Page 120 of Rise
She felt herself trembling. Not from fear, but from the enormity of it. From the way her heart was cracking open, wide and slow, to make room for something that terrified her. Because this was no longer just longing, it waspresence. It wasyes. It was the shaking, terrible courage of being seen and still being wanted.
His forehead pressed to hers, breath shallow between them, his lips brushing her skin as he whispered, “Hazel.”
And something in her broke.
Not the sharp, clean snap of grief or disappointment, but a different kind of break. A soft unseaming, a loosening. The kind that made space for something new.
“I didn’t think I’d get to have this,” she whispered, her eyes still pressed shut. “Not really.”
“You do,” he murmured back. “You do.”
And then he kissed her again, on the mouth, on the corner of her jaw, on the line where her neck met her shoulder. She closed her eyes and let the world go quiet. Let the mess surround them— the half-packed boxes, the cold tea she’d made hours ago and abandoned on the mantel, the apron belonging to her future children hanging over the side of the couch. She let it all exist, imperfect and unfinished, while she stayed exactly where she was, on this couch, with this man kneeling before her like she was worth falling to the ground for.
She reached for him fully now, pulled him up to her, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders like she’d never let go. And when he pressed his face to the hollow of her throat, she felt him exhale— not just breath, but something heavier, like relief.
They stayed that way for a long time, wrapped around each other in the flickering dark, two people learning the shape of something they thought they’d never have. Something they were both afraid to name.
And yet, here it was.
Alive. And held between them.
She wasn’t sure where the shift came from, next. She couldn’t tell if it was her, or him, but either way, their soft, gentle kisses began to shift. Began to heat, like it had been settled on an open burner, switched to high.
Maybe it was him, his fingers brushing lightly against her knee, his hand resting on the couch cushion like an offering, like a question. Or maybe it was her, leaning forward slightly, shifting the space between them until it was nothing at all. When he pulled back from their next kiss, just a breath away, she could feel the rise and fall of his chest, the way his eyes searched hers like he needed to be sure, like he’d stop if she asked him to, like consent wasn’t just the absence ofno,but the presence of want.
“I want this,” she said, voice low, and wrecked, and certain all at once. “I want you.”
Something in his face changed then, softening and unraveling. And she saw it clearly: the weight he carried, the restraint he held, the bone-deep ache of a man who didn’t take things lightly. Who had lived too long without gentleness. Who had taught himself how to survive without a single person in the world who was allowed to draw near.
He didn’t speak, he just kissed her again, slower than before, his hand slipping behind her neck, the other settling at her waist. Hazel melted into him, into the solidity of his body, the quiet strength of his arms around her. There was no frantic need, no rush to undress, just warmth and pressure and the slow unfurling of something that had been building for far too long.
They moved up the stairs to her bedroom in silence.
The house creaked faintly under their steps, as though trying to remember how it once held love. Her hand brushed the banister, steadying herself, but her chest was a swirl of nerves and heat and a deep ache that hadn’t dulled since the day Beck hadn’t come to the bakery. But now he was here. And she wasn’t sure if she was breathing more steadily because of it, or less.
Her bedroom door swung open, slow and quiet. The air inside was cold with disuse but the walls still carried her scent and her grandmother’s— lavender, cedar, something warmer, deeper, like cinnamon tea steeped too long. Boxes were stacked in one corner, a half-filled suitcase slumped beside them, a few items of clothing folded neatly on top as though she’d lost the will to keep going halfway through. The bed was made but not untouched, her grandmother’s quilt folded across the foot like a keepsake, the pillows slightly askew. The bedside lamp was on, casting a warm, amber light across the worn floorboards.
None of it mattered.
The room could have been anywhere. The world could have been ending. All Hazel could feel washim— his breath, his weight, his steady presence behind her as she stepped inside and turned to face him. And when he reached for her again, she went to him without hesitation.
He kissed her, slow and sure, his mouth anchoring hers. One of his hands cupped the side of her face, the other pressed low at her back, pulling her closer like he couldn’t bear the inches that separated them. And she kissed him back with everything she had, with all the ache and longing and raw, unfinished grief she’d been carrying in her chest like a keepsake.
She let her hands move up the flat plane of his chest and across the warmth of his shoulders. He wasn’t a fantasy. He was real and solid beneath her palms. He smelled like salt and firewood and whatever soap he used that somehow smelled exactly like him. She reached for the hem of his sweater, tugging the material upward. He let her pull it over his head and tossed it aside, and did the same with the plain grey tee he worth beneath it. She pressed her hands to the bare skin she’d exposed just a breath later. The heat of him made her pulse race.
Then it was his turn, his fingers gentle as they slipped beneath her cardigan, pushing it off her shoulders, then finding the hem of her long-sleeved shirt and lifting it over her head in a smooth arc. She was braless beneath it. The cool air brushed her skin, tightening her nipples, but she didn’t flinch, didn’t move to cover herself.
He looked at her for a long moment, breath shallow.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, barely audible. “You’re so beautiful, Hazel.”
Hazel flushed but didn’t look away. Her hands moved again, lower now, unbuttoning his jeans with slow, practiced ease, the tension between them growing with every inch she undid. He kicked them off, then his boxers, and stood before her completely bare.
Her eyes dropped instinctively to the scars that wrapped his thigh, his hip, his knee. To the jagged lines, the grafted patches, the skin that bore the truth of what he’d survived. She reached out with slow, hesitant fingers, grazing the longest scar with reverence. He stood still, not proud, not ashamed, just open, letting hersee.
She whispered it then, not for his benefit but because the words were true. “You’re perfect, just like this. Exactly as you are.”
Beck stepped closer, cupped the back of her neck, and kissed her again. The kiss was deep and aching and full of unspoken things. Then his hands drifted to her waistband. He undid the button with care, then slid her own jeans down, inch by inch, until she stepped out of them, her underwear coming with. She was trembling now, not from cold but from the magnitude of what this was, what this meant. She stood before him in nothing but her skin and her scars and her silence.
