Page 145 of Where Roads Lead

“Thanks, you too. And Will?”

“Yeah?”

“I miss you.”

I let out an inaudible exhale, closing my eyes in relief.

“Thank God for that,” I told her. “Because I miss you too.”

“That’s nice to hear,” she said, and then I heard her fingers clicking against her keyboard. “Work hard. I’ll see you later.”

“Bye, Els,” I said, hanging up.

Yeah, I thought. I could get used to this being the new normal.

Chapter Forty-Two

Elsie

“Tell me the truth,” I said, kneeling on Will’s lap, staring into his eyes, my hands gripping his shoulders. “Are you mad?”

“I’m not mad.”

“I feel like you’re mad.”

“Why would I be mad?”

“Because I just spent the last two hours talking your ear off, and I know I usually do that during the day, but I feel like at night when you’re home, it’s like, your personal time and now I’m bothering you after hours, so I feel like it made you mad.”

“It did not make me mad.”

He looked serious, but I couldn’t be sure.

“Irritated, then?”

“No.”

“Frustrated?”

“No,” he said, hands tightening around my waist.

“But you didn’t have anything to say about any of it.” I frowned, trying to make sense of the conundrum.

He laughed. “Els, you didn’t give me a chance before you went off on a different tangent.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, what do you think now?”

“I think that I don’t have any counter logic to your half hour spiel about how you think the Egyptian pyramids were built. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t fascinated by your theories.”

“Really?”

“Really,” he promised.

“So, do you agree then?

“I agree about the giant cranes, but I’m not sure about any curses on the tombs.”

“What!” I shrieked, nearly falling off him until he steadied me with his grip. “But the evidence is so compelling! Everyone who interferes with them dies a strange and unusual death!”