Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,124

those three years. What is filling your years right now? Whatever it is, that is what your someday is being built on. Make sure that you make it count because it does.”

Although The Voice of Truth had been blasting on her car speakers the entire way back to Tech, Taylor hardly even remembered most of it. Her mind continued to play ‘wouldn’t it be cool if,’ and the more ideas she let come, the more of them showed up. It was like they had each invited 52 of their closest friends for the party because someone had finally taken the time to listen to them.

At the outskirts of town, the thoughts of being back again suddenly set up roadblocks that stopped the cascade, and she felt the hard rock of worry take up residence over her heart once again. Just like that, reality came crashing back, and this time it felt heavy, hard, and painful. It was like she had literally traded one reality for a different one.

“I can do this,” she said, forcing her foot to stay on the gas and not letting herself turn around. “I can do this.”

Chapter 17

“Couple of booths is fine,” Wes said to the waitress who led them to the other side of the restaurant.

Nelson, Paige, Wes, and Lauren took one. Greg, Clara and Ryan slid into the other.

“Y’all sounded fantastic tonight,” Clara said, not bothering to look at a menu. They’d all been to this place so many times, they practically knew each other’s orders by heart.

“I love Sheltered in the Arms of God,” Ryan said. “That piano echo always sounds like heaven.”

“Totally,” Clara said.

“So what have you guys been up to?” Greg asked, fighting to find a normal topic that didn’t have to do with anything that might even come close to approaching drama. It wasn’t helping at all that Taylor had not come for services. He’d hardly had the presence of mind to keep his attention on the music and not keep looking for her the whole time, hoping she would come and praying she was okay.

He wanted to call her so badly, his heart was aching over it. But he knew she had made her choice. She was not coming back. The only question now was how he was ever going to go on without her in his life.

“We watched Les Mis last night,” Clara said as she sat back under Ryan’s arm, and she grinned at Ryan. “I think it’s starting to grow on him.”

“Still not a big fan of musicals,” Ryan said, “but if you get past everybody breaking into song for no apparent reason, there are some really good stories in them.”

“Yeah. We’re thinking about doing a trip in the summer,” Clara said.

“Oh, yeah?” Greg could only think of the trips he had taken recently with Taylor. What he wouldn’t do to go back there just to be with her unapologetically.

“Yeah. They’re doing Wicked at the Dallas Theater in July,” Clara said. “And Les Mis is at the Rochester in San Antonio that same weekend. So we could do Wicked on Friday and Les Mis on Saturday. That would be so awesome.”

Greg was truly happy for them. They really were a great couple. “Sounds like it.”

When Taylor made it to her dorm door, all she was praying was that there would be no hair tie on it. She was grateful to find there wasn’t. Unlocking the door, she was thinking of all the things she needed to get done by morning, so she wasn’t really paying much attention to the room itself until she clicked the light on. The sight slammed her backward and swept the breath from her lungs.

Shambles.

She’d heard the term in the past, but she’d never understood it until that very moment. “What in the…?”

The normal heaps of Hannah’s stuff had been joined by heaps and piles of her own. Taylor blinked three times to try to figure out if this was some kind of insane nightmare come to life. Her first instinct was to start to pick things up, but before she even bent down, something inside her said, Don’t touch anything.

Numb and shaken to the core, she pulled out her phone and dialed the only number she could think to.

The beep of his phone jerked Greg upright in surprise. He pulled it out figuring it would be his mother. More surprise jumped into him when he saw the caller ID, but he beat that down, knowing at least Clara would be head’s-up