Before You Go (YA Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page B

knew Jana was European, but really? Did she think he wasn’t a guy?
He pushed the deck door open and stepped down onto the tile floor, wondering what exactly he was supposed to say. He’d planned on ducking out of dinner, but apparently Jana had alerted Oscar to her plan. The jovial chef had pulled him aside, encouraging him to “take some time. Ella es lonely.”
Logan squeezed between the table and the wall. The porch was small, just a round purple table pinned by screen and stucco. But still, it dwarfed Margo. She seemed folded into herself, huddled over her plate, her shoulders not half the size of his. Her brown curls spilled down the chair’s thatched back.
She didn’t look up as he sat down. Didn’t flinch when his plate slipped from his sweaty hands and clattered onto the table.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
His gaze glided over the soft lines of her profile, to her rich brown eyes, her luscious hair. Her lips were gently full, her cheekbones sketched up high, like her mother’s. But where Dr. Zhu’s face was wide and smooth, Margo’s was heart-shaped and…detailed.
Logan didn’t know how to explain it, but there was a lot in the tip of her chin, in the twist of her mouth and the scrunch of her dark, smooth brows. She was pretty, but there was something else…
He glanced back up at her. Drawn into herself, she reminded him of a rabbit about to leap. The thought made him remember what Jana said about protecting her. He wondered from what. He imagined wrapping his arm around her waist, pulling her close against his side. He remembered the way her hand felt in his.
It didn’t matter, he told himself. Didn’t matter what he wanted. All that mattered was his family, and the freedom he could buy them—and himself— if he kept pleasing Cindy Zhu.  
 
*
 
Margo wished with all her heart that she could disappear. Just poof herself from Isis to Elizabeth’s house at Tahoe. The Timberdimes would be drinking gin and playing chess, smoking Cuban cigars and making crude jokes about Republicans. Wild and raucous and totally cozy. Nothing like the stifling awkwardness going down on the small patio at Casa de Zhu.
As Margo brought a fork-full of fried banana to her mouth, she wondered which was thicker—the humid air or the anxious aggression rolling off her new roommate. He glanced at her plate, then began cutting his enchilada, silverware scraping china with a squeak that pinched her bones.
He put a bite in his mouth. Chewed.
She took a long sip of her orange juice.
He cut another piece.
She considered just chugging her whole glass, taking her plate and leaving without a word. He could eat alone. She could run up to the room, grab her cell phone and see if—
“So.” His low voice made her jump. She glanced up. His face was bleak. As was his tone, when he asked, “How’s it going?”
She froze with her fingers around her glass. How’s it going? Surely he was making some joke, but his face was…well, still bleak.
She looked back at her plate. Pushed some grits around. It’s terrible , she thought, and wanted to tell him he was why. She settled for “fine.”
She picked up her fork again, spearing a piece of enchilada. She was conscious of his eyes on her as she closed her lips around it. He was watching her so closely. Like he’d seen her naked.
The shock of the memory made her throat constrict, and a lump of chicken got stuck. She gulped for air, but nothing could get in.
She rushed her glass to her lips, and Logan started rising from his chair. She stuck out her hand and waved until he sat back down. “I’m fine,” she gasped.
His eyebrows arched, but the rest of his face was cruelly passive .“ Good,” he mumbled. “Glad you didn’t…choke.”
Margo laughed, but it was more a snort. He didn’t sound like he was glad.
“Right,” she murmured, glancing sideways at him.
For the next sixty seconds or so, there was nothing but the swish of the fan and the thin scrape of silverware. Through the gauzy