Page 14 of Where Roads Lead

“I don’t need to,” I told her, not meeting her eyes. “I know everyone’s name.”

“No,” she countered, pushing the matter further. “Even when people are passing through, you still never ask.”

I spun, leaning back against the counter to look at her. “So what, Ava? I did it without thinking. What’s the big deal?”

“You always think about everything you do,” she said, eyes narrowed, trying to decipher God knows what.

“Well, this time I didn’t,” I said. “Jesus, it was just a simple question. What do even you care?”

She looked away, as if my words stung her.

“If you wanted to know her name, you could’ve just asked her,” she said, and then spun on her heel and left, leaving me once again with the nagging feeling that somehow, she’d proven a point I hadn’t known she was arguing.

Chapter Five

Elsie

I’d opened every window in every room and yet the house still smelled overwhelmingly of must.

Despite it being only mid-September, there was already a chill to the air signaling the brisker days to come, which normally I loved. But this house had a way of being colder than the actual temperature outside—a quaint side effect of being built before modern day wall insulation—which meant I was freezing.

On the plus side, I’d walked away from my morning excursion with a caffeine buzz and newfound inspiration for my novel.

I hadn’t known what story I was going to tell when I fled my life to come to Colbridge, but apparently Will Hughes served as the perfect muse. For the antagonist, that is.

Something about his unwavering scowl and scoffs of impatience really set my creative gears in motion. Adjectives screamed out to me as my hands ached to put pen to paper and describe him. Or fingers to keyboard. Whatever platform, as long as I could purge my subconscious of the overwhelming feelings that encounter left me with.

The truth was, I didn’t hate him. I didn’t even know him. In fact, I probably should thank him for giving me my first bit of inspiration I’d had in weeks. Before he fired me up with all this emotion, I’d been like a dried-up well when it came to creativity.

The three-month deadline I’d set for myself loomed over me. Not only did I not have funds to stay longer than that, but I simply wouldn’t let myself waste any more time.

I could sulk, cry, write—do whatever I wanted for that long, but I wouldn’t waste another minute of my life past that. I was twenty-six, goddamn it. I needed a proper plan of action. If I hadn’t produced a novel in that amount of time, or at the very least, a substantial start—then I would call it quits.

On my writing career. On Colbridge. And pretty much on all hope of not becoming my mother’s clone in general.

No. I’m not thinking about the backup plan until I absolutely have to. How could I ever finish anything if I had already planned to fail?

But despite having been a writer for most of my career, it was far different to come up with ideas out of thin air than it was to write a local news story or a college essay with clear cut prompts.

Still, I needed to start somewhere. What better way than putting myself directly into the story. Writing about my own experience from a fictional lens point. It was basically journaling. I never had to do anything with it. It would just be my practice manuscript. And I was itching to write about the handsome, angry man who was trying to run my poor, down-on-her-luck heroine out of town.

Grabbing my notebook and emotional support Pilot fine point gel pen, I situated myself out of the cold house and onto the porch swing that was bathed in a glorious patch of midday morning sunlight.

With one leg resting underneath me and the other being used to kick off the ground, I started scribbling, jumping right off into the meeting with the hero.

Ellie (because that name wasn’t too on the nose) had been in town for only a morning before a man decided to try her last nerve.

If it had been at any other point in her life, Ellie might’ve taken it tongue in check. She’d always be unusually adaptable to the tumultuous circumstances of life. But now? Well, unfortunately she’d already hit her limit for bullshit, and she wasn’t going to be taking any more of it in the town she’d chosen to be her refuge.

Not even from someone as handsome as Hugh (Again, maybe on the nose, but it wasn’t as if anyone would ever read it).

He was attractive, like all the best villains are—in an infuriating way that only highlighted how unfavorable the rest of him was.

His hazel eyes might’ve been alluring, if they weren’t set against the deep scowl that she had a feeling never strayed too far from him. His build might’ve been strong and solid, but the indifference that radiated off him in thick waves was off-putting enough to quantify as his own personal repellent.

“Why are you here?” he asked her, staring her down like a wolf cornering its prey, only to find that the fox it had cornered had a bit more bite to it than he’d been expecting.

He didn’t deserve to know, Ellie thought to herself. He didn’t deserve to know her backstory was the pathetic story he probably assumed it was.