Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,243

way is up.”

Taylor had to admit Lauren had a point.

“But trust me, this is a good thing.”

“It is?”

“Yes, it is,” Lauren said, “because now you know how he feels.”

“And that’s a good thing?” Taylor asked. Her mind was no longer working from point A to point B. She had zig-zagged around Points Y, G, and N with stops at E, W, and P spinning and circling until nothing was making any sense anymore.

“Yes,” Lauren said, and she said it with such conviction that Taylor almost believed her. “Until someone steps up and gets real, you’re just playing this game that nobody knows the rules to.”

“But I didn’t know we were playing anything. I just thought we were friends.”

Lauren nodded. “I know. I know. And Greg has practically turned himself inside out to get himself to stop having feelings for you.”

“He has?” Taylor asked. She wasn’t fishing for a compliment. She genuinely had never seen it, or never known she had anyway.

“Girl, that boy is so in love with you, he would take a bullet for you and die happy that he could help you out.”

“A bullet?” Taylor asked with concern.

“And he has,” Lauren said. “Not to say anything about it, but I’ve seen his face when you walk in with someone else. He tries to hide it, but… believe me, that boy has no filter when it comes to you.”

Trying to make sense of this, Taylor turned to Wes as she swiped at her eyes. “Is that true?”

For a long minute, Wes sat there looking as if he was choosing his words very carefully. Finally he nodded. “Yeah. It is. Since long before I knew him I think. Back in high school, I tried not to notice it, but I did. He’d hang around your locker after school.”

“To check the math assignment,” Taylor said quickly.

“And at lunch when he’d save his grapes for you,” Wes said.

“Because he knew I like grapes.”

“And after Brennan broke up with you junior year, Greg was going to ask you to the Winter Formal, but you ended up going with…”

“Noah Brooks,” she said, and she shook her head. “Oh, man, what a disaster that was.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Wes said gently.

“So do I,” Taylor said. That date had been a nightmare from minute one.

“Right,” Wes said, “and remember who drove you home that night?”

Suddenly Taylor couldn’t breathe. “Greg. But he never said anything.”

“Because he thought you didn’t want it,” Lauren said. “He knew you didn’t feel the same way.”

Flailing for something, another thought struck Taylor. “But he went out with Paige. What was that?”

The two of them sighed in unison and looked across her at each other.

“What?” Taylor asked in frustration, looking between the two of them. “What does that mean?”

Another silent conversation passed between them, and Lauren nodded before she said, “Okay, first of all, you were gone, and let’s face it, we all thought you had burned every bridge there had ever been with you and the guys and danced on the ashes.”

Taylor winced at that, but she couldn’t argue. It was too true.

“Second of all, Nelson had broken Paige’s heart into about two million pieces and we were all freaked out about her going off the deep end over it,” Lauren continued.

“And,” Wes said, “to be honest with you, I always kind of wondered if he did it a little bit for you… at least in the beginning.”

“For me?” Taylor asked, twisting in the confusion. “I don’t…”

Wes tipped his head. “She was your sister, and she was pretty broken up at the time. I think he was trying to do whatever he could to make sure she didn’t break for good. He didn’t want that for your family, or for you.”

It was like seeing it all from a whole new perspective, and she had no idea what was the real reality.

“So, I guess the big question,” Lauren said, “is how do you feel about him? Have you ever thought about it? About him… and you… together?”

Together? With Greg? Wow. What a question that was. Taylor’s mind hop-scotched her way through a myriad of random memories of him. In high school chemistry, in elementary, being the rabbit to her Alice, every math class until junior year when they were separated… “I don’t… I don’t know. I guess I just never thought about it like that,” she said as her heart went on a roller coaster of emotions. “He was always just… Greg. I mean, he always felt more like my brother than anything, I