Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,245

try, don’t you think?” Nelson said. He put out his hand. “This obviously isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Nels,” Paige reprimanded him.

“What?” Nelson asked her. “I don’t know how to fix this, do you?”

Greg felt the tension rising between them, and the last thing he could handle was causing problems in their relationship too. He nodded. “I think Pastor Dave’s a good idea.”

Nelson’s gaze fell to him. “You want me to go with you?”

It wasn’t a half-bad idea considering where he might end up if he left by himself. However, he couldn’t justify completely destroying their evening together. “No. You don’t have to. I can handle it.”

Like he was in a fog, Greg stood and swayed a bit. Wordlessly, he grabbed his sneakers out of the closet. Who needed fashion at this point? Shoes on, he searched for his keys and finally found them in the pocket of his pants. He was going to lose his head if it didn’t stay tied on.

“You sure you don’t want us to go?” Paige asked, and her concern sounded loud and clear.

“No. I’m fine.” In the hallway, Greg had to put his hand on the wall to keep himself steady. He was so tired, so very, very tired. Pastor Dave. He was waiting.

Just as he got to the living room, Nelson’s phone went off, and Nelson sighed as he answered it.

“Hey, Wes, can I call you right back? We’ve kind of got something here. K. Yeah. K. Bye.”

“You need a coat,” Paige said, grabbing Greg’s and putting it on him. “You sure you’re going to be okay?”

When Greg turned to her, he knew he had to convince her. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. I’ll be back in a little while.”

“Okay.” She gave him a hug. “Take care of yourself.”

All Greg could do was nod as he turned to go back out into the cold, dark night alone.

“He didn’t say,” Wes said as he and Lauren stood in the corner by the door whispering.

Taylor wanted to tell them the room was small. Their whispering wasn’t doing much good.

“Well, have either one of them heard from him?” Lauren asked, the question going in and out of muffled.

“I don’t know. He just said he’d call me right back.” Wes’s phone rang. “There he is.” He glanced at Taylor who was still sitting on the edge of the bed. “I’ll take this out there.” Waving his finger at Lauren as if to say take care of her, he went out.

At some point, Taylor’s mind and body had gone into full-on shut-down mode. All she wanted to do was go to sleep.

Hesitantly, Lauren came over, stood for a second, and then sat down and put her arm around Taylor. “It’s going to be all right.”

Every scenario Taylor could come up with culminated in their doom. It wasn’t pretty. She shook her head. “How do you know that?”

“Because I know Greg, and I know he’ll do the right thing.”

Taylor noticed that Lauren hadn’t said anything so magnanimous about her. Still, she couldn’t fault her. She was right about Greg. She was. He would do the right thing if it killed him. Taylor knew that now, knew the depths of all he had done for her, asking nothing in return—not even love or loyalty. No, he had given freely, without regard for his own happiness or peace. It was she who had taken that gift and stomped on it.

Coming back in, Wes came over and stood in front of her. “That was Nelson.”

Pain collided with disbelief. No! Now Wes was talking to Nelson about this? “Wes, no. You didn’t tell him, did you? How could you?”

“Hey, now. Hold up there,” Wes said. “I didn’t call him. He called me.”

“And you told him?” This just got worse and worse. How was she ever going to face them again?

“No. I didn’t tell him.”

Faint hope pulled her head up. “You didn’t?”

“No. I didn’t.”

Taylor collapsed into the relief. “Oh, thank goodness.”

“He told me,” Wes said, folding his arms.

The relief scattered as confusion exploded right in the middle of it. “What? What do you mean he told you? How did he find out?”

“Well, apparently Greg came home and about tore the place down,” Wes said. He put up a hand to stop her. “All I know is that Greg just left to go to the student center.”

“The student center?” Taylor asked in confusion and concern. “Now?”

“Nelson said he was going to talk to Pastor Dave.”

The blood drained from her face. “About this?”

Wes tipped his head. “That would