Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,21

help himself. “Come here, you.”

One push away from the car, and she was in his arms again. He held her there, tightly, and he knew she was struggling far more than she let on. Gently he kissed her hair.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said softly, knowing in his heart he would do everything within his power to make it so. “I promise.”

She laughed softly. “I’m going to hold you to that,” she said, and her grip on him tightened.

“K.” Closing his eyes, he let himself fall into the feeling of holding her for one blessed second. He never wanted it to end. “You do that.”

“How was studying?” his mom asked when Greg came back in, needing a heating pad and a gallon of hot chocolate to ward off the hypothermia that was trying to set in. Instead, he sat on the couch and pulled the little blanket over his frozen feet.

“Good. At least I won’t fail it completely now.”

She looked at him over her reading glasses and took them off. Every word that went across her face had to do with concern about him and Taylor. “You two seem to be getting pretty close these days.”

Putting his head over on the couch cushion, Greg sighed. “Mom, we’ve been over this.”

“I know. I know. You keep saying that. You’re just friends. It’s not like that. Except I think it is like that, for you at least.” Slowly she shook her head. “I’m just worried about you. Why don’t you tell her how you feel?”

“Because, Mom. She doesn’t feel the same way.”

“How do you know?”

“Ugh. Because we’ve talked about it, okay? To her, I’m a friend. That’s it. That’s all she wants. That’s all it will ever be.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“If the alternative is losing her as a friend? Yeah. I’m okay with that.”

His mother looked at him for a long, long moment. “Okay, I’m going to tell you something that you might not know.”

Greg rolled his eyes. “What?”

“Before your father and I got together, I was engaged to someone else.”

The shock yanked his head off the couch. “What? You never told me that.”

“It was on a need-to-know basis, and you didn’t… until now.”

“You were engaged?” he asked, stunned by the news. “To who?”

“His name was Bryan Durant, and I thought I was in love with him.”

“Okay, so what happened? Why’s my name not Durant?”

“Well, your dad and I were in a chemistry class together. Yes, believe me, I get the irony. We got assigned to do a project together, and I didn’t want to damage my ring. So when I’d go to the lab, I’d take it off and put it in my pocket. Your dad and I… Well, we started with the project, but then we’d get to talking about things, life, dreams, ourselves. He was… well, he was a lot like he is now, super-serious about everything. But as we worked together, I guess I realized that some of his seriousness was just him being shy and a little awkward. When you really got to know him, he was sweet and gentle and charming and interesting. He had a great sense of humor. Dry as the desert. And he was so easy to be with.”

“Hold up. Wait a second. Let me get this straight. You dated Dad while you were engaged to someone else?”

“No. I didn’t date Dad. Not until after I called off the engagement, which wasn’t easy, I’ll tell you that. I hurt a lot of people over it, and I still regret that. The thing is, I just couldn’t admit to myself that what I was feeling with your Dad was real in a way that what I had with Bryan just wasn’t. Bryan and I didn’t talk like I did with your Dad. Oh, we looked good on paper, but when I was with your Dad, I was… more myself, I guess.” She stopped for a second. “I just don’t want you to miss something special because you’re too scared to take a chance and call off the engagement.”

“I’m not engaged,” he said.

“No,” she said softly. “But life has a way of choosing paths for you if you don’t choose them for yourself when the choice is there to be made.”

By Thursday, it seemed life was almost back to normal for Greg. He went to work, came home and studied in his room. At nine, there was a soft knock on his door.

“Hey,” Ryan called, “you hungry? We’re eating.”

Greg looked at the stack