Page 166 of Where Roads Lead

“It doesn’t matter.” She shook her head adamantly. “Love isn’t practical. It doesn’t fit into the life I want for myself. Matthew and I? We would’ve had a good life together. We should’ve had it.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t,” I told her, heartbroken for the life she had given up—one of true love in the way every girl dreamed of. And heartbroken for what Matthew never knew he had been living without.

“After Matthew died,” she continued wearily. “I was so afraid. I thought Will was going to tell his family what happened back at my wedding. I thought I was going to lose everything all at once.”

I let her talk, some part of me knowing that this was the first time she’d been allowed to tell her story to anyone.

“We mended things a little. But that’s only because he knew that’s what his brother would want. We could work together, run the café, go to these family dinners. The only thing he wouldn’t let us do was talk.” She looked away sadly. “Not the way we always used to.”

“If I’m being honest, I don’t know if I ever really got over him. And for a while, I guess I contented myself with the fact that even if he didn’t love me, at least he didn’t love anyone else, either.”

She looked up at me, then, watery brown eyes piercing into mine.

“But then you showed up. And God, Elsie, it was like the first time his eyes had ever been opened.”

My heart lurched. She couldn’t mean that.

“I saw it that first day when I saw the two of you yelling at each other in the street. I hated you for it.” She smiled despite herself. “I still do. Just a little bit though.”

“No, Ava,” I said softly. “He didn’t—we didn’t. Ava, he couldn’t stand me at first. I promise.”

“But don’t you see? He felt something for you right off the bat. Do you know what that was like to see, after the last four years of him being…empty?”

I didn’t. Because I didn’t know what Will had been like before. I only knew him as he was: infuriating and devastating and maddeningly perfect and—

The man I was completely and utterly in love with.

I nearly gasped at the realization.

But it was true.

I was in love with him. Completely and undeniably in love. He had infiltrated his way into my heart in a way I couldn’t shake off.

And what’s more, I didn’t even want to.

“I’m telling you, Elsie. I’ve known Will Hughes my entire life, and I’ve never once seen him in love…until you.”

I stared at her, not daring to speak, not knowing how to even exist with my stomach fluttering the way it was.

“You have the heart of the man we were all pretty sure didn’t have one to give,” she said. “So, the question is, what are you going to do with it?”

“I’m with him, aren’t I?” I said, voice airy and high-pitched.

“But for how long? You always said staying here was temporary, right? I just want you to know that you’ll break his heart if you leave.”

I sucked in a breath, because for so long the future had been this exciting, unpredictable thing, and now, suddenly it was smack in front of me, forcing me to make a decision.

And just now, at twenty-six years old, I realized that dreaming up the life you wanted didn’t bring you any closer to actually getting it.

I wanted Will more than anything.

But I also wanted a life that felt like mine. Like I really belonged to it, and it to me.

Did I have a place in Colbridge without Will? I didn’t have any money, and I certainly couldn’t warrant staying there solely based on however long it worked out between us.

Relationships changed. People grew. Either together or apart. But I wanted a home that felt permanent. And I didn’t want to feel like an outcast in the town, should Will decide he really wasn’t cut out for a relationship after all.

“I guess I have some things to figure out,” I told her.