Page 38 of The One Who Never Left: Colter

“Good, because Lynlee deserves better than someone promising her the moon.”

“And you?” he said, his voice low. “Don’t you deserve someone who at least tries?”

Sutton blinked, as if caught off guard by the question. Her expression registered somewhere between no-one-has-ever-asked-me-that-before and I-don’t-even-know-how-to-respond, and in that moment he promised himself he’d never be another person to let either of them down.

He meant it about her, but the words kept going somewhere he hadn't planned, because somewhere in the last hour—between the bedtime negotiation, the pony standoff and Lynlee's arms around Sutton's leg like she was the axis the whole world rotated on—something had lodged itself in his chest that he couldn't quite locate or dislodge.

He didn't know anything about raising a kid—a fact he knew without question. He knew vaccines and bloodlines and how to talk a panicked owner back from the ledge at two in the morning. He knew how to carry weight without letting it show. What he did not know was how a person got small enough to sit on the floor and make a four-year-old feel like the most important thing in the room.

Except he had done exactly that tonight, without thinking about it at all.

“I know I don’t make the kind of money that the other families do at her school,” she explained. “But that’s where I’m at right now. This apartment won’t be a forever place, but right now it’s our place.”

Colter swallowed around the sudden tightness in his throat. There it was again—that quiet, unbreakable pride. She wasn’t apologizing for her life. She was just stating it, owning it, and somehow that made him want to tear the world apart and hand her an easier one.

He didn’t see a woman scraping by. He saw someone building something solid out of sheer will, brick by brick, for a little girl who trusted her with everything.

“How much am I paying you?” he asked, already knowing the answer wouldn’t sit right.

“Shouldn’t you know the answer to that?”

“Irma handles billing.”

"Of course she does," Sutton said. "The one part of this operation with adult supervision. And you’re paying me enough.”

He shook his head once. “It’s clearly not.”

“How much did you pay your other interns?”

“I’ve never had an intern.”

“Then why did you hire me?”

“It might have been the twenty times you followed up on your resume.” That got him a genuine smile. “I figured someone who had that much determination deserved a shot to prove themselves.”

“And how am I doing?”

The uncertainty in her voice caught him off guard. It made his chest pinch with the sudden realization that he should have said something sooner—acknowledged her hard work, the way she’d stepped in without hesitation, the quiet competence she carried, and how she handled the animals and their humans. He wanted to kick himself for missing the chance to give her the praise she clearly deserved.

“Good enough to get a raise.” Then, without giving her space to argue, he said, “You’re getting a raise.”

“I don’t want a raise out of pity. I want it because I’ve earned it.”

Colter held her gaze, giving himself a moment to recalibrate. He knew that look. She was drawing a line in the sand. This wasn’t about money—it was about dignity. About not being another person swooping in like a knight to fix things she was fighting like hell to handle herself. The last thing he wanted was to bruise her pride when all he was trying to do was make her life a little less heavy.

Help, not rescue.

Support, not charity.

Two things that were hard for him to swallow, because helping was how he lived. It’s what drove his career, guided his hands when he worked with animals, and shaped the rules he lived by. It even threaded through the rare, complicated ways he allowed himself to connect with people.

He wanted to give Sutton a hand without taking over—to lift her up without diminishing her. For once, that balance felt both unfamiliar and necessary.

“Fine,” he said slowly, a corner of his mouth lifting. “You want to earn it? Then help me run the Paws for the Cause fundraiser.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a day that highlights adoptable animals and raises funds for the local animal shelter. Last year we raised enough to neuter and spay five hundred dogs and cats.”