Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,125

paying attention just like she always was.

“Hm.” He cleared his voice, glanced across the table, and ducked into the conversation. “Hello?”

Taylor put her hand to her head and pushed her hair up and out of her face, fighting tooth-and-nail not to cry. How could this have happened? Why…? What was she going to do…? The emotions were starting to break through as she further assessed the damage and destruction that were scattered everywhere.

“Greg?” she asked, to make sure or because she couldn’t remember if that was who she called, she couldn’t tell which.

“Yeah?”

Her arms wrapped around herself as tears stung the backs of her eyes, and she sniffed them back. What was she going to do now? “Uh…”

Heedless of who was listening or why, Greg straightened. “Tay? Where are you? What’s wrong?”

“I’m… I just got back. Oh, my…”

“Taylor. Taylor,” he said, his voice going rock-hard with the worry. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”

“I just… I’m at my dorm.” Her words were breathless and filled with unsettling panic.

“Okay?” he asked in concerned confusion.

“Can… Can you come?” Her voice was shaky beyond belief.

“To your dorm?” he asked, sure he wasn’t understanding her correctly.

“Yeah. And hurry.”

When he clicked off the phone and stood, both Clara and Ryan’s gazes went up with him.

“What’s going on?” Ryan asked.

“I’m not sure, but I’ve got to go.”

Clara was already sliding out of her side of the booth. “Is Taylor okay?”

“I don’t know. She sounded… She didn’t sound good.”

“What’s going on?” Wes asked from the other booth.

Greg’s gaze went that way, and he wished he had been cooler about the whole thing. “I don’t know. Something happened at Taylor’s dorm.”

Next to Wes, Lauren rolled her eyes. “Drama. Drama. Drama.”

“Are you going over there?” Clara asked only Greg.

“Yeah,” Greg said, ignoring the others.

“Okay, we’re going with,” Clara said. She turned to Ryan. “Let’s go.”

“What about…?” he started.

“Can y’all grab our food?” Clara asked as if the others really had any choice at all.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Wes said. “You want us to…?”

“Just bring it to your house,” Clara said, glancing at Greg. “We’ll pick it up there when we figure out what’s going on.”

Not being able to face the destruction while she waited for them, Taylor went out into the hallway and slid down the wall by her door. What was she going to do now? What was she going to tell her parents? Where was she going to go tonight? She couldn’t sleep here. The thought sent a shiver all the way through her.

Even if she could get some of it cleaned up, she was not sleeping in there and waiting around for Hannah to come back. That was for sure.

She was still debating about what to do next when the three figures rounded the corner, hurrying and practically running down the hall. Knowing she had to get her legs under her, she stood, using the wall for support.

“Tay?” Greg asked, coming up in a run-walk. “What happened? What’s going on?”

There was no way to explain it, so after she leaned into him for a hug, she simply turned and opened her door. Questioning, the others followed her inside but stopped before she did.

“What the heck?” Ryan exclaimed. “What…? Who did this?”

“Taylor?” Clara asked her, more than surveying the room. “Are you okay? Were you here? Who did this?”

“Oh, my gosh.” Greg reached out for her and pulled her to him and held her there.

She was glad for that, glad for the support so she didn’t sink to the ground and give up completely. “It was like this when I got back a little while ago. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Well, first off,” Ryan said, and his voice had a hard edge to it, “we need to go tell the R.A. And then we need to report this to the cops.”

Taylor blinked at him. “The cops?”

“Ryan’s right, Taylor,” Clara said. “This… This isn’t cool at all.”

With his arm around her, Greg rubbed her arm. “They’re right. We need to report this.”

Slowly Taylor nodded, glad someone could be there to think rationally for her because she wasn’t anymore. “Okay.”

The reporting of it wasn’t difficult. The R.A. nearly had a fit when she saw the mess, which didn’t surprise Greg at all. He would’ve thrown one too had this happened to someone on his watch.

When the cops showed up, Ryan and Clara stepped out into the hallway with half of the other residents who were now milling about trying to figure out what was going on. Greg stayed with Taylor