Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,6

me forget it either.”

She grinned. “Never.”

Somehow Taylor hadn’t actually expected him to fall asleep, but ten miles out of town, she glanced over and found him, head back, arms crossed, eyes closed. She smiled and sighed. Well, she had done the same to him on the way home from Santa Fe, so it served her right.

With only the road, the darkness and a few cars to keep her company, she let herself have permission to think about life. Most of the time, she did a good job of not thinking about it, but here, she found that even the challenging parts of it were not so terrible to think about. She glanced at Greg again. Maybe she could talk to him about talking to Mitchell. He always seemed to have good advice about how to navigate all the legal stuff. It was too bad he was going into radiology. Maybe he should have been a lawyer.

She almost laughed out loud at that thought. The world would not have survived Greg Everett, lawyer. Still, she would have been lost the last four months without him. He had been there through all of it, even the parts that she had no desire to remember. Yes, he was a good friend, and she knew she could ask him anything, talk to him about any of it, and he would do his best to figure out a way to get them through it. That’s just how he was, how he had always been. She laughed again softly. They had been through so much together, and still, somehow, he was here off on this crazy adventure just because she wanted to go. What better friend could she ask for?

The sun was up before Greg knew it, and when he opened his eyes, he blinked into the severity of it streaming in from every direction. “Whoa. How long was I asleep?”

Taylor glanced over at him. “Four hours.”

“Oh, wow.” He sat up and rubbed his eyes that felt like they were being attacked. “Sorry about that. I guess all that missed sleep is catching up with me.”

This glance was shorter. “Too much partying?”

“Partying. Huh. Yeah, I wish. Too much studying you mean.”

Had they been on an Interstate, Taylor might have looked at him longer to see if he was joking, but he didn’t appear to be. “Studying? What’s that about? You’re not taking winter break classes, are you?”

“Oh. Uh. No.” Instantly Greg wished he hadn’t brought it up. He hadn’t meant to. The last thing he wanted was to make her feel bad about this trip.

“Okay, so then, what gives? What’re you studying?”

“Hm.” He stalled one more moment even though he knew she would, in fact, stop the car and drag it out of him if he didn’t fess up. “Well, actually, I’m studying for a radiology certification thing.”

“Oh, yeah? When’s that?”

Why did he have to go and open his big mouth? “Uh, Saturday.” He nodded, hoping she wouldn’t turn the car around right there.

Her gaze jumped over to him. “Saturday? This coming Saturday?”

“Yeah,” he admitted, knowing she was about to rip him limb-from-limb for not telling her.

“What? Are you kidding me? You didn’t tell me that.”

He tried to shrug it off, but it didn’t work all that well. “Yeah, well, it kind of came up after we decided to do this, so…”

“Came up?” she asked, her voice going slightly off-kilter. “What, a certification test just jumped up out of the blue with no warning?”

“Well, no, not… not exactly.” With a sigh, he decided his best bet was full honesty. “It’s just that, they’re hiring for radiology techs at the hospital. I’ve got my national certification, but there’s this state test. The actual one is in February.”

“But I thought you said it was Saturday.”

“Saturday is like the temporary test. It’s a limited thing. If I pass it, I can at least apply. Then I can take the other one in February to get fully certified.”

“Okay, wait, wait, wait. Hold the phone. Are you telling me you never took the state test when you got out last year?”

“Well, I was going to, last summer,” Greg said, “but everything was so crazy back then. We were going to move and the wedding and I was working all the time…”

“And it’s Saturday? As in five days from now?”

“Yeah. I actually had to switch to night shift to even get it to work then,” Greg said. “And I’ve been studying for it all weekend. That’s why I didn’t come home yesterday.”

“Well,