Page 98 of Rise
Hazel didn’t flinch. She’d expected the bite. Her lips curved slightly— wry, but not insincere— though the expression didn’t touch her eyes.
“I mean,” she said, her voice quiet. “That part’s easy enough to fix. Consider yourself invited.”
Imogen scoffed, the sound nothing more than a sharp exhale through her nose. Her jaw clenched as she looked away, the lines of her body drawing in like fabric pulled taut against cold. “Hazel. Come on.”
Hazel said nothing. She just stayed. And waited.
Across the street, the laughter and movement inside Greyfin looked almost slow-motion, a little too warm, a little too far away— like a snow globe world neither of them belonged to. Inside, someone shifted past the record player, moving with loose limbs and a bright grin on their face. Music fluttered through the glass like something private being accidentally overheard.
Imogen’s eyes caught on it, then dropped. Her hands disappeared deeper into her coat pockets, curling in against her ribs as if to protect something sore. “You and I both know I’m not exactly welcome.”
Hazel’s voice was quiet. “Says who?”
Imogen had no answer for that, just another long stretch of silence, crisp and thin. Her jaw worked again, grinding down words that didn’t want to be said.
And Hazel saw it.
The crack.
The fault line in all that polished steel.
The way Imogen’s breath snagged ever so slightly. The way she seemed to fold inward, like the cold had finally gotten beneath her skin and set up camp inside her chest. Like it had always been there, if anyone had cared to look closely enough.
“I wasn’t invited,” Imogen said again, her voice sharper this time. “And I’m not interested in being someone’s pity project. Thanks anyway.”
There it was again, that defensive edge, polished to a shine. Imogen always met kindness with a blade, like she didn’t trust it to be real unless it cut. Hazel understood it more than she wanted to, that instinct to bristle before anyone could get close enough to see the soft parts underneath. But tonight, she was too tired to dance around it, too wrung out to offer reassurances she didn’t believe in.
Hazel let out a soft, drawn out exhale, the kind of sigh that felt scraped from the bottom of the lungs.
“Well, that’s good,” she offered a beat later, lifting one of her shoulders in a shrug. “Because I don’t really have any pity to give. Not to you.”
Imogen’s head snapped toward her, startled. Her expression sharpened, a reflex shaped like a raised shield.
But Hazel didn’t pull back. She met her gaze, not with heat, not with pity, not even with hope. Just clarity. Something still and bare and honest.
“I’m not inviting you out of pity,” she said, her voice firmer now, anchored in knowing the right path forward. “I’m inviting you because you’re standing here. And because I think maybe you don’t want to be anywhere else right now. Not really. I know what that feels like.”
That stilled something between them. Imogen’s posture didn’t change, but the tension in it softened, barely, but noticeably. Her breath held in her chest.
Hazel didn’t rush the next words. She let the space breathe before stepping into it again, quieter now.
“Look,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re already dressed for a party. There’s food, there’s music, and there are people in there who won’t ask anything of you except that you stay long enough to have a drink. I’m not asking you to explain yourself. I’m not asking you to pretend.”
She paused again, letting the words settle between them.
“I’m just… inviting you,” she finished. “Because I can. Because I think you’ll have a good time.”
The silence that followed didn’t feel like rejection, it felt like a held breath.
“So,” Hazel added, her gaze studying the sharpened lines of Imogen’s face, the cold set of her icy blue irises. “Are you coming or not?”
It wasn’t a challenge— it wasn’t even a question, not really.
It was a hand held out, palm up, still and waiting.
Imogen looked at the sidewalk, then the streetlamp, then the bakery window where the porcelain town glowed, small and intricate and almost painfully sweet. Something shifted in her expression, not armour, not ice, but something softer. Something uncertain. Like she’d stumbled into a doorway she hadn’t realized was meant for her.
Hazel waited.
