Not Even Close (A New Generation) by Elizabeth Reyes (books to read in a lifetime txt) 📗

up hishands in front of him. “I, I had no idea. I just assumed I’d seen herwith one dude yesterday and then today—” He stopped and turned to her dad whenher dad cleared his throat. “We’re friends, sir, but . . . we’ve gone out and we’vebeen talking—”

“It’s fine,” Vannah jumped in to save him from saying anythingelse that might have her dad scowling. “I should’ve told you I had a twinsooner. This is my fault.” Turning to her dad and siblings she smiled again asshe slipped her hand into Byron’s. “Can you give us a few? We need to talk.”

Without giving them time to respond she pulled Byron along withher and hurried away.

“Savannah.” Vannah winced at her father’s rigid tone but slowedand turned to him. “You’re joining us for an early dinner before we leave.” Shenodded, glad it wasn’t anything more demanding. Then he added, “Bring Byron.”

Turning to Byron she was relieved to see he was already nodding. Vannahnodded as well looking down at her watch. “We won’t be long. Meet you out frontin about a half hour?”

Her dad nodded and as expected Nena smirked knowingly. Vannahwould never hear the end of this but it didn’t even matter. What she’d tried sohard to make sense of all day yesterday and had ruined her entire day, madetotal sense now.

The moment they were around the corner and out of her family’ssight she stopped, pulled her hand out of Byron’s and jabbed his chest with herfinger. “Do you really have an overnight date tonight?”

His eyes widened and her stomach dropped for a second when shethought maybe it was true. “No.” He shook his head adamantly. “No! I, uh . . . I just said that because your sister was sucking face with some dude yesterdayand I thought it was you. Why didn’t you tell me you had a twin?”

Smiling big and feeling suddenly emotional, Vannah brought herhands over her mouth for a second trying to hold it together, then did whatshe’d wanted to earlier and jumped in his arms. She didn’t even care that hemight think her pathetic. She was just so incredibly relieved.

Byron groaned against her neck as he squeezed her tight thenpulled his face away. “Was that you I saw a few weeks ago here at the gymworking out with some dude?”

Vanna immediately shook her head. “No. When and if I ever workout it’s with Xochitl. But my sister was here a few weeks ago when she passedthrough from Santa Barbara. She said she’d be meeting up with the guy she’d metwhen she’d stopped to get the free pass on the way up to Santa Barbra. Met upwith him again yesterday. That’s probably who you saw her with at King Taco.”

His shoulders visibly slumped as he exhaled and buried his facein her neck again and swooped her up in his strong arms. “Why the hell didn’tyou tell me you had a twin sister, Savannah?”

For now, she’d spare him the real details of why she’d recently stoppedtelling people first thing about her twin but shrugged. “I figure people willfind out soon enough. Being a twin doesn’t define me. Especially being theboring one.”

Pulling his face back to look at her again he shook his head, hisexpression souring. “There’s not enough flattering words in the world todescribe you, babe. But boring sure as fuck isn’t one of them.” He leaned hisforehead against her exhaling sharply. “Except you’d think having a twin is apretty significant detail about yourself you would likely let others in on. Especiallywhen it might make for a sticky situation. You saw what almost happened today.”

“I know,” Vannah winced. “I’m sorry but I figured since shedoesn’t live in Los Angeles it probably wasn’t that big a deal. I just hadn’tcounted on the possibility of you running into her without me.”

“Yeah, well I have.” He hugged her tighter and kissed her, thennipped her bottom lip. “More than once now and it was infuriating each time.”

Feeling her heart double over, Vannah smiled even bigger. “So,you’re free tonight? They’re headed home after dinner and after that I’m free forthe rest of the night.”

“Hell, yeah.” Byron kissed her long and deep again. Whenhe finally pulled away, he let his head fall back. “Jesus Christ, Savannah.” Heinhaled profoundly then exhaled with exaggeration shaking his head. “You don’teven know.”

“You don’t even know.” She nudged his stomach playfully.“So, you think it’s me you see kissing another guy and you decide telling meyou’ll be spending the night with another girl is fair play?”

Byron searched her eyes without responding at first, thenwhispered. “No wonder you never responded.” He shook his head again with an airof remorse this time. “I’m so sorry. You have no idea how confused I was. Yousaid you had friends you hung out with so when I saw you—” He shook his headeven more adamantly. “Your twin—with that guy—I assumed he was one of your friends.I figured if you were okay with having multiple friends you did that with, whatI said in the text wouldn’t be that big a deal.”

Swallowing the emotion back, Vannah stared at him thinking about justhow big a deal it’d been but decided to keep it to herself. Even if he did knownow that it had been a big deal to her, she didn’t want him knowing justhow much she’d begun to feel after just one week. Clearly, he was feelingequally entitled if he’d confronted Nena and Taz the way he had. Still, shedidn’t want to get ahead of herself just yet. Yesterday and all morning hadbeen an eye opener as far as how ahead of herself she’d already gotten. Despitethis showing on his part that he was in fact feeling for her what she thoughthe might be, she owed it to her recovering heart to slow this down. At leastuntil she knew for sure where this was headed.

After what Byron had called an agonizing week ofwaiting to kiss her again, he’d taken Vannah outside and her knees nearly gaveout as he did some making up for it. But he said her