Page 105 of Unstoppable Love

Lydia and I hung out at least once a week, usually for dinner in town and drinks at either Tom’s Saloon or my house after, and Cameron and I were now a staple seen around town together when he was here.

Tonight, he was playing in Buffalo, where the weather was even colder, but Cameron had said it wouldn’t make much of a difference. The Mountaineers were, as predicted, leading their division. They were also leading their conference as the only remaining undefeated team in the league. I’d fallen in love with football back in middle school, the first time Cameron and Isaiah played in a high school varsity game, and as much as it’d killed me, I’d stopped watching it when Cameron went to Notre Dame. Sure, I caught the occasional game here and there, but if Cameron was on the TV, my channel was set to something else.

This fall, everything was different. I’d now been to several of his home games, and on the weekends when I stayed in Denver, we usually saw Emily and Caleb and Landon. She was now sliding out of the first trimester and gaining more energy, although she admitted between work and doing a lot of solo parenting with Landon while Caleb was gone, she was much more tired this time around.

She was also on Thanksgiving break all week, and Caleb was on a three-game away stretch, so I had no doubt I’d see her as soon as we stepped through the doors.

Lydia and I slowed our walk while Grams gripped the railing and cautiously made her way up the steps. She was slowing quicker than I expected, but her attitude was still larger than life. Cameron and I usually went to see her on Tuesday mornings, and the first time we’d walked into her room at the home hand-in-hand, her cocky little grin had me rolling my eyes.

“Told you it’d be all right if you listened,” she said to me.

I stuck my tongue out at her, but she’d missed it because she was too busy grinning at Cameron. “I take it that second kiss worked?”

He’d thrown his head back and laughed, and later, he’d explained the joke to me.

Things were good. Outside of not getting to see Cameron every day and trying to figure out how long this long-distance relationship stuff would seem so easy, us meshing our lives together while hours apart, I had everything I needed.

Everything I always wanted.

“Aunty Ava!” Landon’s little shout made my heart swell inside my chest as he ran straight toward me once we entered the main house. “I have to show you something. Come here! Come here!”

“Give me a second, little man. I need to take off my shoes and say hello to your grandma.” He and I had grown closer in the last couple of months, and I adored him. The first time he called me Aunty Ava, I’d had to fight back tears.

Cameron had poked me and called me a sissy.

I’d poked him right back and called him a jerk.

We were still us. Still teased each other, still gave each other a hard time, but there was no longer the anger and pain beneath it.

“No need!” Mrs. Kelley called from the main living room. She was sitting in her chair, feet kicked up on the recliner’s footstool, with a glass of champagne in her hand. “I’m done with the work, and we’re doing a help yourself buffet tonight so everyone can grab food when they’re hungry. You go take care of Landon.”

It was the first time I’d been there when I hadn’t immediately been put to work, but as Landon dragged me through the crowd—the entire Kelley family, save Caleb, who was out in Nashville, playing against his sister’s husband, Tuevo Skyye, lounging either in the living room or piling plates with food in the formal dining room—my eyes bugged out.

Lydia hadn’t been kidding.

And neither was Mrs. Kelley.

Every square inch of the table was covered with hot dishes and platters and some crockpots and serving spoons. There was a vegetable spread in the shape of a football, brightly colored, with a half-dozen different dips and sauces around it. There was a shrimp tower at the other end, and all manner of foods in between.

My mouth watered, even as Landon kept pulling me through the house, straight to the screened-in porch off the kitchen.

“Look what I got!” he screamed almost so hard that my eardrums burst. He bounced up and down on his feet and was so excited, it took me a second to tear my gaze off his bouncing little body to the kennel set in the corner of the room. Wrapped around said kennel was another gated area, with food bowls, pee pads, and toys strewn about.

“A puppy!” he shouted again, and sure enough, laying down in that kennel, curled into a corner, was a ball of golden, floofy fur.

“You sure did,” I said, happily but quietly as I crouched down low. “But we probably shouldn’t shout. We don’t want to scare him.”

Landon squatted close to me, and this time when he spoke, he was whispering at a loud level. “Her name is Goldie, because she’s a golden retriever. Clever right?”

“So clever.” I grinned. “And let me guess, you got to name him?”

“Uh-huh! Papa Kelley bought her for me, and Mom wasn’t too happy since she’s having a baby and everything, but Grandpa said he’ll keep Goldie here until she’s trained really well to make it easier. He said he couldn’t wait until Christmas to give her to me, so I get a puppy now, and then I still get Christmas presents!” He leaned in with a smile so wide, it stretched from ear to ear. “Isn’t that great!”

It was. So great. His other grandparents had nothing to do with him anymore, and I knew from talking to Emily, that hurt her deeply. But she always said the best thing she ever did for Landon was finding his dad and giving him this large family that had nothing but love in abundance to dole out to everyone who walked through their doors.

And Landon was spoiled even more so than Josie, but that was only because Gavin put his foot down early on. Emily hadn’t yet been able to bring herself to do it. “He didn’t have much for three years, and I simply can’t say no to them when I think they’re still playing catch-up,” she’d admitted to me once when she came out to New Haven for a weekend, and the largest wooden play structure appeared in their backyard.

“Grandpa says she needs to sleep now but says I can take her outside after I eat.”

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