Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,175

to thin and completely compress in her lungs. “I’m not… this isn’t… I mean, it’s not like I don’t want to go to school anymore. I do. I’ve just realized that I don’t want to…” Taylor swallowed because her words were starting to choke in her throat.

“So that’s it then,” her father finally said, hollow and angry. “After all the hard work I’ve put in, after all I’ve done so that you could get ahead…, now you show up like this and throw it all back in my face. You don’t want to be a doctor? Well, that’s just great.” He nodded and smiled sarcastically. “Great. Okay, then.” Splaying his hands in the air, he snorted. “So, enlighten us, what do you want to do?”

The air suddenly tasted like old, stale cardboard, and her eyes widened. “I… I don’t… know.”

“You don’t know,” he said with a hard breath like a stamp on her life résumé that said Loser. He folded his arms. “Oh, that’s just great. Even better. Did you hear that, sweetheart? She doesn’t know. Let me guess… art?”

Because that was only on some vague list she had never let herself really contemplate, Taylor blinked at the question. The words were there but so were the tears, and she was afraid if one started so would the other.

“I knew this was going to happen with you spending so much time with that artist person,” her father said, spitting the words more than saying them.

“Now, Thomas,” her mother said, and she turned her gaze on Taylor. “Taylor, honey, you know we just want what’s best for you.”

“Do you?” Taylor asked, the frustration with all of it ripping out of her as she fought back the tears. “Do you really? Because right now, I don’t even know what’s best for me. How in the world could you?”

The gentle touch of Greg’s hand on hers yanked her back, and she looked over at him, knowing he thought she had gone too far.

“Taylor,” her mother said, “hun, you have to know we love you. I’m just not sure where this is coming from. We knew going back would be difficult…”

“It’s not going back,” Taylor said, far more in control than she felt though in all honesty, she didn’t want to be in control. She wanted to scream at them, to ask why they always tried to talk her out of what she was trying to say. “It has nothing to do with going back or with Chris or with the dorm or any of that. I’ve just realized that I keep doing things, trying to be someone I’m just not.” She turned to her father. “I know you’re disappointed in me.” His face was stone hard, his eyes blackened. “Believe me, I never wanted that, but I can’t keep going down this road that is wrong for me just because you want me to. I can’t keep acting like this is what I want when it just isn’t.”

Her mother let out a soft breath, looked at her husband and turned back to her daughter. “Is it the classes?” she asked. “Have you tried going to the Student Help Center thing they talked about when we went for the orientation? They said that could help if you need tutoring.”

Truly, Taylor wanted to lose it, but she closed her eyes and willed herself to stay calm. “A tutor isn’t going to help.”

“But if you could just…” her mother started.

“No. Mom. You’re not hearing me. It’s not that I can’t do it. It’s that I don’t want to do it.”

“Fine,” her father said. “Then what do you want to do? Run off to the Amazon Rainforest and pan for gold?”

“Wh…?” Taylor fell headlong into that thought that made no sense. “I… don’t…”

“Well, if you’re dropping out of pre-med, you need some kind of plan,” her father said, and the sarcasm was thick on every word. “What, then, archeology? Paleontology? No, wait. I know. Astrophysics.”

Taylor still couldn’t find the words, and she blinked into the barrage of his.

“Well, why not?” he asked with a harsh laugh. “If you’re going for bad ideas, you might as well go all the way, right?”

“Thomas, please,” her mother said, turning to him but withering under the angry look he gave her.

“What?” he asked as if everything he had said had been perfectly reasonable and logical to that point. “It would make as much sense as art at this point.”

In all honesty, Greg would have fully expected this reaction from his own