SHE DIDN’T FOOL him for a second with those big, guileless eyes and innocent set to her mouth. Tyler could still feel the way she’d looked at him down in the lobby. He had almost been able to see the hypnotizing spirals circling in her pupils. He needed to keep his footing here.
He’d let about a thousand different vulnerabilities slip out already, so he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to strategize his way out of this conversation. He was man enough to admit that he was certainly outgunned when it came to an argument with Fin. He figured he had only one route. Blatant, unflagging honesty.
He gave in to the urge and scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. Her eyes tracked the movement.
“Regardless, Fin, you’re not nice to me. I’m uncomfortable around you. And most of all, I don’t trust you.”
“Tyler, if I could go back and be nicer to you at that baseball game, I would. I swear. I’ve wanted to apologize for months now. It’s not like talking to you that way made me feel good. But I can’t change what happened.”
In the first crack of her impassive expression, he thought for one moment that he saw something like guilt flash across her face. But that couldn’t be right. The woman was self-righteous and aloof and haughty. There was no way that she could possibly feel bad about the way she’d treated him. He was certain that he was merely one in a long line of men she’d chopped up into dog meat and fed to her pack of hell-chihuahuas.
He narrowed his eyes skeptically at her. He’d been imagining her laughing to herself about the baseball game for weeks after it happened, regaling her girlfriends with the story while she sucked away on a Cruella De Vil cigarette.
As if to prove his point, she kicked out one delectable hip, raised that imperious eyebrow and spoke again. “Don’t punish me for not wanting to date you.”
Rage ignited in his gut like a flamethrower being kicked on in a dark room. “You think I’m punishing you because my ego is bruised?” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t even know why it surprises me anymore, how little you think of me.”
“Tyler, I don’t want to fight with you.”
He scoffed.
She took a deep breath and rolled her eyes to the ceiling, like she was praying for strength. “What happened, happened. And either we move on from it or we don’t.” She took a step toward the table. He automatically stiffened in his chair. “I’d like to get past it, Tyler. And if we can’t get past it, at least ignore it. Because what I’m asking for here, would be good for all of us. Trust me.”
Trust her? Not as far as he could fly her like a kite. “What exactly are you asking for, Fin?”
“I’d like to get to know Kylie. Spend some time with her. I could teach her about the city a little bit. I was a transplant to Brooklyn at almost the exact same age as she is. I know a lot about what she’s going through.”
“You want to...mentor her?”
Fin shrugged one shoulder. “In a way. I want to be her friend. Talk to her. I feel a connection to her, Tyler. And look, I know things aren’t good between me and you. But I’m just asking for a chance to create a relationship with Kylie.”
Tyler pursed his lips. “Kylie ignores me enough already. I’m not sure I want her buddying up with someone who wouldn’t care if I fell off a cliff.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Tyler! Will you please shelve your wounded male pride for a moment?” Her hands came up into the air in a rare show of temper. He seemed to have found the end of some rope of hers. “I’m trying to explain that I have a connection to her! This isn’t about you and me! It’s bigger than that!”
“Connection?” he scoffed again. “You don’t know her! You met her once. What kind of connection could you possibly have? The unbreakable bond of how much you both enjoy gravy on your turkey?”
She huffed out a furious breath. When she spoke, it was with dangerous slowness to her sagey, southern lilt, a deceptive laziness where an East Coaster might have overarticulated. “I’m trying to tell you that literally the exact same thing happened to me as just happened to her. My mother couldn’t take care of me when I was thirteen years old and she signed me over to a family member. Just like that, she was gone from my life, and I was plunked headfirst into Brooklyn.” She crossed her arms again. “See the connection now?”
Tyler had no comeback for that. He’d heard the word connection and pictured Fin waving her hands over a crystal ball with Kylie’s face reflected in it. He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck again, at a loss for what to say.
“I could actually help you, Ty. Her. I’m not just sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong. The girl and I have a kinship. Or, we could, if you don’t stomp all over it.”
Even with the indisputable facts right there in front of him, Tyler didn’t concede the point. He felt ornery and exhausted. Frankly, he was sick to death of not understanding Kylie. Of being so constantly in the dark with someone he truly loved. He didn’t understand teenage girls. He didn’t understand what it felt like to have no parents in his life at all—though his hadn’t exactly been an after-school special. He didn’t understand how scary learning Brooklyn might be, and he was starting to suspect he didn’t understand women at all.
It irked him that Fin, just by dint of who she was and how she’d been born, might have a speedy little highway of a shortcut to understanding and bonding with Kylie.
Honesty, he reminded himself. It was his only course of action.
“Fin, please try to understand my perspective here, all right? I have no idea how to do any of this. As in, I barely know how to talk to her, and here I am, charged with making all sorts of decisions for the girl. Case in point, who I let spend time with her. I have no experience with that at all except for my own gut.” Which he was barely trusting these days. “I’m not trying to be an ass. I’m not trying to hold what you said to me at the baseball game against you, but tell me. Why, why, would I let Kylie spend time with someone who I’ve already decided is bad for me to be around? That makes no sense at all! This isn’t wounded male pride talking here. This is me making a judgment call. I’ve decided not to let my little sister spend time with someone who is capable of cutting others to shreds with just a few cruel words. Call me crazy, I guess, but my decision actually makes sense to me!”
Fin’s mouth opened and closed for a moment in a way that Tyler had never before seen. She looked utterly flummoxed. Her usual impassive, all-knowing expression was wiped clean from her face, replaced with this gaping-fish thing she was doing. It was incredibly satisfying. If he’d had the energy, Tyler might have snapped a photo for his fridge.
“I don’t treat other women that way,” she eventually said.
Tyler had to laugh at what he deemed the sheer ridiculousness of that proclamation. “Oh, so it’s only half the human race that you treat like shit? That’s supposed to make me feel better about you spending time with my little sister?”
She looked like she was going to respond right away, but instead she turned her head and looked out the small window above his sink. There was a small glass ornament dangling there that Mary had given him, but she didn’t appear to be seeing it. Her eyes were lost and distant. When she turned back to him, Tyler got the distinct impression that he was actually going to be conversing with her, not with whatever words she thought would convince him.
“Tyler, do you have any idea what it’s like to be a woman walking around this city? To get asked out by men you don’t want to go out with? You reject them and sometimes, sometimes, they’re nice about it. But I’d say ninety-five percent of the time, their embarrassment or anger or outrage turns them into assholes, okay? Do you know how many times I’ve been called a name because I’ve politely turned someone down? Called a name simply because I don’t feel the same way about them as they do about me?”
He felt the blood run out of his face as the truth of her words registered. She was a beautiful woman, and he’d been around the block enough to have witnessed some truly foul behavior from his male compatriots to know that she wasn’t exaggerating. But still. “You thought I’d treat you that way?” He was flatly flummoxed, aware enough to realize that his blank shock stank of ignorance to the issue at hand. “I thought you were being incendiary when you said that I was punishing you for turning me down. But you meant it. God. That’s not what I—That’s not who I—Fin, I’m not a monster. I know how to take it on the chin. If you’d rejected me politely, I would have been polite right back.”
For the second time in their conversation, something like guilt flashed across her face. Then her chin came up and a firm sort of resolution took guilt’s place, the set of her mouth turning stubborn. “Well, I don’t take my chances with that, Tyler. I make myself very clear with a man. So there is no misunderstanding. And if he’s shocked into silence or has to immediately limp away and lick his wounds, then all the better for me to make my getaway unscathed. Maybe it makes me cruel, but it also keeps me from getting called a bitch, or getting yelled at in public. Or getting followed by some guy or another.”
“Men have followed you after you rejected them?” Tyler asked incredulously.
Of course, her expression said to him and Tyler’s fierce decision over what to do about Fin started to crumble at the edges like yellowed newspaper.
“Dammit,” he grumbled, dropping his chin into one palm and drumming his other fingers against the kitchen table.
“What?”
He glared at her. “I don’t want to see your side, Fin. I was much happier just feeling like I was right.”
To his surprise, she laughed. After a second, she pushed off from where she’d been leaning on his counter and pulled out the chair across the table from him. It was an adversarial position she’d chosen. The chair that someone sitting down for a negotiation would have selected. But still, she was sitting at his table with a begrudging smile on her face and Tyler felt more of the paper crumble.
“That’s how I felt when you showed up for Thanksgiving with a beard and hair in your eyes,” she admitted.
“What?” he asked, confused.
“You normally look like such a Ken doll,” she said and waved her hand through the air, a casual indictment of his entire visage. “But you showed up to Thanksgiving looking scruffy and—”
“Scruffy?!” He straightened up in outrage. Maybe he’d looked a little less put-together than usual, but he’d never looked “scruffy” a day in his life. “I did not look scruffy. Yes, maybe my hair could have used a trim. But I didn’t have a beard.”
“You say beard like it’s some sort of shameful growth.”
“Men who grow beards have something to hide,” Tyler said decisively and to his surprise, Fin laughed again.
“Sebastian wears a beard. And in my professional opinion, he’s the least deceptive person on earth.”
“Sebastian is a freak of nature.”
Fin chuckled at that as well, so Tyler didn’t feel the need to clarify that he’d said it lovingly.
“If it wasn’t a beard that was on your face then what was it?”
He thought back to Thanksgiving and remembered that in the fog of getting Kylie to Brooklyn he’d forgotten to shave that morning. “That is what happens if I don’t shave my face every twelve hours. It’s my curse that my facial hair grows so fast.”
“Sounds like it would be easier just to let it grow.”
“And hide my beautiful face under a bush? A face bush?”
This time her laughter was not begrudging at all. It was sparkling and genuinely humored. “You consider a beard to be a face bush?” She chuckled again. “God, that’s vile.”
“Good. You’re finally starting to see things my way.”
At that, her expression sobered. “I guess I am.” She drew a quick, unseeable shape with one finger over the top of the table. She huffed out a breath, as if she were about to do something she really didn’t want to do. “Look. I was rude, abrupt and maybe even cruel to you at that ball game. I understand why you might be skeptical of the time I want to spend with Kylie. So, why don’t we compromise and have the three of us hang out together for a while? If you’re still uncomfortable with my presence in her life, I’ll back off. If you deem me to be acceptable, then Kylie and I can be friends.”
Tyler was quiet for a minute, mulling over her words. He didn’t want to be the kind of guy who folded after three jokes around a kitchen table, and he still felt that he had good reason to be wary of Fin. On the other hand, even if it was reluctant, he did sort of understand her point about rejecting men. She was a painfully gorgeous woman and he figured that learning how to deal with men effectively in order to keep herself safe was most likely something she’d taught herself long, long ago.
“I know you think I’m a jerk, Ty. And to you, I was. But do you really think I’d be a jerk to her? I—” She broke off and Tyler stilled when he realized that her eyes were shiny with emotion. Gone was the impassiveness he’d come to associate her with. As far as he could tell, there was nothing clairvoyant happening in this current conversation whatsoever. This was two people sharing normal words. “I had a complicated upbringing. And I think that in lots of ways, it prepared me to help out kids who’ve also had complicated upbringings. I could be good for her. I know I could.”
He drummed his fingers again, irritated at himself for folding so easily. He suddenly threw both hands up in the air. “Oh, fine. I guess it wouldn’t kill me to spend some time just the three of us.”
He nearly reeled back from her when an explosively happy smile burst across her face. It changed the shape of her features from long and carved with shadow to suddenly round and high. Her teeth were a slice between her full lips, reflecting light and joy. And those big, achingly light eyes of hers had practically disappeared, all squished down into almost nothing. He was amazed that a woman so beautiful would have such a goofy smile.
It disarmed him.
He smiled back at her, but in a contained, cautious way. He wasn’t ready to be disarmed around her. He figured that if he’d learned anything from the ball game, it was that she was never fully disarmed herself. It would do to remember that she was a woman with plenty of weapons. And she wasn’t scared to use them on Tyler.