lifted the hem, grateful for the intuition that’d told her to wear the long leg warmers. She lowered a calm hand to the top of the dog’s curly white-and-brown head. “Shh,” Fin murmured, concentrating hard.

The dog stopped yanking Matty’s tightfisted hand and plunked his butt down. He still sat between Fin’s legs and his tail bongo-ed a mile a minute, but he was no longer attempting to escape.

“Crabby, come!” Sebastian called, appearing in the hallway with a dish towel over his shoulder. The dog sprinted back inside, leaping over Matty and into the house. Sebastian strode forward and lifted Matty from the ground, dusting off his son’s trousers. “I swear Crabby is somehow gaining energy as he gets older. Hi, Fin.” He bussed her on the cheek and then pulled Via into a hug. “Hi, baby.”

“Auntie Fin?” Matty asked a few minutes later as he sat on the steps to his upstairs and watched Fin unlace her boots. Via and Seb had disappeared into the kitchen to fix dinner.

“Nephew Matty?” she replied, using the same questioning tone that he had, knowing it would make him smile.

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