Page 3 of Unstoppable Love

My stomach rolled, and it had nothing to do with the alcohol.

I’d just taken my best friend’s little sister’s virginity. A gift she begged me to take, and now I was going to puke.

“No, asshole. Go pass out in Caleb’s room.”

I didn’t sleep.

I left.

I’d fix this. Somehow, someway, I’d find a way to fix this.

Chapter 1

Ava

I didn’t want to be here. Heck, I never wanted to be here anymore. The Kelley Ranch wasn’t only where I spent most of my childhood, it was also where the best night of my life became my longest-running nightmare. Unless it was for things like this, Easter Sunday, where the Kelley family invited all their friends and family in town and threw a huge potluck supper celebration, I never stepped foot on their land.

I didn’t even go to the creek in the summertime with friends.

Cameron Kelley was a part of every single one of my greatest childhood memories.

That was until the night I threw myself at him, and the very next day when I slinked out of his bedroom, a bed I’d woken up and found myself in alone, after begging him to have sex with me, and boy did he, he’d scrubbed his face and didn’t once look my way. Instead, as he walked past me, he’d muttered something about how he was so drunk the night before he’d passed out and found himself waking up on the front porch.

He took my virginity. And then he forgot.

He had no clue he’d done it, but with what he’d taken, which had been fabulous—something so incredible and wonderful I hadn’t had another night like it or enjoyed it nearly as much—he’d also taken every good thing I remembered about him.

Because Cameron Kelley became the kind of guy his parents didn’t raise him to be, and that was that he became a big, huge, honkin’ jerk.

So yeah, I wasn’t all that thrilled to be walking up the gravel to his parents’ house. A house that had been painted in recent years and was no longer brown brick but white. A house I hadn’t been inside, always sticking to the deck and patio out back whenever we were there after that night. A house that still had that stupid front porch, which I glared at every time we walked by it.

And I was doing this, my long blonde hair plaited and braided in an intricate design I’d learned to do on YouTube, wearing a summer dress that had puffy shoulder sleeves, a thick brown belt at the waist, and flared at the hips with my cowboy boots. I was carrying cupcakes Mom and I spent all yesterday making, following her and Isaiah reluctantly, but with my back straight and every intention to not lose my cool in front of Cameron like I’d done so many times in the years since.

No. He’d made a fool out of me more than once in the years that had passed since that night.

I wouldn’t let him do that to me today.

Not ever again.

We walked past the house toward the sound of laughter and kids squealing and Christian worship music coming from the backyard’s Bluetooth speakers—it was Easter after all—and stepped right into a storybook, small-town party.

Streamers and lights and balloons were strung everywhere. A large section of the backyard was dotted with plastic Easter eggs. Tables—at least a half-dozen large, rectangle tables—were not only covered with paper tablecloths that had a board of Easter eggs and bunnies on them, but the tables had centerpieces all topped with the same. White vases and yellow daisies sat in the center of all the rounded tables where families sat and ate. Where kids stuffed themselves with desserts and vegetables and fruit.

“I’ll go set these down,” I told my mom.

Connie Decker was beautiful. Everyone in town thought so, our dad most especially, because they’d been married almost thirty years and he still, every night, told her she was the most beautiful woman in four counties. He’d stayed at home to fix some broken part of a tractor he’d noticed earlier that morning, but he’d be here later, no doubt not far from my mom for any length of time.

“Thanks, sweetheart.” Mom smiled at me and waved to Mrs. Kelley who was rushing to say hello to us.

Jenny Kelley was sweet and goofy and loved every single creature on the planet. She was also a woman I tended to avoid as much as possible, only because hearing her talk about how awesome all her kids were doing made me want to tell her the truth about what Cameron had done to me.

She’d whip him. I had no doubt. Or, no, she wouldn’t because she was too nice, but she’d have Cameron whipped by something. Someone.

And then she’d probably do something crazy, like make him apologize for something that should have stopped mattering to me years ago.

Eight years, and I was still in love with the man who took my virginity, forgot all about it, and then never had a single nice thing to say to me since. Like I was the one who’d wronged him.

I was an idiot, but I was an idiot who looked nice just in case the jerk showed up, which probably made me a whole lot worse than an idiot. Whatever. I’m used to it these days.

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