Chapter 43
Sutton woke just before dawn, that strange blue hour when the world looked suspended between night and morning. For one long second, she was warm, tucked beneath a heavy arm and held in place by a steady heartbeat under her ear. Relaxed and treasured.
Then panic sucker punched her ribs.
She was in Colter’s bed, still wrapped up in Colter’s arms, and Lynlee was next door, sleeping alone with no idea her mother had disappeared for the night.
She carefully lifted his arm from her waist, trying to slip free without jostling him.
His muscles flexed, and his arm tightened around her again, hauling her right back against his front.
“One more minute,” he muttered, voice rough with sleep.
One more minute was a dangerous luxury.
“Colter, I really need to get back to Lynlee.”
“Just sixty seconds,” he bargained. “I want to memorize the way you feel in the morning.”
That line knocked breath from her lungs. She let her body relax, just a little.
“Sixty seconds.”
He hummed a satisfied sound and nuzzled into her hair. After a few slow breaths, he shifted, brushing open-mouthed kisses down the line of her spine, lazy and affectionate like he had every right to her body.
It should have been bliss. Instead, guilt sat like a brick on her chest.
She’d lied to him—again. She’d allowed him to shut down conversations that mattered. She was terrified to tell him how deep her feelings ran and that fear was starting to look a lot like betrayal.
She swallowed against the thickness in her throat. “Colter?”
He answered with another kiss on her shoulder. “Hmm.”
“There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
That woke him enough to lift his head. “Something bad.”
“I don’t know yet.” Her voice wavered. “But you should hear it.”
He shifted again, rolling just enough to look at her face. “Then tell me.”
She was ready to tell him everything she should have said weeks ago, before that first kiss.
It was not just fear tying her in knots.
It was guilt. She had been letting him build emotions, deep binding emotions, while she hid the one truth that mattered most. Lynlee was his, and Sutton had been too scared, too selfish, and too overwhelmed to give him the fatherhood he never knew he already had.
“About Lynlee’s dad—”
The sound of little feet on wooden floors came through the door.
“Shit.” She scrambled off the bed and grabbed her underwear, hopping as she pulled it on. “She wakes early sometimes. Sometimes she climbs into my bed. God, she cannot find me gone.”
Sutton yanked on her shirt, fingers fumbling. She shoved her legs through her thong, and he rolled out of bed and searched for his sweatpants. He’d barely tugged them on when the doorknob turned.
Lynlee appeared, squinty-eyed and wild-haired in the doorway. She took in her mother, then the bed, then Colter sitting up shirtless.
“Did you and Colter have a sleepover?”
Colter laughed under his breath. “Something like that.”
Sutton’s heart jammed into her throat. She scooped her daughter up. “Hi, pumpkin. You’re up early.”
“You weren’t in bed,” Lynlee said, wrinkling her nose.
“I went to check on something. I’m here now.”
Colter dragged a hand over his hair. “We need breakfast.”
“And coffee,” Sutton added.
Colter grinned. “Pancakes sound good to me.”
“You’re making pancakes?” Lynlee perked up.
“I sure am,” Colter said. “I make a mean chocolate chip one.”
“You are invited,” Lynlee decreed, pointing at him.
“Best invitation I’ve had in a while,” he teased. “Well, at least since an hour ago.”
Sutton shot him a look, and he winked back. And damn it, that look made her heart sprint again.
She had almost confessed. Almost told him she was in love. Almost confessed the truth about how his DNA ended up in her daughter.
Now she had pancakes to make, a daughter watching her every move, and a secret sitting like a stone in her chest.