Page 16 of Unstoppable Love

She sighed. My bad for being the world’s most irritating housemate. “I manage social media for a farm and feed company. It’s not exactly thrilling work.”

Said to me like I was an idiot, like I didn’t know she got the job right out of college because my own dad put in a good word for her. It wasn’t my fault if she was bored to tears with what she did.

I ignored the attitude wafting off her. It wasn’t like I didn’t know that a lot of the reason for it came from the way I treated her. The way I’d essentially forced her into the truck with me. Not physically, but my dare had put her ass next to me, so whatever. She could be pissed at me. I’d still try to be nicer.

“Do you like it, though? The work at least?”

A brief hint of a smile curled her lips, then vanished. Probably when she realized I was the one who’d asked.

“I like the marketing aspect. I like being able to go to customers’ farms when they let me and take pictures of them using our store’s equipment or feed, that kind of stuff. And yeah, I enjoy making a living taking pictures and creating content. But do I like working at Farmer’s Farm and Feed Supply store?” she scoffed and shook her head. “Not really. I guess I’d always imagined I’d be doing something different.”

I was pretty certain that was the most words she’d said to me in the last decade, except for the times she threatened to tear off my balls or called me an asshole.

“What would you do?”

“What?”

She turned her head toward me. It was tilted to the side, and her braided hair fell down, brushed over her chest, where I had not for a single second forgotten about the pink lace behind the shirt.

My hands squeaked on the wheel as we came to a stoplight, and I forced my attention back to the road. I flicked on the blinker before I repeated myself.

“Your job. If you could do anything. What would you do?”

“Oh.” She turned to face the front windshield. “I don’t really know what I want to do for work. Guess I always saw myself on a farm like my parents, working in the garden and the chicken coop or something. You probably think that’s dumb.”

Far from it. I was suddenly imagining us having a house right next to where Caleb and Emily had built a home, chickens running around the yard. Ava chasing them, barefoot in cutoff denim shorts that would show the curve of her ass when she bent over.

And I was getting hard again. I cleared my throat. “I think you and I grew up in a town where we had the best possible childhoods. There’s nothing wrong with wanting an entire life like that.”

That was the truth of it, too. Something I’d always considered once my playing days were done. Should an injury take me out sooner than I wanted, I wouldn’t struggle like other football players in trying to figure out what was next. My next stop was the Kelley Ranch, working alongside my brothers, right next to Dalton. If I got extra lucky, I’d coach the high school football team, but I’d definitely coach my kids’ sports, whatever they chose to play.

The light turned, and I made the left to take us to Sprout’s Farmers' Market.

“I guess,” Ava muttered. “Feels like a small dream, though, when it’s possible to do anything.”

“If it’s the life you want to live, then there’s nothing small about it. Dreams are dreams, they don’t have to make you a billionaire to be successful.”

“Says the man who comes from a billionaire family.”

“Not quite.” I chuckled. We were several millions away from that.

“Fine. Says the man who recently signed a forty-million-dollar-a-year contract.”

My brows jumped, and I had to stop my jaw from dropping. She knew that? There had to be only one reason. “Isaiah tell you that?”

Her mouth clamped shut, and her face paled before she went back to staring out her own window. The knuckles on her fingers grew whiter as she fisted her hands into tighter balls.

Oh, she’d given herself away with that one.

“Look into me often, Sunshine?”

“Don’t be a dick,” she muttered right back.

But that was all she said, which said enough.

My little sunshine paid attention to me.

She didn’t hate me nearly as much as she wanted me to believe.

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