Before You Go (YA Romance) (13 page)

“Really?”

The word was so soft, and the way he looked at her, so nice, that she blushed again. “Yeah,” she said, embarrassed for being so open. “It’s okay, though. I’ve thought of going to school at Stanford or something.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I think I would like it there.” She chewed her lip, trying to think of why. “It’s just big enough. You could be anyone.”

“So you want to be someone else?”

He had his head in his hand; she could practically envision glasses on the tip of his nose. “Are you trying to psychoanalyze me?”

“If you’ll just lie down flat and close your eyes…”

“You’ll tell me how I feel.”

His brow arched. “Touché…”

Margo grinned. “Actually, I’m a fan of that kind of thing.”

“Shrinks?”

“Psychology,” she said.

“Stanford does that well.”

“I know.”

“You know,” he murmured, “I think Freud said there are no accidents.”

“None at all?”
She wondered what that meant for her. First, she’d undressed without locking the door. Then she’d saddled a wild horse and gotten herself thrown off. “Based on that, maybe I should be in therapy.”

He smiled.
“Maybe.”
She opened her mouth for an indignant retort, but he quickly said, “Kidding. I’m kidding. I don’t think things are really that cohesive.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged again. “You know…everything connected.
For a reason.
I say maybe there are accidents. Shit just happens.”

He reached out and grabbed the ice pack, stood slowly over her, and settled it on her bruise. He was silent for a moment, staring down at her, while Margo’s heart beat uncomfortably hard.

“Tell me something: can you walk?”

She nodded.

“Then come with me up to the O. I want to show you something.”

“I don’t know….”
 

Logan stuck out his hand. “Come on. No one’s up there right now. And you have four more hours until you can fall asleep. This will be better than your iPod.
Promise.”

Margo hesitated,
then
peeled back her covers. His hand was warm and firm, with calluses on palm and fingers. As he led her out the room and down the hall, he exerted the slightest bit of pressure.
Follow
: an urging. Not an order.

By the time they made it to the sixth floor of the observatory tower, her heart was pumping twice as hard as normal, and she felt it in her head. They stopped at a tall steel door, and Logan pulled a card out of his pocket, swiped.

The room he led her into looked like a geek’s heaven. Dozens of rows of computers were tricked out with all kinds of little gadgets: cameras, printers, digital writing pads, touch pads, speakers. One computer near the
room’s
opposite end linked up to a movie theater-size screen, connected to dozens of little tubes that fed into the ceiling.
 

“That’s my desk,” Logan said.
“Big screen for the important folks.”

“Big heads, big screens.”

He laughed. “I don’t actually have a desk. No one does.”

She held a hand to her chest. “You mean you have to…
share
.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

She glanced around the room again, and then up. “Why is the ceiling flat,” she asked, pointing, “instead of round.”

“You’re about to find out.”

Logan steered her toward the back of the room, where a winding staircase disappeared into the ceiling, and she said, “I don’t know if I can handle any stairs.”

“Relax,” he whispered. Then he picked her up.
 

Seriously.
He actually swept her off her feet, and carried her up the stairs like she didn’t weigh a thing. When they reached the top, he set her down gently, holding her waist.

“Got it?” His voice was husky.

“Yeah.
I think.”

She felt weak and shaky from the ride, and every nerve in her body had zeroed on her waist, on the spots where his fingers touched her body, too tight to be casual. He let her go, but she was still standing body-heat close to him, so her senses were overwhelmed by his warmth and his scent: wintery with a touch of something sweet, like honey.

She took a little step away, and then her eyes adjusted, and her mouth fell open.

“Wow...”

They stood inside a dome that resembled a giant, circular tic-tac-toe board. Pipe-like bars folded into diamonds crisscrossed the ceiling, and a flap near the front of the dome gleamed golden brass, winking in the faint mechanical light of several massive, cannon-like machines that must have been cameras.

“This,” Logan said, sweeping his hand out at them, “is the real observatory. And
those—” he nodded at the big, bulb-like things on the end of what looked like cannon chutes— “are the telescopes.”

They were pointed toward the dome’s top. Margo noticed patterns cut into the ceiling; flaps where it opened. “Cindy designed them,” she murmured.

“
Zhuscopes
.”

Margo had heard all about her mother’s special telescope, and had wondered about the name. Casa de Zhu, the
Zhuscope
,
Zhu’s
. How arrogant could you get? Logan’s arm bumped hers, and her temper instantly cooled.

“Come over here and sit with me.” She followed him past a couple of desks to a long, couch-like thing she couldn’t really see in the dark. It was positioned just in front of the massive machines. Margo sat down tentatively, eyeing the rubber-looking floor, inhaling the funny scent of metal and plastic. He sank down beside her, and dropped a pair of goggles in her hand.

Her fingers explored the plastic, finding that they fastened via a strap; it would be too tight for her hurt head.

“Lean back against the couch,” he told her. “I can hold them up for you.”

“You don’t have to that. I can hold them.” She suddenly felt shy, overexposed.

“You’ll need your hands for something else.”

He leaned away, then in, and dropped a small, smooth cube into her lap. She rubbed her fingertips over its rounded keys, and the thing beeped. Logan lunged, a second late. The ceiling was starting to vibrate. Its wide, segmented pieces shuddered and slid, descending slowly toward the floor. The dome’s walls continued to fold in, not loudly, but in bursts of cool, smooth air that tossed her hair around her cheeks. The walls slid down into the floor until the sky surrounded them. A warm breeze kissed her skin. Stars sparkled, billions of white pinpricks.

Logan’s hand touched down on her knee.

“This is it…”

The air on the hilltop was wet and carried a thousand scents: pine sap, moist dirt,
salt
water. Her senses hummed as the crickets sang and frogs croaked. They were sitting up high; she could see the distant lights of Puerto Rico, a smear of gold amid a sheet of flattened black. And closer to her, tools to see the sky.

When the dome was all gone, all that remained were pistons, sheets of mirror, and at the heart of it all, a giant lens.
 

Logan snorted. “I thought that you might like to come up here. I guess Bach is more relaxing, huh?”

“Yes,” she whispered, turning to him. “But this is incredible.”

There was a little awkward moment, where she thought he seemed embarrassed. That or he thought she was cheesy and obvious. Then he bumped her shoulder with his, and the coziness fell back over them.

“With this thing,” he said, taking the remote in her lap, “you can guide the telescope. It’s already set, so you just have to put on the glasses. The old way would be looking through those lenses there,” he said, pointing to the ends of what looked, to her, like pistons.
 

“Your— Cindy invented these things,” he said, holding out the glasses. “The telescope sends the signal to them, so you can see everything from here. Most of us who work here stick to the old school way, but this gets grants. And,” he smiled, “it works well for the concussed.
Wanna
try?”

“Absolutely.”
Anything.

“Sit back,” he told her. “I’ll get up and stand behind you. I can hold the goggles up and you can—”

“That’s okay,” she blurted, desperate to keep him next to her. “I really can hold them myself. You can just steer this thing,” she told him, holding up the little box. “I trust you.”
        

13

Logan wanted to warn her that her trust was misplaced, that whatever she thought this meant, it probably meant more but would be worth less, but she was smiling.

He’d told himself he could treat her like a friend, and for some reason, he’d actually believed it. The truth was, every second near her worked on him like Southern Comfort, heat gliding over him, tightening his stomach and clouding his mind, drawing his hands to her, until it seemed fine to touch her, linger. He could tell himself he was being nice, offering to stand behind the couch, so close that his chest brushed her back, his arms rested on her shoulders, her hair tickled his cheeks and tortured his nose, all so he could hold up some goggles.

It was ridiculous.
Asinine.
Selfish and at the same time, completely stupid.

He’d wanted to get off the planet since he was old enough to think. He’d worked tirelessly for the last decade to get to where he was. He was smart, sure, but he’d still worked his ass off to choose the right courses, impress the right people, and now that he was close—
so
close—he was preying on Cindy Zhu’s daughter?

What was wrong with him? Was he so much like his father?
So self-destructive?

Logan took a steadying breath and smiled at her, telling
himself
to keep his shit together.

“Sure. I’ll steer you.” …
down onto the couch
. He gritted his teeth, and she seemed to notice.

“Or I can hold the controller, and you can do the goggles? It doesn’t matter to me.”

“Nah, this way is good.”

He needed to get on with it. He could show her a couple of planets and take her back to the casa. Surely Jana would be finished putting the boys to sleep by then. He felt guilty abandoning Margo when she was hurt, but that was better than driving
himself
crazy. Or more importantly, better than engulfing her in his bullshit.

And there was a lot of it.
Enough to fuel a space shuttle.

“Um…”

He blinked. She was watching him.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sorry.”

He took the controller and she raised the goggles to her face. She shifted a little, and her shorts bunched up, revealing a dangerous amount of thigh.

“Oh my God.”
She took the mask off her face and grinned. “This is very cool.”

“Good. I wanted to....” He shook his head. Shut his mouth. She smiled at him, an understanding smile, like she could tell he had lost his mind and she didn’t mind being with him anyway. Logan felt a swell of guilt.