Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,4

was truly incredible. “The other night, Mitchell and I were talking about you.”

“Uh-oh.”

“No, we were talking about life and how things happen, sometimes without any rhyme or reason, but how it channels into something you would never have done otherwise.”

Carefully sweeping the yellow through the white and pink on her own canvas, Taylor just nodded.

“Anyway, I was telling him about your situation, you know, the whole psycho ex-boyfriend and everything.”

The center of Taylor constricted painfully, but she made not a single sound.

“It’s just that… well, Mitchell does some of those kinds of cases. One of his areas is family law. Like I said, I hope you don’t mind,” Lily said and then stopped talking altogether.

It took effort to breathe. “I… don’t mind,” Taylor finally squeezed out. What would minding do anyway? The story, her story, was already out. Getting mad wouldn’t put it back in.

“I asked him about the trial, about how these things go,” Lily said, continuing though she sounded distant. “He said he thinks you’re super brave to be going through with it. A lot of women don’t. They bail at the thought of getting up there and saying what happened to them.”

This wasn’t helping.

“But he also said that sometimes when the woman is brave and doesn’t back down, that will force the guy’s hand. They think they will just get away with it. When they find out they aren’t going to…”

Swallowing as she sat back from her painting, Taylor fought her own internal reaction to the thoughts of the up-coming trial barely two weeks away. How would she ever make it through that in one piece? “It’s tough,” she finally said. “Just thinking about getting up there, thinking about what they’re going to do to my friends... There’s a part of me that just wants to say forget it. But then, I know if I do that, if we do that, then he walks, and I couldn’t live with myself if I knew I could’ve done something to stop him and I didn’t.”

Lily nodded. “But it’s hard because even if you do, there’s no guarantee.”

For weeks, Taylor had tried not to let herself think that. “I just… I feel like it’s me against all of them. Him, his lawyers, all of what they’re going to say about me, what they have said about me.”

“Yeah, that’s what Mitchell said. Some defense lawyers play win-at-any-cost.”

Taylor tipped her head at the memory of just how far the lawyer had gone at the deposition. It wasn’t a comforting thought.

“This isn’t here nor there,” Lily said slowly, “but Mitchell said if you’re interested in some legal representation for you, he wouldn’t mind talking to you about it. He said he might even do it pro bono if you need him to.”

“Oh, gosh,” Taylor said, sitting back. “Seriously?”

“He seemed pretty serious,” Lily said. She left her painting and came over to sit with Taylor on the floor. “Listen.” Reaching over, she put her hand on Taylor’s wrist. “We both know that a lot of bad stuff can go down with guys who are more interested in themselves than in anyone else. But we also know our share of guys who legit want to help and protect people. Strength is a double-edged sword. It can be used to help or to harm. I really feel like Mitchell is in the help side of that equation.”

Lily’s arm and gaze dropped between them. “I told him about me.” Carefully she lifted her gaze, and it caught and held on Taylor. “About Peter and all of that.”

Worry for herself transferred in an instant to worry for her friend, and Taylor sat forward. “You told him? How’d that go? What’d he say?”

“He said that some guys don’t give a flying flip about anybody but themselves. He said that he remembered back in high school, guys talking about girls and the lies they told to get them to do things the girls didn’t necessarily want to. He said even later on, in college and afterward, there were just some guys who could not be trusted. They knew the right things to say to get girls to…” She shrugged. “Well, you know. He said he didn’t blame me for being wary. In fact, he said, he’d be worried if I wasn’t.” She shook her head so the dyed-silver strands swayed. “I guess talking to him, I realized I extrapolated from what Peter did, and I kind of thought all guys were like that. But Mitchell’s not. He’s really not.”

Taylor was