Forcing Gravity Read Online Free PDF Page A

score with her that night. The last thing I wanted on my first night in L.A. was to go to a party with Ethan and have him ditch me for the girl he was crushing on. No thanks. I opted to stay in and told him we could hang out the next day.
    Slipping into my wetsuit was foreign since back home I never wore one, but even in the middle of summer, the water temperature of the Pacific Ocean was frigid, and I wasn’t taking any chances. As the sun was just starting to rise, I paddled out, relishing in the calm and quiet of a new day. No matter how stressed or inside my head I got, surfing could always reel me back to sanity. Out there, I was far away from the people and things that drove me crazy. Out there, I was free.
    I smiled to myself as the first wave of the day started to appear in the distance and got in line to catch it at just the right spot. Popping up on my board for the first time, I angled myself toward the shoreline and rode it all the way in. And then I did it aga in and again and again, until I exhausted myself.
    Knowing my mother would be pissed if I went inside all salty and sandy, I leaned my board against our outdoor shower, rinsed off and peeled my wet suit down. I contemplated going inside to see if Julio would make me an omelet when I saw movement on the back porch of the Lewis’ s house. Carol was up and reading the paper on the deck.
    I slid my board shorts on over my bathing suit and headed over to greet the woman I liked to call my second mom but who I really wished was my real mom .
    “Logan!” she said, as soon as my head cleared the steps. She rose from her chair and reached out to hug me.
    “I’m all wet,” I warned, but she just waved me off.
    “Oh, I don’t care about that. Give me a hug.”
    She squeezed me tight, like someone who hadn’t seen their daughter in a year, like I’d expected my mom to do, but she hadn’t.
    “It is so good see you,” she said, pulling back to appraise me. “Oh, you are more gorgeous than ever. And apparently my oldest son took notice of that.” She was grinning conspiratorially at me.
    My face fell. I’d hoped Garrett, or at least Ethan, would have told her not to believe what the tabloids had printed. I knew she, like my dad, secretly thought I’d end up with one of her boys, but it wasn’t happening.
    “I’m kidding!” she said then. “Garrett told me the truth, but I have to say, for a little while, I was hopeful. You’d make a great addition to our family.”
    “She’s already part of ou r family,” a very rumpled looking Ethan said as he slumped into a chair at the table and leaned his head on his hand. He looked hung over. He probably was hung over.
    “I suppose you’re right,” Carol agreed. “Now come, sit. I made pancakes.”
    I was always amazed that Carol cooked for her family. They were just as well-off as my mother, but Carol refused to hire a cook. She did have a maid though, since their house, although not as monstrous as ours, was still more than she could handle.
    But Carol didn’t subscribe to the Hollywood way of life in almost every other way. She was a writer by trade and had made a good living from an early age writing contemporary romance novels. She’d met Ethan’s and Garrett’s father , an entertainment lawyer, while on a book tour and had moved to L.A. from O hio to be with him. I liked the fact that she never really let go of her Midw estern roots and raised her kids like she would have if they were still living in her provincial hometown.
    “I can’t say no to pancakes,” I said.
    I was ravenous after the low-carb meal my mother had served the night before. I looked over a t Ethan who seemed a little green at the mention of food.
    As soon as Carol disapp eared I turned to him. “Rough night, E?”
    “Ugh,” he was all he could manage, so I reached for the carafe of coffee in the middle of the table and poured him a cup.
    I shoved it under his nose, hoping it would awaken him. He eyed it gratefully