Page 160 of Where Roads Lead

“Like you said, I’m a people pleaser.” She frowned. “Give a girl the luxury of at least knowing she pleased her favorite person.”

“Your favorite, huh?”

She nodded, and I leaned forward to kiss her head.

“Call me if she bites,” I teased, to lessen the anxiety of sending her down there with a precariously minded Ava. “I’ll be right up here.”

Chapter Forty-Six

Elsie

Ava was going to do one of two things:

Bite my head off for daring to intrude on her solitude.

Tell me to get lost, but leave my head otherwise intact.

I didn’t really see a scenario where she’d be glad to see me walking down the stairs toward her, but I saw her face when she left the kitchen. She wasn’t pissed. She was broken.

And I just couldn’t leave her alone like that.

Not when I’d been in that spot so many times, wishing there was someone to come check on me, and knowing the feeling when no one who ever did.

But instead of the fire-breathing dragon I’d expected to encounter as I walked down the stairs to the basement, I found only Ava, looking utterly human as she laid on her back, blonde hair splayed against the carpet and an old Bop It game in her manicured hands.

“I used to love that game.” I pointed to it.

“I always hated it,” she said, tossing it aside. “It used to stress me out until I cried.”

I couldn’t help but laugh because of how characteristically Ava that was.

“It can be a little overstimulating,” I agreed. “But that’s part of what made it fun.”

“I don’t like games that you can’t win.” She frowned, sitting up so her back was resting against the couch. “What’s the point of them if it just goes on forever? Now, the Rubik’s Cube. That was the one I liked.”

“I can see that.” I came to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of her. “Now, me? I never had the patience to even try to solve one of those.”

Ava sighed, looking at me with a weary expression.

“I guess I embarrassed myself pretty bad up there, huh?”

“What?” I focused my gaze on a pattern on the carpet. “No.”

She raised her brows, and I peeked up bashfully.

“Well, I think you made them a little concerned. They seem worried about you.”

She huffed, wiping at tears that were still escaping from the corners of her eyes.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” Her voice was soft and vulnerable. “I don’t mean to be like that. I don’t. It’s just, when I start to get into that headspace, I feel like if I can just reorient myself. Just clean a mess or finish a task; it’ll take some of the weight off me. But it never does. There’s always something my brain tells me I have to do next. And it builds and builds until I…” She looked down. “Well, you saw what happened.”

“I can’t help but notice,” I started. “And please, tell me if I’m being an absolute ego-maniac here, but I feel like there’s a correlation between when I’m around and you’re…you know.”

“Melting down?” She huffed a laugh. “You can say it. And you’re not wrong.”

“But why?” I asked. “Did I do something to make you hate me?”

She stared at me intently, opening her mouth and shutting it, as if the words were hard to say.