Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,183

up that night, but then he delved even deeper into the thoughts. Sunshine was one thing, but it was more than that. A lot more.

Spotlight. The word zipped through him. It’s like she’s in the spotlight, like she’s on a stage. And she’s… performing.

In one breath, he was back across that table from Clara and Ryan, watching Taylor, knowing she could “get like this” but not understanding why. It was like ricocheting through all the memories at the same time. He’d seen her like that before—many, many times. On the arm of Quinlen the night of his birthday party. On the arm of countless guys really… even sitting with Chris that night in the chair…

What had Nelson said about the night he took her back to her car after the disaster of a graduation party? How different she had seemed… How she said she needed to get back or Chris would be mad… To hear Nelson recount it, she sounded almost depressed, despondent, deflated. Nothing like she had been at the party that night.

The air around Greg began to thin.

Covering. She was covering what was really going on with Spotlight Taylor.

His mind slipped to right after they’d left her parents’ house earlier that day. It was like she had flipped a switch. He knew she was hurting. She had to be. He had seen her at that table, broken, crushed, ready to give up. He knew what they had done to her. He knew she had to be sad and angry and hurt… But none of those came out…

He remembered after the Chris thing, how she had hidden in her basement, locked herself in her room, barely making it through any of that. But when she showed up with her friends or with even her family…

It was like she was two, different people. One the bright spotlight girl that everyone either loved or hated because she was so wonderful. And the other, this dark, frightened, closed-in young woman who couldn’t let anyone know what was really going on.

He knew. She had shown him. Sometimes.

But had anyone else ever seen that part of her? The scared part? The vulnerable part? The part that got crushed and somehow got back up and kept right on walking as if nothing had ever happened?

Then his mind remembered the day he had confronted her about Chris after psychology class. She hadn’t been Spotlight Taylor that day. She had looked far more like a wounded animal, cornered, scared, and dangerous. He wondered then how many others had ever seen that side of her. It was clear her parents didn’t know the real her—probably either side of it. No. With them, she was always bright sunshine Taylor or on occasion spotlight Taylor. But those weren’t real, not really real.

They were how she thought others wanted her to be. He saw that now.

Tonight. She had been Spotlight Taylor because she was covering for what had happened earlier with her parents. That was her defense. What did they say, the best defense is a good offense? Well, Taylor could go on offense like no one he had ever seen. The problem was, that often just ended up alienating everyone else.

As the night deepened around him, he began to pray… for wisdom in handling this, for strength to make any of this right, for peace for her. She was not at peace, and he wondered then if she ever had been…

Chapter 25

The next morning, Taylor was up and out the door before Greg was even awake. She had so much to do. Her first stop was the housing office, which she found out when she got there didn’t even open until nine. Frustrated by that, she grabbed something to eat from a vending machine and was an hour early to her nine o’clock stats class. Time to get on with life.

At 7:30, Greg heard someone in the kitchen. He laid completely still, trying to surmise who it was. Wes and Nelson, he decided. They were talking, quietly. He tried to make out what they were saying, but he only caught snippets. Paige… Lauren… Taylor… Clara…

He prayed that Taylor wouldn’t walk in on them talking about her, and he wondered even as he thought it, which Taylor would show up if she did. Since he didn’t have class until ten, he didn’t move until the others had left. He wondered as he stumbled off the couch and folded the blankets if Taylor was still asleep and what to do about it