Page 64 of The One Who Never Left: Colter

“Animals rank pretty low on the police priority list. So, every breeding season, I buy whatever puppies Harvey has.”

He said it like it was no big deal, like it was something anyone decent would do.

“How long have you been doing this?” she asked.

“Since I was seventeen.”

“You’ve been doing this for ten years?”

He smiled then—small, crooked. “Try fifteen.”

Her throat tightened. Surely he was exaggerating. There was no way⁠—

“Doing the math?” he asked with a quiet chuckle. “I can tell you just realized our age difference. Shocked?”

“Nope.”

“Liar.” He was correct. It was her seventh such lie since running into him at the market that first day, and it wasn’t even lunchtime.

“Okay,” she admitted. “Maybe a little shocked.”

Sutton’s mom had still been a teen when she’d had her—making her only a few years older than Colter was now—and the realization sat wrong in Sutton’s chest. It blurred lines that were already complicated enough. It was just another reason that stacked itself neatly onto the why-this-won’t-work pile.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Thought of that too.”

“Am I really that transparent?”

“Let’s just say don’t go to Vegas anytime soon.”

The truck hummed beneath them as Colter pulled onto the highway, one hand on the wheel, the other resting casually near the gearshift. Sutton tried not to think about their earlier conversation as she stared out the passenger window, watching the town fade into open land.

“I heard you had a run-in with the town gossip herself. How bad was it?” Colter asked, breaking the silence.

“You should go ask her,” Sutton said dryly. “She’s probably still waiting for you. And your prized butt.”

Colter glanced over, one eyebrow lifting. “Prized, huh? You on the judges’ panel?”

“You wouldn’t want me there,” she said sweetly. “I’d ruin your ranking.”

He laughed, then reached up and pulled off his glasses, setting them in the console before giving her a more serious look. “Alright, jokes aside. What did Harriett say?”

What didn’t she say?

“Enough that apparently sharing a cup of coffee with you qualifies as a scandal. I might need bodyguards.”

Colter leaned a little closer at the stop sign, forearm resting across the steering wheel. For no reason Sutton could articulate, her stomach did that annoying, traitorous lurch.

“People are talking,” he said.

“Does it bother you?” she asked, keeping her voice light.

“Not in the slightest.” He tilted his head, studying her like he always did when he was being too perceptive. “Does it bother you?”

She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “No. Not really. But for Lynlee’s sake, we need to be careful. I don’t want her getting confused.”

Because confusion led to attachment, and attachment led to loss—and she would not let her daughter learn that lesson the hard way just because Sutton had let her guard slip.

“What does that mean?”