Page 5 of Unstoppable Love

And like always, I became the viper, poised to strike, to hurt him the way he’d for so long hurt me.

“You didn’t win,” I told him.

Cameron was no longer behind me. He moved so quickly I didn’t blink, and he was there, standing in front of me, blocking my view from everything and everyone, but that didn’t matter because when he was around, I never saw anything or anyone.

But I knew that scowl on his face well. The pinched lips. The tight eyes. He and Caleb were twins, not identical, but close enough that outside their hair—Cameron’s was shorter—strangers wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

I could, though. Cameron was more intense. Always had been. Football wasn’t a game to him, it was life, and they both might have been on professional teams in their respective sports, but there was a fire in Cameron where Caleb was more water. Caleb went with the flow, rode the tide. Cameron was the tide. The force behind nature.

“That’s not very nice,” he said to me. Still with that scowl.

He hadn’t been nice to me in almost eight years to the day. Mom always told me to be the bigger person, but when it came to Cameron, it was impossible.

And frankly, he had almost a foot of height on me and at least a hundred pounds. I couldn’t be bigger than him if I tried.

“Congratulations,” I drawled, and there was no mistaking the sarcasm in my tone. “For getting to and then losing the Super Bowl, Cameron. Better luck next year, though, yeah.”

I spun to leave, already the ball of guilt at my own nastiness lodging in my throat. He deserved it, but it still made me sick.

“Wait a damn second,” he growled. Yes, growled. And that growl shot right to my stomach. Deeper. Lower.

Which meant I shivered. He reached out to grab my arm, at the same time that shiver happened, which meant he felt it.

And smirked, when I was face-to-face with him again.

“What do you want?” I asked.

Because that look. I’d seen that before. Many times in my life, but the last time was right after he gave me my very first orgasm. With his mouth and fingers. At the same time.

“I want to know why you’re always so pissy around me.”

Pissy? Me? I was pissy? Oh, he had to be… “You’re joking,” I hissed, and somehow he was closer, but he hadn’t moved. No, it was me. And I was on the tiptoes of my boots, leaning in, breathing like a bull ready to charge the red flag.

For a second, I swore I saw a flash of something in his sky-blue eyes. Something that looked like regret. Sadness. It was gone in a blink, though, and the arrogance returned.

That damn smile reappeared. Man, he had a beautiful smile.

“Yeah, Sunshine. Tell me why you’re so pissy with me. I thought you liked me.”

Sunshine. I hadn’t heard that in well over eight years. Probably ten. We’d been at the creek. Caleb, Cameron, a whole host of girls in their grades, along with Isaiah and me, and their sister Meredith were all at the creek. I was fourteen, Cameron and the guys were sixteen, and I had taken a break to lay out on a towel.

Cameron had stood over me, blocking my view of the sun, and I’d sworn his eyes raked down my body for a second before ending up on my hair. “Your hair is as bright as the sun,” he’d said.

Someone had slapped his back.

He’d turned and taken off.

But for the rest of that day, and the following week and a year or two after, to Cameron, I was Sunshine.

Fury rose, hard and fast, and was bubbling over before I could stop it.

He didn’t know why I was pissy.

But he should have.

And that was what hurt the most. That was what made me madder than a hornet in a kicked nest.

Which meant I didn’t have full control of all my senses when I lifted my glass of beer, almost still full and probably warm, and threw it in his face.

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