Free Lies I Told by Michelle Zink

weekend.
    As usual, I was lying through my teeth, but at least the odds of getting caught were slim.
    An hour later, the party was in full swing, and I watched from across the beach as Rachel moved in on Parker, standing too close and flipping her hair, textbook examples of body language in full-on flirt mode. But there was something else, too. Something watchful in the way she stood, the way she angled her body. Like she was expecting an attack any minute.
    Or planning one.
    Olivia spoke from the chair next to her. “Don’t look now, but someone’s found a new target.”
    I laughed. “Rachel? Or Parker?”
    â€œNeither.” Olivia tipped her beer bottle in another direction entirely. “Logan. He hasn’t taken his eyes off you since he got here.”
    I followed the beer bottle until my gaze landed on Logan. He was standing at the edge of the fire, a petite blonde chatting him up as he tried to look interested in what she was saying. It might have helped if he’d actually been looking at her.
    But Olivia was right; he was watching me.
    I offered him a sympathetic smile. His eyes lit up from across the beach.
    â€œTold you,” Olivia said, laughing a little.
    It was the perfect segue to the dirt on Logan’s romantic past. “He is pretty hot,” I admitted. “Does he have a girlfriend?”
    â€œNot right now,” Harper answered, running her fingers through her short, dirty-blond hair. “But he does have an interesting dating pedigree.”
    Olivia laughed.
    â€œThat doesn’t sound good.” I sat back in my chair with a sigh. “Go ahead. Give it to me straight. I can take it.”
    â€œHe and Rachel were a thing,” Olivia said. “Until last year, actually.”
    â€œReally? What happened?”
    Olivia shrugged. “Logan’s a little . . .”
    â€œSlow,” Harper finished.
    â€œSlow?”
    The subject file didn’t say anything about Logan being slow. Captain of the lacrosse team, a 3.9 GPA, and president of the school’s charitable Human Services Group didn’t say slow. Not to mention the way he’d seemed when we talked, the clarity and intelligence in his eyes when he’d given me a ride home.
    â€œI guess slow isn’t the right word,” Olivia corrected herself. “More . . . chill.”
    â€œEveryone’s chill compared to Rachel,” Harper murmured.
    Olivia cut Harper a sharp glance before turning her eyes back to me. “Rachel’s just . . . high-strung, you know? She likes to party, likes to go to bonfires in Malibu with people none of us know, sneak into clubs in Hollywood. Crazy stuff like that.”
    â€œAnd that’s not Logan’s scene?” I asked, watching himfeign interest in the blonde across the beach.
    Olivia laughed. “You could say that.”
    I held her gaze without saying anything. Parker had taught me the tactic. It was instinctual for most people to fill silence with words. Silence made people uncomfortable. Made them feel obligated to say something. If you were patient, if you let the silence sit, most people would blab about anything and everything to make it stop.
    â€œLogan’s just laid-back,” Olivia said. “It didn’t work between him and Rachel. Every weekend, she wanted to find the party, and Logan just wanted to come down to the Cove and play his guitar or hang out at Mike’s with the guys.”
    â€œMike’s?”
    â€œIt’s a burger place in the Town Center. We hang there when there’s nothing else to do,” Olivia explained.
    â€œAnd when Rachel isn’t dragging us all over LA,” Harper added, her voice thick with sarcasm and something I could have sworn was resentment.
    â€œSo . . . I take it Logan’s off-limits?” I had no intention of leaving Logan alone. I just wanted to know what kind of territory I was wading into. “Because of the history with