Unstoppable Love: The Kelley Family Series

12. Ava

I woke up in a dark room. It felt like someone had scrubbed my eyes with sandpaper while I slept and then poured rock salt down my throat. Everything hurt. My limbs. My teeth. Even my scalp stung as I tried to stretch. A warm body stopped me, and I forced my dry eyes to blink away the darkness and haze of sleep.

“It’s late,” Lydia whispered. “And you’ve been sleeping all day.”

Oh, thank God, it was her. But…

“Why are you here?” Vaguely, I remembered her showing up. I remembered her running her hands through my hair while I curled into her and bawled until my body had no tears left to expel.

“Cam called me,” she said, and I jerked at the mention of his name before she held me tighter. “He didn’t say anything, but I’m guessing he did something monumentally stupid.”

“He…” I coughed again.

Lydia pushed up so she was sitting, worry pinching her brows as she looked down at me. “Don’t talk. We’ll get some water in you and some food in you. Then you shower, and I’ll get us some wine. You can tell me whatever you want to say or nothing at all, okay? But no talking until you can do it without hurting.”

I would hurt for the rest of my entire lifetime.

Love.

Fuck Cameron Kelley and his ideas of love.

Lydia patted my hip and slid off the bed. I stayed there a while longer, unable to sleep, unable to stop the hurt squeezing my chest, compressing it.

Eventually, I made my way into the shower. Hot water pelted my body like needles, stinging my skin, but instead of turning down the water, I leaned in closer. Relished the pain. If I stopped feeling all the pain and anger, I was terrified I’d feel nothing at all.

Was it possible for a heart to shatter, to become nothing, and yet keep beating?

I had no idea, but when I was in the shower long enough, I was risking Lydia coming in to check on me. I finally trudged out of the shower, dried off, and climbed into cutoff sweat shorts and an oversized, ratty T-shirt. I let my hair hang down, wet, and by the time I made it into the kitchen, Lydia had commandeered my kitchen.

A meat and cheese board was set out. Crackers and dips. She’d set out the new dishware and wineglasses I’d ordered from Pottery Barn.

“Hey,” she said quietly, like I was the frailest piece of crystal and could shatter with a raised voice.

She wasn’t that far off.

I flinched when I reached into the fridge for water. Visions of what had happened in that exact same spot only hours ago assaulted me, and I turned my back to the fridge, facing Lydia and the narrow island now filled with food.

Food that was not in my kitchen that very morning.

“Did you leave?” I asked, and my throat was still a raspy, scratchy mess, so I opened the water and chugged it all.

“No. I called Jeff at the store. He ran some things over when he got off work.”

Lydia’s cousin was older than us and helped her mom manage the grocery store after her dad died last year. “That was nice of him.”

“You want to talk? Or sit out back and drink?”

I wanted to crawl back into my bed or find a time machine. Go back in time twelve hours. Better yet, go back eight years.

“Drink,” I told her.

Lydia poured wine, I filled a plate with food even though my stomach hurt so bad I wasn’t sure how I’d get any of it down without it coming straight back up, and we headed out to the backyard.

My dad had been right. I loved the little plot of land I had all to myself. A privacy fence left it feeling cozy, and the previous owners had done wonders with the space for gardens and both a pear and apple tree that would give me more fruit than I’d know what to do with. First chance I had, I’d run to the hardware store and bought a small seating area with a table, so I slid onto the loveseat and set my plate on the cushion next to me.

The sun was setting. Dang. I really had slept all day.

Lydia joined me, set my glass of wine in front of me, and I leaned forward to take it. Resting back, I pulled my feet up to the edge of the couch cushion and hugged the glass of wine in the space between my chest and thighs.

Birds chirped. Frogs croaked. Lightning bugs started to light up throughout the yard. The wind rustled. Lydia munched on crackers, and I was on my second glass of wine before I set my cheek to my knees and faced her.

She was on her phone, face hidden behind her strawberry blonde curls, playing a game of some sort based on the flashing lights. She hadn’t left my side all day. She’d rushed to me as soon as she heard I needed her.

I’d never thank Cameron for calling her. It was his fault I needed it, but I was damn glad he’d done it.

I turned in her direction and pressed my cheek to my knees. “I love you.”

She hit a button on her phone and blackened the screen, setting it at her side. “Love you too. You’re the sister I never had.”

“He never forgot that night.” My chin wobbled as I said it. We’d already known it, but maybe, just maybe, I’d hoped he was talking about something different. Something that wouldn’t have shattered my heart like his admission earlier.

“Why?” she asked. “Did he say why? Why he, well, why he did every stupid thing after?”

I nodded. My chin was trembling again, and I’d been so sure I was out of tears, but there they were again, making everything go blurry.

I squeezed my eyes closed and sniffed, shoved my head into the back of the couch, and stared up at the sky.

And then I told Lydia everything. I retold her everything he said—everything I could remember anyway—but there were certain points I was certain I’d already blocked out.

I cried through the retelling, scrubbed tears off my cheeks when I got to the end, and I got so mad I finally chomped on a cracker to expel some of my anger.

A cracker wasn’t nearly enough, but angrily eating prosciutto and Wheat Thins helped some.

She was silent for several moments after.

“I need more wine,” she finally said.

While she climbed out of her chair and headed inside, I brought my plate to my lap.

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.