Page 52 of The One Who Never Left: Colter

“What word would that be?”

She paused, studying him, then shook her head with a reluctant smile. “You don’t quit, do you?”

“Not when I’m ahead.”

“I didn’t realize we were engaged in a game.”

“Freckles, this is more than a game, and you know it.”

He watched her walk toward the door, heart doing something reckless and stupid in his chest, and thought—without humor this time—that this was how it started. Small moments. Soft ones. The kind that snuck up on you while you were asleep and rewrote the rules before you even knew you were committed.

Sutton had always known she was capable of professional self-sabotage, but falling asleep on her boss’s lap felt like an ambitious new low.

One minute she was curled up against him like aluminum wrap on a chocolate bar, drooling on his lap a mere inch from his—well, let’s call it “equipment,” and definitely in a place she should never be. The next she was following him to the ranch to collect Lynlee for school.

Sutton eased her POS Honda down the gravel road toward the Callahan ranch, the tires crunching against the loose stones like tiny percussion in the quiet morning. The September sun was just tipping over the horizon, spilling gold across the valley, painting the fields in shades of amber and rose.

Fall was flexing.

Sutton stole a glance at the ranch—the sprawling farmhouse, the barn in the distance, the fences lined with cows—and felt a pang she couldn’t name. What would it be like to live somewhere with roots, with history threaded into every beam and every stone? Somewhere with love that wasn’t transactional or conditional?

She thought about the foster homes she’d lived in. Rooms that smelled of bleach and strangers, walls that had held her only temporarily, never staying long enough for her to feel safe or settled.

After aging out, she’d couch-surfed until she’d graduated high school, then floated from one apartment to the next, stacking boxes and memories that never quite stuck. Each place was a stopgap, a pause, a reminder that home was something she’d never been allowed to keep.

Then she thought of Lynlee, and how incredible it would be for her daughter to grow up somewhere like Bridlewood—to wake to the same sun spilling over the fields every morning, to know that the walls around her held history, love, and a family that didn’t rotate like Sutton’s had.

And this ranch could be a soft place to land that would always be there—a family who would welcome her with open arms—a family who would treasure her.

She threw her car into Park and took in a fortifying breath, preparing herself for what she’d find inside. A happy child or one that felt disoriented from waking up in a strange place. After all, this was the first step in, what could be, Lynlee’s future of Saturday sleepovers and Sunday night dinners.

Before she could even catch her breath, the car door swung open and the crisp morning air smacked her square in the face, pulling her out of her spiral of what-ifs.

“Careful,” Colter called, resting his forearm on top of the door like he owned the sunrise. “If you don’t get out soon, your carriage is going to turn into a pumpkin.”

Sutton snorted. “I didn’t know coachmen drove trucks.”

“I guess today’s your day to learn something new.” He grinned in that way that made her stomach do a thing she tried not to notice.

She stepped out and into his space—easy to do since his energy could fill a room—and for a second neither of them moved. Everything about this place—about him—made her chest feel too full for words.

“Thanks for last night,” he said. “If you hadn’t stayed, I’d have lost Patches for sure.”

He was so tall, Sutton had to tip her head so far back she could see the sun. She considered him then, wondering how much of the guy in front of her she was allowed to trust.

“Why did you ask me to stay with you instead of Dr. Porter?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Why did you say yes?”

Careful not to overthink it, she settled on, “Because you needed me.”

The truth of it pressed down on her sternum heavier than she liked. She had stayed because he needed her and she did not miss the jagged edge of recognition that followed. She was careful with her daughter, bordering on overprotective even, yet here she was bending her own rules for a man’s needs without stopping to consider the ramifications.

Sutton told herself it was situational, harmless. Still, the quiet question lingered: when had keeping her priorities straight started to feel negotiable?

“But you had to leave Lynlee with my family. I know how hard that must have been,” he said.

“It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I trust you so therefore I trust your family.”