Her breath caught. He wasn’t teasing anymore.
Avery wiped her hands on a towel, suddenly aware of how quiet the bakery felt. “Because I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
He didn’t move.
She swallowed hard, fingers tightening around the edge of the counter. “After college… everything fell apart faster than I could keep up with.”
Noah’s gaze sharpened, but he stayed silent.
“I got a job right out of school. A good one. Something I thought would finally make all the years away worth it.” Her throat tightened. “Then the company restructured. My entire department was cut.One email and I was done. No warning. No severance. Just… gone.”
Noah’s jaw flexed.
“And my boyfriend, Ryan?” She let out a shaky breath. “I found out he’d been cheating on me. Not just once. Not just recently. Probably from the beginning. I was living with someone who didn’t even like me enough to pretend.”
Her voice cracked, but she pushed through it.
“I kept trying to build a life that didn’t fit. Trying to prove I hadn’t made a mistake leaving here. Trying to pretend I wasn’t lonely or exhausted or… lost.” She blinked hard, eyes burning. “And then Aunt Clara died. And suddenly the only person who ever made me feel like I belonged anymore was gone.”
She looked up at him, raw and exposed.
“I realized I’d been running from home for years. And I didn’t have anything left to run.”
Silence stretched between them, heavy, suffocating.
Noah didn’t speak at first.
He just stood there, jaw tight, eyes fixed on a spot on the floor like he was debating whether to say anything at all. When he finally looked up, something in his expression had shifted. Not softer, exactly, but less guarded. Like he’d stopped holding his breath.
“You wanna know what happened after you left?” he said quietly.
Avery nodded.
He exhaled through his nose, slow and heavy. “I enlisted the morning after you drove off for college. Didn’t tell anyone. Didn’t think it mattered.”
Her chest tightened. “Noah…”
He shook his head. “I needed to get out of here. Needed to become someone who didn’t fall apart after you walked away.”
He leaned back against the counter, arms crossed, but it wasn’t defensive — it was bracing.
“The military… it was different. Hard. Brutal sometimes. But it made sense. Orders made sense. Missions made sense. Pain made sense.” His voice dropped. “People depended on me. And I depended onthem. It was the first time since you left that I felt like I wasn’t… empty.”
He wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was staring past her, into memories she could tell he didn’t talk about.
“I saw things I don’t talk about,” he said. “Did things I don’t talk about. Lost people I shouldn’t have lost. Guys who were closer to me than my own blood.” His jaw flexed. “And when I came home, it was like the world had moved on without me. Like I didn’t fit anywhere.”
He finally met her eyes again. “Stone was putting together a new chapter and needed a home base. I told him to bring it here… figured it was the one thing I could still offer.” His voice dropped. “Didn’t expect the club to feel like family… not after everything.”
Avery swallowed hard. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”
His laugh was low and humorless. “You were gone, Aves. You had your life. Your future. I wasn’t gonna call you from a base halfway across the world and say, ‘Hey, I’m falling apart without you.’”
Her heart twisted painfully. “I would’ve answered.”
“No,” he said softly. “You wouldn’t have.”
She stepped closer. “You don’t know that.”
