Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,170

well, no, I guess not.”

“Good.” She worked a little more to get comfortable and yawned as she fell still. “Who’s in this?”

“Keanu Reeves,” Greg said as he worked to get the movie started.

“Ugh.” Twisting her head, she looked at the light. “Can you shut that off?”

He looked less-than-pleased, but he said, “Sure” and clicked it off.

“Oh, yeah. Much better.”

At some point after Neo’s transformation, Greg glanced down at her, one breath away from asking what she thought so far. It was then, however, that he realized she was fast asleep. In frustration, he angled his gaze back up at the television. “Yeah, Greg, you’re so fun to be with. I can hardly stay awake.”

Sometimes the red pill of the truth about a situation was hard to swallow and harder still to get yourself to be okay with. This was one of those times.

Neo was fighting the swarm of agents as the world bent and twisted around him when the door opened and Wes walked in. One look, and Greg knew what he was thinking. However, without a word, Wes came around to see the TV.

“Matrix?” Wes asked.

“Yeah,” Greg replied without letting his gaze dwell on his friend too long.

Wes nodded. “Cool. Well, I’m going to turn in. G’night.”

“Night.”

That left Greg praying fervently that Nelson wouldn’t show up before the movie was over. He even considered shutting it off, but he wasn’t sure what to do after that. Should he leave her here and sleep in his own bed? Wake her up so she could go to his bed? Sit here all night so he didn’t have to do either because neither seemed quite right. Out of every possible scenario in life, this was one he would never have thought might show up.

At the end of the movie, he let the credits play all the way through, still trying to decide what to do once it was over. It was only when the room grew dark and quiet after he shut the thing off that she stirred enough to think she might not be completely asleep.

“Tay?” he asked quietly. “Taylor?”

“Hmmm.” She shifted and rolled over so if she would’ve been awake, she would have been looking right up at him.

Greg assessed his options—none of them were good. “Tay? Hey. Taylor…”

Everything was dark, which normally would have freaked her out, especially because as she came awake, nothing looked at all familiar.

“Tay?” the voice whispered in the dark. “You awake?”

“Hm,” she replied, trying to find her voice. She vaguely remembered a movie. “Is the movie over?”

“Yeah,” Greg said. “You ready for bed?”

That seemed like a long walk, but she knew it wasn’t fair to him to stay here. “Yeah.” One heartbeat, and she was asleep again. Why was it so hard to wake up?

“Tay?”

“Yeah,” she said, floating on a soft, gentle breeze of total relaxation.

“You want to go to bed, or do you want me to?”

Actually, she wanted neither. She wanted him to stay right there because in the fog of being somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, she had the thought that he was the reason sleep had so thoroughly taken hold of her. “No. I’ll go.” But she didn’t move. Even though in her mind, there was a part of her that got up, walked down the hall, and got into bed.

“I can go if you want me to,” he said again.

That brought her more awake, and she managed to drag herself up. She swayed as if threatening to return to his lap. He put his hand on her back either to steady her or to make sure she didn’t just collapse.

“You need help?” he asked, and there was a tinge of real concern.

“No, I can get it.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” She pushed herself up and off the couch and tramped sleepily down the hallway. On autopilot, she went in, closed the door, slid under the covers and between the sheets, and in seconds, she was out.

Chapter 24

“You want to drive, or you want me to so you can work on your paper?” Taylor asked the next morning when they met in the kitchen for breakfast before their impending trip to her parents’ house. Her only defense against the shaking conviction that this was a thoroughly bad idea was to go full throttle and do it before she could talk herself out of it.

“I can drive,” Greg said. “The paper’s not due ‘til Wednesday. I’ve got time.”

Coming over to the table with her own toast and cereal, Taylor sat down and nodded. “So how