Page 71 of Where Roads Lead

These women were trying to kill me. I swear they were.

“What are you doing here?” Ava asked, balancing on a chair for some goddamned reason.

I walked over to her, turned off the fire alarm, and glared at her.

“I came to give you a ride home. Figured I’d wait in my car until Tessa got home, but when I heard the fire alarm go off, I thought it best I come check out what the hell was happening in here.”

Then I spun to stare at Elsie, taking a step closer toward the last person in the world I’d expect to see standing there beside Ava.

“And what are you doing here?” I asked, staring down at her in barely restrained fury.

“Uh,” she lifted a shoulder, “helping?”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “looks like it.”

“I take offense to that.”

My voice rose. “Well, I take offense to the fact that the two of you almost burned Tessa Brooks’s house down with her child inside!”

Not to mention the two of them.

“Don’t be dramatic, Will.” Elsie scoffed infuriatingly. “There were no flames.”

“It was my fault,” Ava said from behind us. I turned to face her, but she could barely meet my eyes.

I thought it would be a cold day in hell before Ava admitted she was wrong about anything, but I guess that’s where we were now.

“Elsie didn’t do anything wrong,” she said, finally looking at me with a stubborn tilt to her chin. “She’s been saving my ass all night. I don’t know what I would’ve done if she wasn’t here, so you don’t you dare yell at her.”

I inhaled, trying to collect myself.

I didn’t want to be an asshole, but damn it, it pissed me off when people were careless. Accidents happened every day, the least people could do was try to avoid ones as easily preventable as this.

Of course Elsie was here. That girl was a walking accident magnet. I’d been more unnerved than I had a right to be at the sight of her, but ever since she’d shown up, she’d made a habit of catching me off guard.

And besides that, now a part of me worried Ava had been rude to her all night on my account, fabricated as her reasoning might be.

I tried to shake it off. I had no business being concerned about the emotional well-being of a stranger. I had plenty of other things to focus on in my life without adding her to the list.

But still, that didn’t stop me from giving her the once over, just to assure myself that there wasn’t any unseen damage from the cookie fiasco.

In my peripheral, I felt Ava’s gaze blaring a hole through my head, telling me I’d stared at Elsie a beat longer than I meant to.

I cleared my throat and looked away.

“Well,” Ava said, gathering the cookie tray and aggressively dumping its contents into the trash. “Thanks for stopping by, but I’m fine to walk home.”

I rolled my eyes, wishing she’d give up the stubborn routine for one night.

“Ava,” I said in a warning tone.

“Will,” she countered, just as fiercely.

“Elsie!” The redhead in question waved from where she stood by the door.

Ava and I turned to stare at her, wearing matching expressions of bafflement.

“Now that I have everyone’s attention.” Elsie threw a thumb behind her toward the door. “I’m going to be heading out.”