Page 28 of Unstoppable Love

Don’t know. Looked upset. Just checking in.

Then I texted Ava.

Know you’re upset. Probably confused. We’ll talk, Ava. Tomorrow. You promised.

Eventually I fell asleep, and in the morning, I woke up to a string of texts from my teammates, planning on getting together to do some workouts and go hiking.

One text from Grams telling me to see her before I left town.

Nothing from Ava.

So I went to see Grams.

“You messed up again.”

“Yeah, Grams. I messed up.”

Grams didn’t beat around the bush, and I hadn’t bothered trying to hide the mood I was in when I walked through her doorway, so the fact I messed up was pretty obvious.

Ruthie Clapton wasn’t my grams. She was Ava and Isaiah’s, and she wasn’t their grandma but their great-grandma. I’d called her grams my entire life. Since Isaiah and I grew up together, my mom called him the sixth Kelley son, and I grew up with Grams in my life, too.

She also knew things she had no business knowing. Like somehow, she knew something happened between Ava and me all those years ago. How she picked up on it was anyone’s guess, and at the time I told her I was too young to settle down, too young to think about being with one girl.

Way back then, she understood.

Her understanding waned last summer, when, for some reason, she started insisting I make things right with Ava.

“We only get one chance to live and love in this world, really love, Cam-honey, and you better start thinking about the kind of love you really want before it slips through your fingers.”

A week later, Ava moved in with Kip.

Grams called me, called me an idiot, and hung up.

Back then, I’d figured she was wrong. If Ava was happy with Kip, then whatever. It was meant to be.

“Wanna give me all the dirty details? My life could use some fresh excitement in it.”

I choked and cleared my throat. Grams was a nutcase. The best kind.

“I kissed her.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound like messing up.”

“She cried and ran away from me. And now she won’t answer my texts.”

I’d texted her a half-dozen times this morning. A bunch of question marks, since she hadn’t replied to my texts last night. And then more, asking her when she wanted to leave to head back to Denver. She could only ghost me for so long. I knew where she lived, and that house was my next stop.

“Maybe you’re a bad kisser.”

“No, Grams.” I laughed. “I’m not a bad kisser.”

If only I could have seen her when she was in her twenties or thirties. No way she didn’t run this town with her sass and charm.

Her thin lips kicked up at the corners, and she rocked in her navy-blue recliner. “Yeah. Boy like you, figured you wouldn’t be.”

“Jesus, Grams.”

“So what are you going to do to fix it?”

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