Barefoot, I make my way to the stairs. The house is quiet at first, shadows stretching long across the rustic beams, the faint smell of coffee drifting up to meet me. But as I descend, voices filter through from the kitchen. Low, steady. But it isn’t Colter’s voice I hear at first.
I pause in the hallway, the cool floor grounding me, straining to catch the words.
“…shouldn’t have brough her here,” a man says, voice sharp, controlled.
“She’s not a liability,” I hear Colter answer, and my stomach tightens at the sound of his voice. It’s calm and steady, but there is no mistaking the underlying edge to it that could cut glass.
Another voice joins, quieter but firm. “The longer she’s here, the harder it will be to keep her out of it. You know that.”
My pulse kicks up and my hands grip the banister.Keep me out of what?
I take one slow step forward, then another, until the kitchen comes into view.
Three men stand around the island. Colter’s broad shoulders are turned toward me, his posture deceptively relaxed. The other two, men I don’t recognize, look carved from the same stone. Their eyes are hard as they stare at Colter, arms folded against their flannel covered chests.
Every instinct screams for me to walk away. That I have no business listening in, but I can’t help but creep closer, barefoot and quiet, the cotton hem of the sundress brushing my thighs as I hover beyond the threshold of the kitchen.
The men don’t see me. Their attention is locked on Colter.
“She’s a risk,” the man with wind swept brown hair says again, his tone carrying the weight of authority. His hair is silver at the temples, but his eyes are sharp assessing. “You know how fast word travels. One slip and?—”
Colter cuts him off with what is no doubt, a dark look. I can’t see his face from here, but I feel the air shift, tense like a storm ready to break. “I said she’s not a liability.” His voice is calm, but final, a warning wrapped in velvet.
“You’ve been keeping your distance to prevent a target from being put on her back,” the man with a military cut argues. He’s younger and broader than the other one, his words biting with impatience. “She doesn’t know who we are. We don’t know if we can even trust her with that information. Look at what Sadie fucking did. That bitch nearly wrecked John.”
My chest tightens at the sound of my mother’s name. Hearing it here, in Colter’s kitchen, makes the air too thick to breathe.
Colter’s tone drops low, lethal. “Careful how you talk in my house, Ford.”
The older one lifts a hand, silencing the one named Ford. “We’re only saying what you already know. If she says, she needs to understand the stakes. She needs to know who she’s living with.”
My heard hammers so hard I’m sure they’ll hear it.
Colter doesn’t answer straight away. The silence stretches heavily. Then, finally, “That’s my call. Not yours.”
Something twists in me at his words. Possessive. Final. A claim I never agreed to, spoken like it’s already written in blood.
I linger in the shadows, hidden but not really.
The older man exhales heavily, tired but resigned. “Just don’t wait too long. Secrets rot from the inside out.”
His words slice through me, sharp and uncomfortably true.
I grip the end table beneath my hand, my knuckles white. I don’t belong here. Never did. And yet—Colter keeps dragging me closer, threading me into a world I don’t understand. A world that whispers about stakes, risks, and my mother’ sname like it’s poison on their tongues.
Colter shifts then, like he senses me. My breath catches when he turns slightly, head tilting. His gaze cuts toward the doorway, straight through the shadows where I hover.
“Peyton.” My name on his lips, rough and certain, makes the other two men go still.
My throat goes dry, but my feet move anyway, carrying me into the kitchen like I’m walking straight into a trap. The air is different here; charged and dangerous. The smell of coffee mingles with woodsmoke and something sharper I can’t name.
Colter doesn’t move from where he is leaned against the counter, broad shoulders framed in the glow of pendant lights. He looks steady, grounded, like the whole damn world revolved around him. Maybe it does.
The two men are another story.
The older one straightens politely, though is sharp eyes rake over me like he’s weighing and measuring every detail. The one named ford doesn’t bother to hide the frown pulling at his mouth like my very presence confirms everything he was saying.
I tug at the hem of my sundress and force myself to meet their stares.
