Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,10

this!” one of them called into the open mountain air.

“Boys!” a woman called below them. “Boys! Wait for your father!”

Taylor laughed softly. It was too late for that. “You okay?” she asked Greg as they carefully passed the man who must be the boys’ father. He, too, looked more than a little freaked out.

“Uh, y-yeah,” Greg said, clearly trying for that to be true.

“Okay, hang on, we’re almost down.”

And in three more steps, they were at least back on the stone part of the structure though they were still high above the ground.

“Whew,” Greg said, and he bent all the way forward and put his hands on his knees.

“You okay?” Taylor asked, now actually worried about him.

“Uh, yeah. Kind of. You think I could sit down for a minute?”

She looked around. There were people, dots really, far below them, but other than the boys and their father, none of them had made it up this high yet. “I think so.”

“Cool.” Letting himself down, Greg picked a place where his back was to the wall of the stone portal that led back down to the main area.

Now really worried about him, Taylor, too, sat next to him.

“You sure you’re okay?” she asked, her gaze taking him in without straying to the sight beyond.

“Whew.” He let out another breath and put his head back on the wall. “Let’s not ever do that again.” His gaze slipped over and down to her as she put her hand on his leg. “Man.” He shook his head slowly. “That thing is wicked.”

“Let’s go over there!” one of the boys said, his voice floating down to them from high above.

Taylor looked up, and from that vantage point, it did look rather insane to have been up there. Figuring it would be a while before they moved again, she plopped the blanket on them both, settling it over their legs before she wound her arm through his and put her head on his shoulder. “Thanks for doing this.”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” he said, and the fact he was trying not to be shaky about it touched a soft place in her heart.

“It’s so weird.” Her gaze slid around her, around them as her heart whispered things she hadn’t let herself think until now.

“What is?”

“It’s like… it’s like I’ve dreamed about this place, about being here, but I know I haven’t.”

“Dreamed,” he asked, his voice going soft. “Like you wanted to come?”

“No,” she said with a small shrug. “Like really dreamed, like at night and stuff.”

“Because you saw it online.”

“No,” she said, knowing he would surely think she’d lost her mind. “Like… like I’ve been here before. Like the trees and the stairs and stuff.”

“You’ve been here?”

“I don’t know. Or something like here. I mean, there are a lot of similarities, some differences too.”

“Like?” he asked as if he was really interested.

Her gaze came up to his, and she smiled. “Well, you’re here with me for one.”

He nodded, holding her gaze with understanding. “You were here… with someone else?”

A breath as that thought hit her hard. “No,” she said, surprised at the realization. “I was here all by myself.”

The whisper of her words went through his eyes. “Oh.”

Slowly she nodded and only her eyes smiled. “This is way better.” And with that, she put her head back down on his shoulder, and neither moved for a long, long time.

They sat together just talking for much longer than Greg would have expected. She asked about the new job, and his plans for going forward. He told her about the hospital, how at first he thought it might kill him but now he’d gotten used to all of the walking. She asked about his plans, and he said he really liked radiography but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to stay with X-rays or move into CT scans and MRI’s.

“I’ve thought about going all the way through, med school, clinicals, the whole thing,” Greg said with a shrug as he put his head back on the stones behind him. No two of them were even similar, so it created an uneven surface to rest on. “But I don’t know. Part of me says can I really do that? I mean, this is me we’re talking about here.”

Taylor tilted her head to look at him. “Well, yeah, but I mean, you work harder than anybody I’ve ever been around. Okay, you don’t always flaunt that for everyone to see, but…”

“Work hard or take it hard?” he asked, trying to throw her off.

She