Before You Go

by Ella James

  “I was an ass at dinner.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “It kills me, thinking of it.”

  And that confession sent butterflies through her stomach. Before they dissipated, he reached out and cupped her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Margo. Really sorry.” His face grew darker. “You really are better off without me.”

  She shrugged, dislodging his hand, which she immediately missed. “You were an ass. But do you really think being alone is better for me?”

  He exhaled loudly, his eyes bleak. “You’re right—you shouldn’t be alone. It’s wrong, the way she treats you. Cindy.”

  Margo’s eyes teared. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t even know her. She’s like…not even my mom really.”

  “Is that why you were so upset just now?”

  “Kind of,” she hedged.

  Logan grabbed her hand. He captured it in his big, warm ones and glanced sideways at her. “You’re putting me in a tough position, you know that?”

  “Not exactly.”

  He scooted closer, looked into her eyes, so Margo felt like he was reaching into her chest and squeezing her heart. “Margo,” he said. “You really shouldn’t get involved with me. I know this sounds stupid melodramatic, but you shouldn’t. I’m not good for you—or any girl. I shouldn’t have told you…but I wanted you to know why I…behaved the way I did.”

  “Okay, but you still haven’t explained why you’re ‘bad for me.’”

  “I… had a weird upbringing.” Something dark passed across his face, and she squeezed his unhurt hand.

  “You mean with the going off to school so young?”

  “No,” he murmured, looking down. “Before that.”

  She remembered what he’d said about going home. I don’t think home’s the same for everyone…

  Oh, God. She looked at his cut, bruised hand. “Logan…”

  Before she could ask him anything, he was wrapping his arms around her, holding on tight. She could feel it the moment the squeeze went from one of comfort to…something else.

  He pulled slightly away, and when he looked into her face, his eyes seemed odd, so dark and dazed. Like he was drunk or something. Drunk on her. But when she looked more closely—looked below the surface, she could still see the other thing, and she had the same feeling she’d gotten on the horse, when he had talked about going home.

  “Logan, you can talk to me…if you want to,” she added quietly.

  From looking down, he looked at her…and his eyes were big and wide, almost vulnerable.

  “Thank you,” he murmured. “Margo, can we just…stay here?”

  She nodded, pinned under the weight of those hypnotic eyes. Logan leaned in, his lips brushing gently over hers. The kiss was dizzying. She felt her judgment drift away as her body got hotter. Heavier. She felt restless, hungry… She ached. She thought, This is why they do it. All the sluts at Kerrigan. I would do it, too—with him. Logan kissed her until she thought she might go crazy, till she had to pull away to breathe. Her body trembled, but he was rubbing her arm, tugging her gently, gently close to him.

  She found his mouth again, unable to believe what he had started but wanting it. His mouth was warm and slick and sweet, his arms around her heavy and strong. She felt him shaking, and she knew it wasn’t show. Those little sounds from his throat, they meant something.

  The air seemed to wrap them up, his body hardening, hers melting. His eyes shone, fever-bright and hypnotizing. It was kiss and then breathe, long kiss, little gasp, rough kiss, and rougher, until the air didn’t matter anymore and only Logan did, Logan with his hands in her hair and his mouth over hers, Logan who couldn’t get enough of her.

  He kissed a warm line down her throat as his palms cupped her breasts; his fingers stroked her nipples, and she felt on fire.

  “Margo. God…”

  She liked the sound of that, his hoarseness. Want.

  Shaking, gasping, she lifted his shirt, running her right hand up his hard, hot chest. He flinched, as if in pain, but she knew that he wasn’t; she let her hand slide down, running into the fabric of his boxers.

  His breath caught, and she froze, too. She felt something beneath her, at just the right spot to be… “Oh…wow.”

  “No,” he whispered, his long fingers closing around her wrist. Margo waited, thinking he would drag her hand away. She waited, because she would have pulled against him, but it didn’t come to that. She smiled, smug, at the bliss on his face, Logan’s eyes searched hers. He looked so hot like this. So wild.

  Sweat bloomed as their hands inched lower, moving like fingers on a Ouija board—working together—down down down, until she dipped under the fabric of his underwear. For a breath she felt sick with anticipation.

  And then she found what she was looking for.

  He groaned out, “Stop.” But he sounded drunk.

  “I don’t want to.”

  Her admission started a fire—his mouth slammed down on hers. Nothing mattered now, none of her misgivings, when he was breathing like this, his muscles tight, strong hard Logan, whispering her name like a sacrament.

  Her warm hand slid down, rolling under him, then creeping to top.

  His eyes flipped open.

  She would never forget the look on his face. Like he was hungry, and he wanted to have her. That heady focus stole the breath out of her throat. She bent down, wanting better access to him. His head went back, eyes popping wide.

  “Margo, STOP.”

  He lifted his knee, separating them, and reached down for her hand.

  “You’ve got to stop. I’m sorry, I know it’s my fault.”

  She had her hand on his knee; her fingers curled possessively. “You know…I wouldn’t mind sneaking around to see you.”

  “That’s not fair to you.”

  “I think I can say what’s fair to me. I’d do a lot of things if it meant we get to see each other. We can meet here every night. Hey—you can just come back to the room!” She slapped her head.

  “That’s another point.” He sighed. “We share a room.”

  “So what? We’ll have different rooms in like, a week. Remember what Jana said?”

  He shook his head and stood. Margo groaned and followed him up. “What does it matter?”

  “This should be enough—for both of us. I got what I wanted. So did you. It can’t continue. I shouldn’t have followed you tonight.”

  She smiled. “Oh, shut up.”

  “Margo, you don’t know what you’re asking for. I’m not your age. I’m not your boyfriend.”

  “I don’t care.” She was surprised to find she really didn’t.

  The air got heavier, seemed to press on her heart. His mouth curved down, one pliant moment when his eyes burned, and she could see how much he wanted her. He raised his hand, leaning forward, though his feet stayed locked in place.

  He smiled, small and tight and maybe not a smile at all. “We should go.”

  She stood there, stupidly, and he opened the door. He stepped out first and held it for her. “Coming?”

  She nodded, feeling dizzy...off-kilter, but stronger somehow. He followed her out the door and they started up the pebbly hill, walking silently most of the way as she assessed his posture, breathing…as she caught his eyes sliding over her. When they neared the house, she grabbed his hand and squeezed.

  “Look, Logan, just sleep on it, okay? Think about how it would be if we were something real.”

  He squeezed her hand back, leaned down to kiss her softly on the cheek. “Goodnight, Margo.”

  18

  Twenty-one hours later and twenty-two kilometers northwest of The Zhu Observatory, in a crystalline cove off the island’s northwest shore, Logan stacked the last keg on top of an icy steel pyramid. He was in the back of a thatch hut where, tonight, he would spend several hours serving drinks.

  He rubbed his cold, achy hands on his silky black slacks; they fit a little closer than he liked, but they were nothing compared to his stiff, white linen shirt. It had “Z�
�-embossed onyx cufflinks, and a little black bowtie like the one he’d worn to his MIT scholarship dinner.

  He felt like an ass in the dressy clothes, and it didn’t help that when she’d seen him earlier, Cindy had told him he looked “dapper.” Of course, he wasn’t the only one tricked out like this. Most of the casa staff had been shipped to Castillo de Zhu, Cindy’s fifteen-story resort, to work the Fourth of July celebration/Equirria Enterprises banquet—where, at midnight, the company’s manned Mars program would be officially announced. Logan had volunteered for the gig; he’d get paid for the work, just like any day down at the barn, but this way, he’d avoid all the dull, pre-announcement chit-chat.

  The guests had been trickling in for half an hour, socialites wearing sequins and tuxes, their miserable-looking kids dressed in tiny suits and puffy dresses. Most were still mingling in the hotel. Logan’s hut and dozens of others like it were on the resort’s municipality-sized deck, mixed in with a handful of large tents and several sparkling blue pools.

  The party was there, too: swing bands, a woman making leis, stone-framed pits where other folks in little black bowties roasted hogs and grilled steaks. He scanned the crowd for a flash of red—Cindy. She’d been around for several hours, but she’d only recently slipped into her gown, a strapless, skin-tight thing that looked like it cost more than a house.

  Restless, with half an hour to spare, Logan pushed through the door on the side of his booth and dove into the crowd, working his way toward the rows of glass doors and the lobby behind them. He’d decided, after a night and day of conflicted self doubt, that he wanted to see Margo. It was insane, and he still felt sleazy about keeping it a secret, but he wanted what he wanted. And the decision made him feel, for the first time in a long time, lighter. The check-up call he made on a lobby pay phone to his sister back in Georgia didn’t make him feel as crappy as he usually did. He hung up the phone thinking about Margo.

  When he pushed past several staff members wrestling with hundreds of balloons, and a red one escaped from the pack and sailed four stories up, Logan decided to go after it. He watched it get caught in a palm tree hanging over the open-air lobby, and, feeling slightly crazy, climbed all four flights of stairs to get it. He pressed himself against the rail, reaching out till his straining fingers closed around the string. He took the balloon downstairs, feeling strangely exuberant, like a question was answered, like the world was okay.

  He smiled, walking out the doors with the bobbing thing wrapped around his wrist. Maybe he would give it to Margo.

  Strange that her face was in his head, because the second he stepped out, her mother was right in front of him.

  “Logan. I had wondered where you were.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, unraveling the balloon from his wrist as he spoke. “I had to make a call on one of the phones. Family thing. Left my cell back at the O.”

  She waved her tiny hand. “Don’t give up the balloon.”

  He smiled, feeling foolish.

  “I hope it was nothing serious.”

  “The phone call? No,” he said, as she beckoned him away from the doorway and over toward a gold-fish pond.

  “Have a seat,” she urged, and he sat down on some rocks, feeling nervous and odd. She remained standing over him, holding a glass he hadn’t noticed before. He had a sixth-sense-ish feeling that this was a bad thing, that her schoolteacher stance, lording over him while he sat there with his balloon, meant she was going to scold him. She brought her wine glass to her lips and cast her eyes up, where palm leaves crisscrossed a black sky.

  Finally, she asked, “How do you like it here, Logan?”

  Did she mean the hotel? He nodded. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Castillo Zhu. Well, of course. It’s a resort. How do you like the casa?”

  “Um, it’s good, too. I’ve enjoyed my time there.”

  “Is that all?”

  Confused, Logan expounded: “It’s been very important to my career, like you said it would be. And I feel very lucky that you invited me.”

  “Lucky.” Her nose scrunched. “It’s a funny word. In Chinese culture, they say luck is determined in the first breath. You inhale—” She did it herself, her sequins casting specs of red over the water and the rocks. “You breathe in and…it’s like destiny.”

  “You mean qi?”

  “You know.” She smiled. “I should have known that you would know.” He wondered if that was a compliment, relaxed a little bit. “So, there is qi, and there is man luck. You know about man luck?”

  He shook his head, wishing that he did.

  “‘Man luck’ is the golden rule. You’ve heard of that.”

  “Treat others the way you want to be treated.”

  She nodded, angling her body toward him, so her crystal glass splashed light into his face. When she spoke, her voice was soft. “Tell me this: do you want children?”

  He gulped. The question was somehow intimate, and also charged. Why was she asking? What should he say? “I’m not sure, to be honest. I guess I wouldn’t rule it out.”

  “And if you had a daughter…” Her brows arched. He had no idea what he was supposed to say, but she waited, silent, forcing him to throw the ball back.

  “If I did…”

  She winked, her pale face pulling in a smile that wasn’t a smile.

  “If you did,” she said, dragging out the words. “Would you want someone who worked for you to admire your daughter?”

  Oh, shit. A fist clutched the back of his throat, and, slowly, he shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  What could he say? Because I wouldn’t want the dickhead trying to fuck her. That thought brought a hundred others, of himself and Margo, there in the dirt of the greenhouse, her hand on him.

  Pull it together, Tripp.

  “It…um, well, there are a lot of reasons that’s bad. You uh, shouldn’t mix business and personal, for one.”

  She was nodding, shrewd, subtly yet firmly egging him on.

  “Honestly, if I had a daughter, I probably wouldn’t be happy to see her with anyone. I’d be protective.” He’d be surprised if Cindy felt that way, too, uninvolved as she’d been in Margo’s life.

  And yet she said, “You got it. You are smart.” She whirled her beverage around, making little bubbles that smashed against the glass. “Logan Tripp, how old are you?”

  “Eighteen,” he mumbled, sweating now.

  “You know how old is Margo?”

  He nodded. He expected her to say more, to flay him with fifteen, but for a long time she just stood there.

  Then: “In six years, you will be twenty-four. What about that?”

  Logan was lost. He shrugged.

  “In five years, we start our training. For Mars trip.”

  The words hung between them, more accented than usual, thicker than ocean air. He couldn’t swallow, waiting for her to speak.

  “Logan,” she said at last, a good witch twist upon his name, “you want to go to Mars?”

  “Yes.”

  Cindy reached down, grabbed his hand. She lifted it up, her pencil-thin brows scrutinizing his fingers. “You broke,” she said, and for a second, he thought she was reading the lines of his hand. “When you were ten?”

  He nodded, breath held. How the hell did she know? She released his hand, and Logan had to fight the urge to tuck it under his arm. The break, like all his other childhood “scuffs,” was a secret. It shouldn’t have been anywhere in his file.

  “You know, astronauts, they should not have scars or breaks,” she said.

  He nodded, numb now. Was she saying he couldn’t go to Mars? What was the point, then, of scolding him for seeing Margo? Just as he opened his mouth to ask, her red lips smiled. In a jubilant voice, Cindy said—she almost shouted: “For you, I will make an exception!” She nodded once, briskly. “Man luck.”

  Then she sauntered off, while his fingers opened, letting go of the balloon.

  19

  Limos lin
ed the glossy brick driveway of the luxurious Castillo de Zhu, their smeary red taillights blotted by the arched leaves of the massive palms shrouding the drive. Margo tried to count them, but the line was too long. She clutched a glass of chardonnay that Jana had poured for her, and she wondered how, on such a tiny island, accessible only by ferry and plane or helicopter, there could ever be so many limousines