Colton's Lethal Reunion (Coltons of Mustang Valley)

A bed didn’t change that.

Nor did her sleeping beside him.

She had to find a way to squelch, once and for all, the young woman inside her who kept trying to pretend that it might.

* * *

She had to pee. It was three in the morning. If she lay completely still and held her breath, she could hear Rafe breathing on the floor two feet from her bed. Her bathroom was on the other side of him. She’d have to pass him, risk waking him, to get there. If she went down to the hall bathroom, she’d have to open the bedroom door she’d closed and locked to give her warning if someone got in the house and tried to get to them. The sound of the door opening would wake him for sure.

Flushing was going to wake him up. No way could she go and just leave it there for him to find if he got up to go. She’d already instructed him to use her bathroom during the night.

Maybe she could hold it. She’d expected to spend most of the night just dozing, anyway. With Rafe so close, and her heart still needing him, how could she expect to sleep?

Then she’d gone and drifted right off, sleeping like a baby, until three. He could sleep another couple of hours, minimum. She wasn’t going to be able to hold it.

In the sweats she’d changed into while he’d been in brushing his teeth, and the T-shirt she’d had on minus the bra, she slid out from under her sheet on the far side of the bed. Lifting her feet so they wouldn’t make shuffling sounds on the carpet, she walked by Rafe’s bare toes sticking out from the bottom of the sheet she’d wrapped around the mattress and made it into the bathroom.

Holding the handle in the turned open position, she quietly closed the door, slowly released the knob. She turned on the ventilation fan to muffle any noise as she hurried to the little toilet cubby, thinking ahead to time her flush with washing her hands.

She didn’t look in the mirror. Didn’t take time to do more than dry her hands and then, light and fan off, she opened the door as carefully as she’d closed it, her gaze aimed toward those feet at the bottom of the mattress.

They were still there. Same position.

She’d made it.

“Everything come out okay?” The sleepy voice seemed to boom into the room. Freezing on the spot at the bottom of her bed, Kerry didn’t look at him. She’d told him once that her father, who’d been very drunk at the time, had asked her that one night when a couple of the other ranch hands were over and she’d been really embarrassed. To their credit, none of the other guys had laughed. Rafe had, though. And by the time they were done talking about it, she’d been laughing, too.

Everyone used the restroom, he told her. Even royalty. He’d joked about the number of toilets in the Colton mansion. The phrase had become kind of a joke between them. And not just about the bathroom. She’d do something embarrassing, like the time she’d tripped over her feet running to get to him so not a second of their stolen time had been wasted, and he’d scooped her up, watched her spit dirt out of her mouth and asked, “Everything come out okay?”

Why did she still remember this stuff?

Why did he?

Not answering him, she made it back to bed. Under the covers. Lying there stiffly staring at the ceiling.

“I miss you.” His voice still sounded sleepy. Sexily sleepy. Was that it? He missed her body doing things with his after their last two nights together?

“I miss the way you used to trust me,” came next.

“I miss that, too.”

They were voices in the dark—that was all. It was okay.

“You think we’d have made it? If Payne hadn’t found out about us?” The fact that he had to ask was telling.

But... “Yeah,” she answered. She wasn’t as sure as she used to be, though. “Maybe.” Because as strong as their love had been, Payne would still have been an issue.

Was still an issue.

She saw that now, more clearly than ever.

Rafe had made his choice.

The thought had been painful sitting at the dining room table filled with work and bright lights to distract her. In the dark, in her bed, in the middle of the night, the strangling pull of pain was almost unbearable.

Unstoppable.

But the way he’d talked that night, when she’d seen it all from his eyes, for the first time she got it. She actually understood. He’d had to make an unbearable choice and the only way he’d been able to do so was to harden his heart.