“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the empty building. “I should’ve come sooner.”
The rain blurred the present-day Sweet Treats into a watercolor, and suddenly, Avery wasn’t twenty-five and exhausted. She was thirteen again, sitting on the counter with her legs swinging as the warm scent of sugar and cinnamon wrapped around her.
Aunt Clara’s bakery had always felt like a second home. But Noah Carter had made it feel like hers.
“Aves, you’re gonna spill that,” Aunt Clara warned, sliding a mixing bowl toward her. “Gentle, sweetheart. Batter doesn’t like being bullied.”
Avery grinned and stirred anyway, too fast, too messy, splattering batter onto the counter.
A familiar voice drifted from the doorway. “You’re making a disaster zone.”
She turned, cheeks warming.
Noah stood there, taller than last summer, shoulders broader, hair falling into storm-gray eyes he pretended not to know were pretty. Fourteen and already carrying himself like he had something to protect.
“You’re supposed to be helping,” Avery said, sticking her tongue out at him.
“I am helping.” He crossed the room and plucked the spoon from her hand. “By preventing Sweet Treats from exploding.”
“You can’t explode batter,” she argued.
“With you?” He smirked. “I’m not taking chances.”
Aunt Clara chuckled. “Be nice, Noah.”
He softened instantly, he always did around Aunt Clara, and handed the spoon back to Avery.
“Here,” he murmured, guiding her hand with his. “Slow. Like this.”
His hand was warm over hers. Steady. Gentle. She remembered thinking he smelled like sunshine and flour and the leather bracelet he never took off.
She remembered thinking she wanted him to stay forever.
When the muffins went into the oven, Avery hopped off the counter and tugged Noah toward the front of the bakery.
“Come on! Aunt Clara finished the new sign.”
He let her drag him, pretending to resist even though he never really did.
They stood outside, staring up at the freshly painted sign:
Sweet Treats
Home is where the sweetness is.
Avery beamed. “Isn’t it perfect?”
Noah didn’t look at the sign. He looked at her. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Perfect.”
Her stomach fluttered, but she didn’t know why.
The timer dinged in the kitchen. Aunt Clara called for them. Avery ran ahead, laughing. Noah stayed a moment longer, staring at the sign, then at the doorway she’d disappeared through.
The memory faded as her car sputtered, coughed, and died right in front of the bakery.
Of course it did.
Avery let her forehead fall against the steering wheel. The tears came harder now, messy, tired, unstoppable. She’d held everything together for so long, and now, in the dark on a rain-soaked street in the town she’d run from, she finally broke.
