Still, something in her chest tightened.
She told herself she was imagining it. She told herself she was fine.
She didn’t believe it.
Needing to keep moving, Avery cut through the small lot behind the diner, her tote bag bumping against her hip. Voices drifted from the far side, low, rough, threaded with laughter. She slowed without meaning to.
A group of men stood near a line of motorcycles, leather cuts dark against the overcast sky. The backs of their vests were identical: the same emblem Noah wore, the same bold lettering curved across the shoulders. Bloodline Saints MC.
They moved with an ease that made her stomach tighten, like they belonged to the same rhythm, the same unspoken rules. One leaned against a bike, another adjusted something on his handlebars, another raised his arms, stretching. She didn’t know their names. Didn’t know their faces. But she knew the type: men who watched everything, even when they pretended not to.
And then she saw him.
Noah stood slightly apart from the others, but they angled toward him without realizing it — like gravity pulled them his way. His cut hung open, the same emblem stamped across his back, the same patches stitched along the front.
He looked… different here. More grounded. More sure. Like this was a world he understood in a way she never had.
He scanned the street once, quick and precise, before turning back to the man speaking to him. Avery recognized the movement, the way his eyes swept corners, windows, and rooftops. The way his shoulders stayed loose but ready. The way he shifted his stance like he was trained to react before he thought.
Military. It hit her all at once. He wasn’t the kid she remembered. He was someone harder now, steadier, shaped by years she hadn’t been here to see.
Seeing him like that made something old and fragile inside her twist.
One of the men said something, and Rook’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but close. The others reacted instantly, like they’d been waiting for it. A few chuckled. One clapped him on the back. Another nodded like Rook’s approval meant something.
He stood there so easily among them, steady and sure, like this was the version of him the world had shaped in her absence.
Like they’d earned pieces of him she’d never gotten back. The thought hit harder than it should’ve. She had no right to feel that. Didn’t stop her from feeling it anyway.
He belonged with them. He fit. He was… home.
Avery’s chest tightened.
She didn’t know how long she stood there before Rook’s gaze lifted and found her.
The look wasn’t long, but it hit like a hand around her ribs, firm, unyielding, familiar in a way that made her knees feel unsteady. He used to look at her like that. Like he was memorizing her. Like he didn’t know how not to.
Heat crawled up her throat, ridiculous and unwanted.
He didn’t startle. He didn’t look away. He just… saw her.
Something flickered across his face. Something she didn’t have a name for anymore.
Rook’s jaw flexed once before he turned back to the group, the moment slipping away as quickly as it came.
Avery forced herself to move, her legs carrying her toward the coffee shop even though her heart felt like it had been left behind in the parking lot.
The bell over the coffee shop door chimed as Avery stepped inside, the warm smell of espresso and baked sugar wrapping around her. Normally, it would’ve soothed her. Today, it barely touched the tightness in her chest.
She ordered a latte she didn’t really want and moved to the small table near the window, trying to pretend she wasn’t still rattled from earlier. She pulled out her notebook, flipped it open, and stared at the blank page like it might tell her what to do next.
It didn’t.
She took a sip of her drink. Too hot. Too bitter. Too much.
People came and went — a couple of students, a man in work boots, a woman with a stroller. Normal. Ordinary. Safe.
So why did she feel off-balance?
