Page 90 of The One Who Never Left: Colter

Jo, honest to a fault, leaned across the table with a mischievous grin. “And being a mother doesn’t mean you have to shut off the rest of yourself. Stop overthinking it and just bang him already.”

Sutton nearly choked on her wine, cheeks heating.

“Jo!” she hissed, looking around to make sure no one was listening. Thankfully, the no one she was concerned with was leaning on the table in quiet conversation with his date.

“Call it a suggestion. Call it tough love. But you? Sitting here, watching him laugh with some other woman? It’s murder on your nerves. And the best way to blow off nerves is to fu⁠—”

Sutton slammed her hand over Jo’s mouth.

“Yeah, I get it!” she snapped.

Vivi grinned, clearly not backing down. “I have to back Jo up on this one. I mean mind-blowing sex isn’t a bad idea. Hell, I did it myself.”

“Hell, at this point any kind of blowing needs to happen,” Jo said, biting on a toothpick.

Sutton ignored Jo and looked at Vivi. “Wait. What did you say?”

Vivi waved a hand, casual as could be. “I slept with Boone two weeks after I met him. Total rebound sex—well, I convinced myself it was rebound because I’d just broken up with my boyfriend.” She smirked. “Best part? I was shocked at how quickly it worked. All the nerves and awkwardness? Gone.”

“And did it work? Did you get Boone out of your system?”

Jo grinned devilishly. “Oh, she got him in her system.”

Vivi shot Jo a mock glare but couldn’t hide the laughter in her eyes. “Yes, Jo, but only metaphorically. Though, uh, maybe not entirely.”

Sutton groaned, burying her face in her hands. “You two are impossible.”

“And you,” Jo added, poking her lightly in the side, “are about to find out how fun impossible can be.”

Sutton tried to focus on her wine, swirling the deep red liquid like it could calm her spinning thoughts, but she couldn’t ignore the pull across the room. Colter’s eyes found hers just as he laughed with Cheryl. A flicker of recognition—of something unsaid—passed between them and Sutton understood in one breathless second that she’d made the wrong decision for all the right reasons.

Her pulse jumped and heat rolled through her chest and up her neck as she held his gaze, a brief, charged moment stretching out, hot and electric. It was everything her brain told her to ignore, every warning she had tried to silence.

Cheryl, following his eyes, caught the same spark and arched a perfectly sculpted brow. That little twitch, that subtle narrowing of her lips, told Sutton everything she needed to know—Cheryl understood. And that realization—that she was hurting someone else—guilt crept in, slow and unwelcome.

She dropped her gaze to her wine again and muttered under her breath, “I can’t do this. He’s on a date with my friend.”

Vivi’s eyes narrowed with knowing amusement. “Oh, Sutton. That’s not it. Spill it.”

Sutton exhaled, shame and frustration mingling. “When he looks at me, like really looks at me, I feel this pull. But Cheryl just noticed it and she knows something’s going on. And I can’t stand that I’m making someone else feel that way.”

“Well, congratulations, girl,” Jo said. “You’ve just confirmed the obvious. You’re playing with fire.”

Vivi nodded, voice low but deadly serious. “Then here’s the solution. Stop screwing around in the half-shadows. Own it.”

“And start screwing around,” Jo said wiggling her brow. “Or a third party will get hurt. You don’t want someone’s heart to end up in a blender, do you?”

“No. Including my own. Or Lynlee’s. Something between us or not, I can’t go there for a very valid reason. Reasons I’m not willing to share yet. But I will, very soon, I promise.”

Colter was halfway through a story he didn’t remember starting when he felt it—that shift in the room, the sudden absence of something he hadn’t realized he’d been tracking all night. It was like the air had been pulled out without warning.

He lost his place, his words trailing off into nothing.

Across from him, Cheryl tilted her head, waiting patiently, but his attention had already drifted. His gaze slid past her shoulder, toward the front of Tomato Time, as if drawn in by this obsession he couldn’t outrun.

Sutton was standing now, pushing her chair back from the table she’d been sharing with Vivi and Jo. She said something low and quick—too quick for it to be casual—and slung that ridiculously big bag she always carried over her shoulder. Her posture was tight, like she was holding herself together by will alone.

She didn’t look back at him.