Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,12

his head on hers. “I try.”

When Greg finally felt like his legs would hold him up again, they stood together and trekked back down to the car. She had packed sandwiches, and with no restaurant anywhere around, it was a good thing.

Taylor retrieved their lunch items from the cooler in the trunk and divided it up between them in the front. Eating slowly, she soaked in the warmth of the sun’s rays. “So are you brave enough to try the bridges?”

Laughing softly, Greg took a bite of his sandwich. “Brave or crazy?”

She joined his laugh. “Probably both.” In no real rush to get finished, she chewed slowly, contemplating the castle. “Isn’t it crazy to think about Mr. Bishop? I mean, to think that one guy did all of this.”

“I read on one of the sites that the county tried to get him to stop using the stones, but they were on his land, so they couldn’t say much about it.”

“To have that big of a dream,” Taylor said. “To think up this crazy thing nobody would’ve ever believed could actually be built, and then to do it, you know? Rain or shine. Snow or wind. Good years. Bad years. To never give up. It couldn’t have been easy.”

Taking a bite, Greg put his head back on the head rest. “I guess it’s kind of like life. You dream something up, and then you do it, you work toward it, and you just keep going no matter what.”

“Like you with the radiology thing.”

He tipped his head. “Or you with the doctor thing. Think about it, someday, ‘Paging Dr. Grayson, Dr. Taylor Grayson, you’re wanted in the O.R. stat.”

She wrinkled her nose. “The O.R.? Yikes. I don’t think I’m operating material.”

“So what do you want to do? In ten years, where do you see yourself?”

The answer should have been easy, and had anyone else asked it, it might have been. However, with him, easy and real were two different things. She sighed without meaning to. “I don’t know. I want to help people, help them be healthy and stay healthy, but all that hospital stuff, the being on-call and trying to get the fellowships and compete for the top positions, that’s just not me. Not the me I want to be anyway.”

His face registered confusion as he turned it to her. “Okay, so what does the me you want to be want?”

Taylor thought about that for a minute, shrugged, and took a bite, chewing and taking a drink before she answered. “A thousand things, but I guess… to be happy? Fulfilled? Doing something that makes a difference.”

“And doctoring doesn’t make a difference?”

“Yeah. It does.” She nodded. “I guess it’s just weird to think of myself that way. Dr. Taylor Grayson.” Shaking her head, she widened her eyes. “It just doesn’t even seem real.”

Greg looked out at the castle. “Well, I guess everything starts as a dream for someone.”

“I guess so.”

After lunch, they explored more of the castle, and although Taylor kept thinking they really should head back, there was always just one more thing to see. They went up each turret and even across the big bridge, but she’d nearly had to carry Greg across the second half of it. After that, they stuck to paths that weren’t suspended five stories in the air.

“It’s so beautiful,” Taylor said when they came back into the great hall. “The windows are gorgeous with the sun coming in like that. It’s like being in a completely different world.”

“You have to wonder where he got the inspiration and the drive to do all of this,” Greg said. “I mean, it looks so haphazard but there had to be a plan.” He put his hand on a large stone. “How does one guy even do all this, you know? How do you decide what stone goes where to make it end up like this?”

“You have to have a vision,” Taylor said, spinning to lean on the wall next to him and looking up at the high rafters soaring above them. “You have to be able to see more than you think is real. It’s like Nelson with the music or Wes with the cars. You have to be able to see what could be instead of just what is.”

Greg spun, leaned next to her, and crossed his arms. “I’d love to have that kind of vision.”

“Me too.”

Chapter 3

On the way home, they studied for three hours until dusk took over and Taylor couldn’t see without a light