Page 102 of Rise
Beck was near the fireplace, now, half-turned toward Malcolm. One of his hands was wrapped loosely around a dark glass of something neat. He looked up at Iris’s voice, brows raised. He looked surprised, and she couldn’t blame him. She was, too.
“You’re exactly the type of gentleman I need,” Iris called out, her voice saccharine sweet. “Hazel’s running to Verdance. I left something a little…heavy…behind. She could use a hand.”
Hazel shot her a look, though Iris pretended not to notice.
Heavy?Since when was a bouquetheavy?
Beck didn’t argue. He nodded once, his face unreadable, then set his glass down on the side table and made his way through the crowd toward the door. Hazel gave her head a rough shake and she let out a long exhale, fingers finally stilling on the material of her coat. She pulled it off the rack and pressed her arms into the sleeves, turning just as Beck appeared at her side. Their eyes locked and for a moment, the room around them seemed to fade into nothingness. The music quieted, the chatter dimmed, the lights snuffed out. All Hazel could focus on were the soft brown of Beck’s eyes and the steady warmth that flowed through them, towards her.
She swallowed the sudden rise of emotion in her throat and stepped aside, making room for him to find his own coat. It took him a mere moment to locate it, pull it free of the hanger, and then slide it over his dark button-up shirt. Today, for once, there was no plaid in sight.
Hazel turned towards the door and Beck reached out ahead of her, pushing it open, though he still didn’t speak.
Outside, the cold met them like an inhale held too long, sharp and pure and almost sobering in its clarity. The air smelled of salt and snow and the lingering sharpness of alcohol, likely from Hazel’s own breath. She wrapped her coat around herself tighter, the collar brushing her chin, and stepped down into the snow-covered street.
It was quieter here. Removed. The lights from Greyfin still spilled golden across the sidewalk behind them, but ahead, the street curved into softer shadow. Snow fell slow and heavy, the kind that seemed to mute everything it touched. She could hear her own breathing, the rhythmic crunch of their boots, and the distant hush of wind shifting through bare branches above.
She walked beside him. Not behind, not ahead. Just… beside. And somehow, without realizing when it started, her body tilted subtly toward his. Not a lean, just a shift in gravity. A pull. She wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or the cold or the night or the months that had led to this, but something inside her had softened. Or cracked.
When his hand lifted to rest almost imperceptibly at the center of her back, she didn’t startle. She didn’t freeze. She only breathed out, slow and unguarded, and let herself move into the space he offered, tucked in close at his side.
There was something unspoken in it, in the way he touched her without hesitation, like he’d done it before. Like her body had already taught him what it needed. And her heart beat faster, not out of fear, but recognition. She wanted to memorize this, the way he walkedbeside her like he was built for it. Like he’d been quietly carving out a space for her all along.
Verdance stood quiet on the corner, its windows dark save for the faint, flickering trace of fairy lights woven through the garland in the front display. The buckets of eucalyptus and dried thistle swayed in the breeze, metal clinking faintly in the cold, wind tugging at the edge of the ribboned wreath above the door like it was trying to peel back some secret.
Hazel climbed the stairs with slow, slightly unsteady steps, the key cold and unfamiliar in her hand. She hadn’t used it before. Iris always handled the shop’s final lock-up, always seemed to flit between spaces like she existed above the weight of keys and set schedules. Hazel had expected to find Verdance quiet, still, untouched— but somehow, it felt like it had been waiting for them, holding its breath.
She fit the key into the lock and turned it.
The door creaked open on a breath of pine and dried roses, the scent clinging to the air like memory. She stepped inside, the bell overhead giving the faintest jingle, half-hearted and sweet.
The cold followed them in, but only just. The air was warmer here, a pocket of preserved stillness, soft and dry and perfumed. Hazel took two slow steps over the threshold and the floor creaked beneath her boots.
Then, behind her, the door finished swinging wide, and something shifted.
There was a soft rustle, a brush of movement above, and then a sudden, delicatethunk.
She didn’t notice at first. She was already speaking, voice low and trying for casual, though she felt anythingbut.“I was going to ask— you and Leigh. You two seemed like—“
“Hazel.”
The sound of her name was soft, but it wasn’t casual, it was fractured— like something had cracked open in Beck’s chest and fallen to the floor, beneath their boots.
She turned, alarmed. His voice alone had done it. Her brows pulled in toward one another, eyes narrowing. “What? What’s wrong?”
And then she saw the way he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking up, his body still, barely breathing. Her heart stuttered, confused, but her gaze followed his anyway.
There, hanging just above her head and dislodged from the frame, now swaying ever so slightly from a crooked nail, was a single sprig of mistletoe.
The kind Iris had tucked into corners all over town this past week, pretending it was for luck. The kind that looked like nothing but tradition, but in the right moment, under the right light, held the power to bend gravity.
Hazel froze.
The door eased closed behind Beck with a muffled click. The silence that followed wasn’t empty, it was thrumming. Filled with a million questions and answers, heavy with the weight ofwhat if?
She looked back at him, the movement so slow and hesitant, it felt like it tookminutes.She was afraid to look at him, afraid to see what she might find there, reflected back at her, on his face. But his expression was unreadable, like it always was. Not blank, exactly, but restrained— like he was holding something in his chest that weighed more than it should’ve, something dense with time and ache and the careful, quiet effort of not saying what he’d wanted to for weeks. Maybe longer.
“Beck…” she whispered, but the rest of the sentence slipped away from her like breath on glass.
