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The silence was thick and painful.
“You’re lying,” Adam finally whispered.
Noah swallowed past a lump in his throat. “I wish I was. You have no idea how much I wish I was lying.”
“How old were you?”
Noah shrugged. “Eight. She started the moment we got here. First in Hebrew, then in English as we started to learn more. Then she died, and I would wake up every single night from nightmares that she was somehow going to reach beyond death and take you with her. Bubbe tried to help, but she didn’t know what to do, so I just…dealt with it.”
“You never told me that either,” Adam accused.
Noah swiped his hand over his brow, then turned away mostly to wash but also to have a reprieve from Adam’s relentless gaze. “Of course not! You were a child, Adam. You were convinced she was…something else. You were convinced I had a relationship with her that was good. I barely remember the mother who was happy, Adam, but I didn’t want to take that from you.”
“So why tell me now?” Adam asked. The question wasn’t mean this time, just honest.
Noah turned and felt so helpless. “Because you’re right. I should have told you years ago. When you thought I was a mess for the sake of being a mess, I could have told you then. I couldn’t handle setting foot outside the house…” He closed his eyes. “So I begged Hashem to protect you, and that in exchange, he could have all of me. I’d give up on the idea of love and friendships and anything personal so long as he didn’t take you too.”
Adam made a helpless noise. “You chose to suffer to protect me, but no one asked you to do that. That’s not how it works, Noah.”
Noah sighed and shook his head. “I know, but I was too afraid to take the risk. Bubbe left me with this debt, with this shop crumbling beneath our feet, because I was already ruined. She didn’t want to ruin you too.”
“Jesus,” Adam said, and though Noah wasn’t watching him, he heard his brother shift on the counter. “You aren’t ruined.”
“I’m close enough,” Noah offered with a baleful smile. “You got out, though.”
“Okay, but what about you? If it falls apart now, you’ll never get out of debt.” Adam took a step forward, then stopped. “What are you going to do?”
Noah shook his head. “I’m…I’m going to sell it. Not the bakery but the building.”
“The apartment,” Adam said, his tone slightly pinched, and Noah knew it was just him trying to hide his heartache. “You’re going to sell our home.”
Noah nodded. He stood there, and when Adam jumped down and stormed out of the room, Noah’s eyes closed, and he sagged against the counter. It wasn’t worse than he imagined but not much better either. He felt Adam’s anger and frustration, and he deserved all of it.
Glancing at the clock, he knew Paxton wouldn’t be long. Most of the prep work was done, and Wednesdays were never a big day for them. Noah would work a few hours later than usual, feed the cat, then head back over to Adriano’s for their last night.
At least the last night before Noah had to decide whether he was really going to go all the way on camera. Resisting Adriano was getting harder and harder, his restraint at an all-time low. He wanted to be inside Adriano or let Adriano sink into him. He wanted to be pulled apart in ways that made him weep with pleasure, not with anguish.
He was just so damn tired.
Turning back to the cookies, Noah shoved everything in his head into the dark shadows, then got back to work. The almond cookies were the last to bake besides the challah, and then he could focus on everything else. Adam would…well, he would either come around, or he wouldn’t, and Noah…
“This.” Adam’s sharp voice interrupted Noah’s thoughts, and he spun to face Adam, who stood in the doorway that led to the stairs. He had stacks of papers clutched in his hands, and he walked over, slamming them down onto a clean spot on the baking counter. “This is everything?”
Noah glanced at the pile, and he couldn’t be sure, but he nodded anyway. “Probably.”
Adam thumbed the stack, then shoved them all to the ground. “You’re fucking ridiculous, Noah.”
He swallowed thickly and nodded. “I know.”
“You should have been a goddamn Christian.”
Noah blinked at him, startled and so confused. “What…”
“You suffer enough for a Jew, but you’resucha fucking martyr,” Adam said.
The accusation was so wild, so absurd—so Adam—that the laugh bubbled out of Noah’s chest before he could stop it. And it wasn’t even funny really. It mostly hurt. The honesty of it, and the fact that while Adam never felt like he’d gotten what he deserved, Noah had never felt seen, and it was all crashing down. His carefully constructed walls were nothing more than rubble as he bent in half.
He wasn’t quite sure when his laughter turned into sobs, but Adam was at his side, an arm around his waist as he got him to one of the stools. Noah couldn’t begin to count how many times he’d done this with the roles reversed, with Adam crying rivers into the front of his shirt when kids were mean, when his girlfriends dumped him, when he was lonely. He had bouts of sadness and rage, and Noah had held him and rubbed his back through all of them.
