Page 47 of Rise
Like most things with him, it didn’t come with fanfare or explanation. He justshowed up. Steady and unspoken, like she was someone worth showing up for.
That thought caught in her chest, sharp and aching.
Because it wasn’t a truth she’d ever let herself believe, not really. Not since childhood, when people had left and never looked back, when absence had taught her how to be small, how to be self-sufficient, how to stop asking for things she wasn’t sure would come. She had learned how to be the one who was always left behind.
But Beck was coming anyway, no questions asked, no hint of hesitation.
And something in her, tender, bruised, and long-protected, flinched toward it like a hand reaching for light. She wondered if it could be real, ifshecould be enough, just as she was, to make someone choose to stay.
She pressed her hand over her heart, as if to hold the thought in place before it dissolved.
“I don’t want to make this your problem,” she murmured.
“You’re not,” he said. Then, softer— softer than she’d ever heard him, softer than she knew his voice could go— he added, “Hazel, you’re never a problem.”
Her lips parted but no sound made it out. Her heart stuttered, the emotions circling within her too full and too much.
She couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe past the insistent ache in her throat.
And somehow he seemed to know, because he didn’t fill the silence with noise. He just let it exist, held open like space carved out for her, and her alone.
“Listen to me, alright?” Beck said after another beat, his voice quiet but anchored. “Go sit down and keep your leg elevated if you can.Don’t touch the cut, don’t try to wrap it, just leave it. Unlock the door before you go, so I can come straight in.”
“You should come in the back,” she replied, voice faint. “It’s safer. I’ll make sure it’s unlocked.”
“Okay.”
It wasn’t just agreement… it was reassurance. A promise, tucked into a single word.
Then he said her name again, his voice so soft she barely heard it over the sound of the storm raging on outside. It tipped up at the end like a question.
She closed her eyes against the weight of it. “Yeah?”
“You can always call me,” he said. There was no question in it, no hesitation. Just gentle certainty, like it had always been true and he was onlynowsaying it out loud. “Doesn’t have to be this. Doesn’t have to be an emergency.”
Each syllable landed gentle, but with weight, like raindrops on thick glass, like he wanted her to hear it in her bones.
“I want you to call me,” he added. “Alright?”
Her grip on the phone shifted, her fingers trembling where they curled around the edges. It wasn’t just what he said, it washowhe said it— like it mattered to him. Likeshemattered.
And it cracked something open in her. Not wide, but enough. Enough to let the warmth in. Enough to make her feel the ache of wanting— so much so, she didn’t know where to put it all.
She nodded, even though he couldn’t see her. Her eyes continued to sting, the sensation rising in the back of her throat… the sharp, familiar threat of tears.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Alright.”
Somewhere on the line, she could hear his engine start. “I’ll be there soon.”
And then the line went silent, but this time, the silencedidn’t feel empty.
It felt like company, like someone lit a light just down the road and had started walking toward her.
The warmth of his voice had left something behind in the room with her. Not heat, exactly, but presence.
You can call me.
Hazel lowered the phone, pressing it to her chest for a beat before setting it on the edge of the sink. The porcelain was cold beneath her palms. Her reflection still hovered in the mirror, pale and flushed, wet strands of hair clinging to her cheeks. Her sweater hung damp and lopsided on her frame, darkened at the shoulder from rain she hadn’t realized had gotten in.
