Page 1 of Unstoppable Love

Prologue

Cameron

Eight Years Earlier

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This had to be a dream. Unlike the others, unlike so many of the incredible and torturous dreams I’d had for the last year, this one felt real.

Because it didn’t feel much like a dream when Ava Decker peeked her head into my bedroom and tiptoed in, glancing down the hallway where my oldest brother’s twenty-first birthday raged on outside. I was drunk. Tired. I forced myself to leave the party before I threw my fist into Jimmy Morton’s face for daring to touch Ava.

Wanting your best friend’s little sister, knowing she was hands-off, too damn young, and you were too damn wild to settle down sucked. I was leaving next month for Notre Dame on a football scholarship. She was going to start her junior year of high school.

Which was why these dreams were a mixture of heaven and hell.

Except as Ava clicked the door shut and tiptoed to my bed, none of this felt like a dream. I was lying on my side, back to the window, eyes to the door. It was dark, yeah, but I’d become a master at recognizing Ava’s presence as soon as she was within one hundred yards of me. I also still felt the haze of alcohol slowing my movements, making Ava’s curvy, sweet, and tempting body more blurry than normal.

Yeah. It had to be a dream.

I lost her from my line of sight as she rounded the bed, and then the bed dipped behind me. I tensed. Never in a dream did she come to me. It was always me. Following her, chasing her down. It was me who touched her first, me who dragged my hand through her silky, golden-blonde strands. It was always me who leaned in, wet my lips to make sure the kiss would be good, and brushed my thumb along her bottom lip and asked, “You sure you want to kiss me?”

Now, though, I was rolling to my back, curious to see where this dream would lead.

Ava was in the bed next to me. My bed. My brothers and I were all big guys, built. So no twin beds for us. Mom and Dad upgraded us all when we were thirteen to queen-size beds, so there was plenty of room for Ava and me to be in it without touching, but then she scooted closer.

I licked my lips.

“Whatcha doin’ here, Ava?”

She nibbled on her bottom lip. Said nothing.

I took a chance this wasn’t a dream and asked, “Thought you and Jimmy were in the barn.”

“I don’t like him,” she whispered.

That was good she didn’t like Jimmy. His dad ended up in the back of a Plum County Sheriff’s cruiser more often than not on Friday nights when he stumbled out of Tom’s Saloon on Main. Mom and Dad said Jimmy was just like his old man, Jimmy Sr.

She was on her side, all that hair all over my pillow, and maybe it made me sick, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever let Ma wash them again. Definitely not before I left for school.

Ava’s eyes, dark now, but normally blue as the Colorado sky in the summer, dipped. And shit.

Yeah, I didn’t think this was any dream at all. It certainly felt real when I reached out and did the one thing I swore to Isaiah I’d never do. I touched her. And as soon as my knuckles brushed against her cheek, she inhaled a quick breath, went still right as my dick went hard. Not hard to do these days, but still, faster and harder than usual.

“You didn’t answer my question, Ava. What are you doin’ here? In my bed? You need a place to sleep?”

“Yeah,” she whispered, but then she turned her head and those lips of hers brushed against my hand. “But I was hoping for something else, too.”

“Not sure that’s smart.” It wasn’t smart. Nothing about this was smart.

I should have jumped out of bed as soon as she stepped into my room and kicked her out. I shouldn’t have stayed lying there, letting her get close. Letting her crawl into my bed. Letting her brush her lips over my knuckles again.

I swallowed. This wasn’t like any torturous dream I’d ever had, this was heaven and hell in the flesh.

This was bad.

“Ava,” I groaned, and I pushed my hand to the back of her head.

Her eyes flared wide with surprise as I spread my fingers, cupped her head, and tugged her toward me at the same time I pushed up to an elbow, so I was hovering over her.

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