Page 118 of The One Who Never Left: Colter

She carefully lifted his arm from her waist, trying to slip free without jostling him.

His muscles flexed, and his arm tightened around her again, hauling her right back against his front.

“One more minute,” he muttered, voice rough with sleep.

One more minute was a dangerous luxury.

“Colter, I really need to get back to Lynlee.”

“Just sixty seconds,” he bargained. “I want to memorize the way you feel in the morning.”

That line knocked breath from her lungs. She let her body relax, just a little.

“Sixty seconds.”

He hummed a satisfied sound and nuzzled into her hair. After a few slow breaths, he shifted, brushing open-mouthed kisses down the line of her spine, lazy and affectionate like he had every right to her body.

It should have been bliss. Instead, guilt sat like a brick on her chest.

She’d lied to him—again. She’d allowed him to shut down conversations that mattered. She was terrified to tell him how deep her feelings ran and that fear was starting to look a lot like betrayal.

She swallowed against the thickness in her throat. “Colter?”

He answered with another kiss on her shoulder. “Hmm.”

“There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

That woke him enough to lift his head. “Something bad.”

“I don’t know yet.” Her voice wavered. “But you should hear it.”

He shifted again, rolling just enough to look at her face. “Then tell me.”

She was ready to tell him everything she should have said weeks ago, before that first kiss. It was not just fear tying her in knots. It was guilt. She had been letting him build emotions, deep binding emotions, while she hid the one truth that mattered most. Lynlee was his, and Sutton had been too scared, too selfish, and too overwhelmed to give him the fatherhood he never knew he already had.

“About Lynlee’s dad⁠—”

The sound of little feet on wooden floors came through the door.

“Shit.” She scrambled off the bed and grabbed her underwear, hopping as she pulled it on. “She wakes early sometimes. Sometimes she climbs into my bed. God, she cannot find me gone.”

Sutton yanked on her shirt, fingers fumbling. She shoved her legs through her thong, and he rolled out of bed and searched for his sweatpants. He’d barely tugged them on when the doorknob turned.

Lynlee appeared, squinty-eyed and wild-haired in the doorway. She took in her mother, then the bed, then Colter sitting up shirtless.

“Did you and Colter have a sleepover?”

Colter laughed under his breath. “Something like that.”

Sutton’s heart jammed into her throat. She scooped her daughter up. “Hi, pumpkin. You’re up early.”

“You weren’t in bed,” Lynlee said, wrinkling her nose.

“I went to check on something. I’m here now.”

Colter dragged a hand over his hair. “We need breakfast.”

“And coffee,” Sutton added.