Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,211

what you gave me.”

“Tay,” he said with a small shake of his head.

“No, Greg. I’m serious. Let’s face it, I probably wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t shown up that day, and I sure wouldn’t be here right now if you hadn’t stepped in and taken me in when everything was falling apart at the dorms. I’m no saint. I know it. You know it. Everybody knows it. But that never mattered to you. I know you get frustrated with me. Heck, I get frustrated with myself. But the one thing you never did, ever, was give up on me.”

“I would never give up on you,” he said. “I don’t…”

“I know. I… know.” She willed the words to come up. “But it’s time.”

“Time?” he asked, his voice slowing down in fear and panic.

A nod. A smile. And she shrugged. “I need to learn to do this on my own. I need to learn to fly.”

“I don’t understand. What…?”

“I’m moving out,” she said, and he looked like he’d taken a bullet to the chest.

“What?”

It was like the words were echoing around the room, bouncing off of everything and sounding again and again.

“On Monday,” she said, dropping her gaze because his had become too heavy to hold.

“Wait. You’re… moving?”

Courage, Taylor. Don’t back out now. “Don’t think I’m not grateful. I am. You’ll never know how much. But I can’t keep hiding from life here. I can’t keep taking advantage of you, of the guys. You’ve all been wonderful. Really, you have. But I also know you haven’t had a single good night’s sleep since I got here.”

“The couch isn’t so bad.”

“But it’s not your bed. It’s not being able to live your life without worrying about mine all the time.”

“I don’t mind worrying.”

She smiled at him. “I know. You say that, but I’m one more thing to think about. And you’ve got so much on your plate right now—classes, work, and let’s face it, you haven’t even been on a date since December. That’s not fair to you. It’s not fair to keep you in limbo so I can be okay.”

“I don’t mind. I haven’t…”

“I know, but…” Closing her eyes, she willed herself to be strong and let him go. When she opened them again, she found his eyes shredded into a million pieces. The last thing she’d wanted to do was to hurt him. “I really do think it’s time.”

His face slipped from sadness to regret to acceptance in five short seconds. “Where are you going? You’re moving on Monday?”

“Yeah. They found me a room, over in the senior apartments.”

“But you’re not a senior.”

“They pulled some strings. Probably because of what happened and they don’t want us to sue them, that’s what Dad said anyway.”

Greg absorbed that blow, wondering how many more he could withstand. “You talked to your dad?”

“I had to… with the room thing and the laptop…”

“Wow. Okay then.”

“Look,” Taylor said, “I know what I said before, how I was, but I think I was just trying to make things feel okay again.”

“And now they do?” he asked, feeling himself withering inside but knowing he couldn’t do that to her. Of course she had the right to make her own decision—about all of it.

“I’m getting there,” she said. “I just… I want to make sure you’re okay with it, that we don’t have any hard feelings between us because that’s the last thing I want.”

Breathing was becoming impossible. “No. Yeah. Of course. No hard feelings.”

She, however, took a long deep breath of relief. “Good.” Looking around, she surveyed the dishes. “You going back to study?”

With a long stretch, he shook his head. “I think I’ve got to take a break. Besides, you cooked, I can do the dishes.”

“It’ll be faster if we do them together.” She picked up three of them. “Then you can get back to studying.”

“What are you trying to do, kill me?”

She grinned. “Nah, if I’d wanted to do that, I would’ve done it a long time ago.”

Chapter 29

Dishes done, Greg went back to studying, and Taylor went back to, what else? Hamilton.

It was like she couldn’t get enough of the songs, the story, the layers of meaning and understanding. Every time she uncovered another piece, it was like finding a lost treasure that was one more to add to her growing collection.

She watched two of the lead actors sing That Would Be Enough at a luncheon at a fundraiser for the Graham-Windham Orphanage that Eliza herself had started, followed by the debut of the