Page 104 of Rise
She opened her eyes. He was already looking at her like she was something found. Something he’d been searching for.
And maybe she was.
16
The snow had picked up again. Not frenzied, but steady, the thick flakes tumbling through the streetlamp glow. It was the kind that dulled sound and thickened silence. Hazel’s boots moved through it carefully, muffling her footsteps, the powder brushing up over the toes of her boots in a fine, quiet line.
Beside her, Beck walked with his coat collar turned up against the cold, one hand tucked in his pocket, the other loose at his side. His gait was steady, but not even, she noticed it now more clearly than she had before. The slight favouring of his right leg, the subtle tilt of his weight each time they stepped off a curb or shifted direction. It wasn’t dramatic, just familiar. Like a rhythm his body had learned and made peace with.
And suddenly she understood. The stiffness on colder days, the way he leaned into railings or sat with care. It all came together— not as a flaw, but a fact. A quiet truth stitched into him, weathered and worn smooth by time. She found herself watching the shape of him as they walked. The broadness of his shoulders, the rise and fall of his breath, the way his jaw was dusted in faint stubble and half-turned toward her, like he was listening for something even when neither of them were speaking.
They hadn’t said much since leaving Verdance. He’d offered to walk her home, and she’d accepted.
And yet, the silence between them wasn’t empty. It felt charged, almost sacred, like a stillness you didn’t dare break with anything too sharp.
Hazel’s coat was cinched at the waist but beneath it, the velvet dress still clung to the warmth he’d pressed into her. Her skin was nearlybuzzingbeneath the layers, like it hadn’t yet stopped registering his touch. His kiss. The press of his palm low at her back. The heat of his breath against her mouth.
She felt altered by it. Rewritten, somehow. And beyond that, she was terrified that if she said the wrong thing now, the spell would lift and he’d slip back into the quiet, unreachable version of himself she’d known for months.
So instead, she reached for the gentlest thing she could think of. Except it wasn’t gentle at all, not in the way it mattered. It was simplydifferent,a diversion from whatever was building between them, seething just beneath the surface, spitting and hissing like water meeting a hot coil.
“You and Leigh… are you close?” she asked, her voice barely loud enough to be heard above the world around them. “I didn’t realize you two knew each other.”
Beside her, Beck tilted his head— not in surprise, but in consideration. He was quiet for a few steps more before answering.
“We’re not,” he admitted, his chin still turned in her direction. “Not really. She’s been helping me with my injury. Giving me some exercises and stretches to help relax and build the muscle up again.”
Hazel glanced at him, brows lifting.
“She’s studying online to get her physiotherapist license. She wants to offer it through Northlight,” he added. “Eventually. She’s been letting me come in during off-hours when the place is quiet.”
Hazel nodded, the pieces falling into place. It was soLeigh— gentle, grounded, deliberate. Of course she’d want to help people rebuild their bodies as well as their strength. And of course she’d never mention it to anyone, because she likely knew as well as Hazel did, that that was the way Beck would like it to be.
“And she’s been helping with your leg?” Hazel asked, quieter this time.
Beck nodded. “My leg, my hip, my knee. There was… damage, after my last posting. I almost lost the leg. There was a lot of surgery and a long recovery. It’s better now, mostly. Just flares up when it’s cold or if I overdo it. Which I do, sometimes.”
The admission was matter of fact. No self-pity, no false bravado. Just Beck, saying something difficult the same way he might describe the weather.
Hazel didn’t reply right away. Her gaze drifted down again, following the subtle pattern of his steps, the way one foot dug deeper than the other, the way he moved with the awareness of his own limitations— not in fear of them, but in practiced accommodation.
Something in her stilled, like her body recognized the weight of what he’d shared before her mind had time to catch up. It wasn’t shock. It wasn’t even sadness. It was something deeper than either of those. An ache that bloomed slow and sure behind her ribs— not because he’d been hurt, but because he’d carried it so quietly, for so long.
And she’d seen it, hadn’t she? In the way he stood, always just slightly angled to one side. In how his fingers curled around stair rails or workbenches like anchors, and in the way he moved through the world with careful intention, like every step had been measured and earned. She’d noticed, sure, but she hadn’tknown.
Now that she did, it was like another piece of him clicked into place.
She glanced sideways, studying the shape of him through the falling snow again. The set of his shoulders, the subtle tightness in his jaw. There was no embarrassment in his posture, no need to explain further. He wasn’t giving her a wound to cradle, he was offering her a fact, a truth carved into him by fire and healed over in silence.
And that, somehow, undid her more than anything else.
She didn’t reach for his hand, didn’t step closer, but her breath slowed. Her heart did that strange, fluttering tilt it always seemed to do around him. And all she could think— absurd and quiet and clear as glass— was:I see you.
She hoped, somehow, he couldfeel it.
“I wondered…” she admitted, her eyes still on him. “Sometimes you move like it hurts.”
His brow lifted, like he was surprised, but he didn’t look away. “Sometimes it does.”
