Page 42 of Unstoppable Love

Cameron Kelley, the boy I’d loved since I could remember, admitted to feeling the same way about me, and I’d never thought it was possible for his admission to spear an arrow through my chest so deep I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to pull it free.

Lydia returned, carrying a bottle of wine and a bowl of ice, and set it on the table. “Figured we’ll need it.” She settled back in her chair and pulled her feet up beneath her, sitting cross-legged. “Why Grams? Why would she get involved in this?”

“She’ll be my first stop to figure it out.”

It didn’t make sense. Grams was ornery and spicy and opinionated, but she wasn’t a meddler. She wasn’t a gossiper. She lived her life the way she lived it, but she never seemed to care too much about how others lived theirs. She knew things, though. About people. I always figured she listened really well, caught the gossip as it traveled her way, and then tucked it into her memory banks.

“Cameron said she knew something happened,” I muttered, “and that means after I went and saw her after that day, so did he.”

“She’s always been close with him and Isaiah.”

“I didn’t know he kept seeing her.” I turned to Lydia. “Why wouldn’t she tell me that? Or how could all of these years have gone by and it never came up? Or slipped? I never ran into him leaving her home or the retirement home.”

He wasn’t here that often. And yeah, I’d been in Denver too, but I was back home all the time.

Okay, so maybe I stayed away more in the off-season and stayed close to home when I was back for the holidays. But it still seemed like we ran into each other all the time. All those years, those times he’d pop into my life out of nowhere, practically goad me into getting mad at him.

“Talk to Grams,” Lydia said. “She’ll help you figure it out.”

“Yeah. Which means now there are two people who have been lying to me.”

“I have a thought, and you’re not going to like it.”

“I haven’t liked anything about the last twenty-four hours.”

She chuckled and rolled her pretty blue eyes. “I’m trying to figure it out, why he’d continue to hurt you, knowing he was. But do you think he was trying to get you to admit what happened?”

“What?” I jerked back so quickly, wine sloshed over the rim of my glass onto the plate in my lap. “No.”

“If you screamed it at him or told him why you hated him, then he’d apologize, it’d be out there. But him having to admit he knew all this time… that had to be killing him, don’t you think?”

He’d certainly seemed gutted earlier, but I wasn’t giving Cameron any credit for being the good guy in this.

My expression must have changed because Lydia winced. “I’m not saying that means it was okay what he did, it wasn’t. I’m one hundred percent on your side on this, I swear. I’m just trying to understand. Playing a game like this, being that cruel to you, it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing Cameron would do, you know?”

Up until this morning, I would have agreed.

Now I wasn’t sure if I knew him at all.

Chapter 13

Cameron

“So, I need to go scrub the vision out of my brain of you and little Ava Decker doing the nasty,” Caleb groaned and squeezed his eyes closed.

“I tell you all of that, and that’s your response?” Jesus. I wasn’t sure how helpful he’d be, but I didn’t think he’d be useless.

“In his defense,” Emily said, “that was kind of a lot, and I don’t think either of us know where to start.”

I hadn’t fully planned on Emily sticking around for the conversation, but when I said it was about a girl, she shoved her thumb in Caleb’s direction and asked, “You think he’s equipped for this?”

Fair point, considering he’d screwed up during the beginning of their relationship, too. Fortunately, they were now married. A wedding done quickly, and a wedding Ava hadn’t come to. They spent their off-season on the ranch, in a home Caleb and Emily built so she could be close to family, so Landon could grow up close to a family he hadn’t known existed for almost the first four years of his life.

“I know, but fuck.” I scrubbed my face and flinched at the scrape of my beard. I never grew this shit out, but shaving was the last thing on my mind while I fumbled my way through training camp. This was only going to be my second year as a starter, and I’d taken my team to the Super Bowl last year. There was a lot riding on me. On my future success this year, and I needed to focus on that.

And yet, for the last month, all I’d thought about was Ava. If she was safe. What she was doing. How I could get her to listen to me, and talk to me, and somehow, forgive me. The first shot I had, I blew it.

“Tell me more about Grams,” Emily said. She sat back in her chair and brought one leg up, tucking her feet beneath her other thigh. We were in their living room, bright and white and neutral with specks of green in plants and other greenery sprinkled throughout the house. It was open, airy, and void of all colors except tan, white, and green. “Why did Grams get involved? What’s her motive in all of this? I mean, the woman is old, and I know everyone says she’s wise and all, and I don’t know her, but it seems like she’s the one who made this harder for you.”

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