Page 23 of The One Who Never Left: Colter

“What does that mean?”

“It means be careful, he’s a charmer,” Vivi answered. “I know there’s more to him and I still haven’t figured out why he is so gun-shy about serious relationships, but the capacity is there.”

“Gun-shy?” Jo snorted. “Viv, he’s a total playboy. Dates everyone, commitment is optional. He hasn’t been on a second date in almost a year.”

“We’re working on that,” Vivi said proudly.

Sutton decided, right then, that she liked Vivi entirely too much to tell her she was dating-app-matchmaking the father of Sutton's daughter like he was a normal, unclaimed bachelor.

“We redid his profile to encourage more long-term connections,” Vivi added.

Jo’s laugh echoed so loud half the bar turned their way. “Long term? He’s a Callahan, so long term means they look at you once across a crowded room and wink before winking at the next woman in a three-foot radius.”

“I’m engaged to a Callahan,” Vivi said defensively.

“And Boone spent the first six weeks of knowing you acting like dating was a government conspiracy,” Jo said as if she were the expert on all things Callahan. She looked at Sutton. “Colter is a panty-whisperer, so your degree of difficulty is significantly higher than hers.”

Panty-whisperer. Great. Add that to the file too, right under charmer, gun-shy, and protects what's his. Sutton was building quite the dossier tonight, and none of it was helping.

She hadn’t planned on dissecting her boss’s love life over martinis and nachos, but that was exactly what grown-up girls’ nights were good for.

“I am not interested, and I mean not interested. I just wanted to know what kind of man I’m working for. I moved all the way from San Francisco for this internship. I want to be sure I didn’t make a mistake.”

“Charmer aside, he’s a good guy,” Vivi said. “All the Callahans are. He’s honest to a fault and trustworthy.”

“I’d trust a Callahan with my life,” Jo said. “Not my heart, but my life. Plus, Colter’s a protector and protects what’s his.”

Of course he would.

Life loved stacking the odds against Sutton. Before she could stop, her mind went somewhere dangerous—toward sticky fingers and bedtime stories and a little girl with Colter’s eyes he didn’t even know was his.

Would that protection extend to a four-year-old he’d never asked for? Or would finding out feel less like gaining something and more like being trapped by it?

“In the third grade, I accidentally launched a ball into the lunch lady’s cart,” Jo went on as if Sutton’s entire world wasn’t under siege.

“How do you accidentally launch a ball into a cart?” Sutton asked.

“I was aiming for Eli, who tried to dodge it but ended up getting hit in the shoulder and it rebounded making direct contact. Colter dragged us both away before the principal saw, and we spent the rest of picture day with tomato soup stains on our shirts like battle scars.”

“Colter’s the mediator of the family,” Vivi added. “The easy-going one. Well, from what I hear, he was before the accident.”

“Accident?”

Vivi didn’t answer right away, and Sutton felt that familiar squeeze in her chest—the one that came when someone treated her like she didn’t belong. Maybe talking about Colter’s family was like stepping across an invisible line she wasn’t sure she could come back from.

Vivi put deliberate space between them as if debating if Sutton’s trustworthiness was enough for such a private matter.

“A little over two years ago, their parents died in a car crash,” Jo said.

“Oh my God. That’s horrible.” Sutton’s stomach knotted.

Losing his parents like that—suddenly and violently—had to have changed everything. She knew what it was like to lose parents. She never knew her biological dad and when she was five her mom dropped her off at a fire station and never came back. Growing up without parents had been painful, but to have them suddenly taken must have been devastating.

“They were good people,” Jo said, her voice soft with sorrow. “The whole town felt that loss. Colter was speaking at his alma mater in California. The funeral wasn’t even over when he and his brothers had to step into their father’s shoes—running a massive ranch and protecting everything their family had built.”

And keeping his family together, Sutton thought.

That must have taken a kind of strength that didn’t need words to prove itself. It made her chest tighten, because she understood that weight all too well, even if her own family had fallen apart differently. Just like Colter would do whatever it took to protect what was his, so would she—no excuses and no looking back.