Liora snapped out of her thoughts abruptly, her breath catching slightly as reality settled back in.

For a moment, she had been somewhere else—lost in everything Leo had said, in everything she had been trying so hard not to feel.

But now—

Ashvin was here.

And that changed everything.

She didn’t want to go back to the front of the bakery. She couldn’t. Not when he was there. Not when Avery was here too.

The thought alone made her chest tighten.

Leo’s words echoed in her mind, persistent and unr