Page 97 of Can't Help Falling

“You have no idea what time it is.”

“It’s still dark out!”

“It’s winter, it’s always dark out.” But she surprised him by snuggling into him all the same. She was warm and soft and pressing her forehead under his chin. Neither of them mentioned that her thigh was laying directly over a very awake part of his body. They were both adults, both understood the manner in which they wanted one another. Tyler couldn’t help but let his hand trace down her back, play with the top seam of her leggings.

She shifted against him. “You’re a mountain man in the morning.”

He groaned, dragging a hand over his face, scraping over his beard with chagrin. “Ugh. I know. I usually shave before bed to prevent this from happening. Otherwise it takes me twice as long to shave it off in the morning.”

“I can’t believe your beard grows that fast.”

“So does my hair. I get it trimmed every two weeks.”

“Between that and the gel, your hair budget must be through the roof.”

She was biting her lips together, so Tyler was fairly certain she was teasing him. “I do not use hair gel.”

Cue the emoji eyebrow.

“Fine,” he huffed. “I might, on occasion, use a little pomade. But these are just good-hair genes you’re witnessing.”

“It’s so strange how you and Kylie can look so different and so similar at the same time.”

“I know.” Guiltily, his thoughts traced back to Kylie for the first time in twelve hours. It was strange not to have been dwelling on her while she was on her trip. She’d been foremost on his mind for months. He instantly felt guilty, and suddenly nervous, like just because he hadn’t been keeping her in his every thought, that something bad could have happened, and it would be all his fault.

“She’s fine,” Fin told him, doing that thought-reading thing she did so well.

“How do you know?”

“One, I’m in tune with her. If something terrible were to have happened, I’d have an intuition about it. And two, she’d text you if something happened.”

“Or she’d text you.”

Fin nodded in concession. “She trusts us, Ty.”

A wind chime sound went off in her bedroom and this time Fin sat up for real.

“That’s my alarm. I have a client meeting in an hour and a half up in Greenpoint.”

“Eesh. You’ve gotta get going, then.”

“There’s a bagel shop on the way to the train if you wanna grab a bite with me.”

Tyler finger-brushed with her horrible natural toothpaste and sat on her couch as he watched her pace around the house, getting ready for the day. Twenty minutes later he grinned at her as she scrabbled with the lock on her door.

“Still feeling befuddled, Ms. St. Romain?” he asked, leaning against the wall of her hallway.

He walked her to the bagel shop, and by the time they’d gotten their orders, it seemed she’d found her footing again. Wordlessly, she’d taken his coffee from him and fixed it with cream and sugar, just the way he liked. She was running late, so they got their bagels to go, slurping on their coffee cups as they walked to the train.

“You gonna be able to work today?” she asked.

“I’ll head home and give it a shot.”

“I—” She stopped walking so he did too. “I want to come over after my appointment.”

“Yes,” he said immediately. “Please do.”

“Good.”

He kissed her underground, after swiping into the train station, but it wasn’t the kiss that stayed with him for hours afterward, it was the hug. Her arms clinched around his back, her forehead against his neck, his head bowed into the negative space above her shoulder. It was a seal on the end of their night together. A stamp saying, “We did this, it felt good.”

They split ways to catch their separate trains, and Tyler was glad that her train came first. He hadn’t known how good it would feel to watch her head to work, to see her off safely. It didn’t make him feel left behind. No, it gave him purpose.

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