Page 103 of Rise
She didn’t know what she’d meant to say, only that her voice knew his name before her mind could shape anything else. Only that something in the air had changed the moment the mistletoe shifted loose and hung there, trembling like a held breath above them.
He took a step forward. Just one, but it felt like more. It felt like crossing into something fragile and holy, like the space between what they had been and what they couldbecomewas stretched taut, quiet and waiting.
“You don’t have to,” she insisted, her voice softer now, nearly lost to the hush of the shop around them. She shook her head, one handlifting to press to his chest, fingers splaying wide just over his sternum. “If this is because of the mistletoe—“
“I know,” he whispered back, his dark eyes on hers, unwavering. “It’s not.”
The silence that followed was its own kind of intimacy.
And then, with his voice low and stitched through with something unsteady beneath the surface, he added, “Tell me not to.”
She could have, but she didn’t.
Because in that moment, everything else— the party, the cold, the winter air that still clung to her coat— fell away. All she could see was him.
Not the version of him that came for coffee and repaired her porch without asking. Not the Beck who fixed engines and vanished for long stretches of time. ButthisBeck. The one who watched her like he was afraid to look too long. The one who, even now, held himself still like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to move.
Not with fire, not with certainty, but with something else. Somethinggentler.Something deep and quiet, forged from waiting for the right moment to arrive.
And now it had.
The hand pressed to his chest began to rise, her fingers trembling with the kind of care that had no language. She reached his face after a few breaths, her touch grazing the rough line of his jaw. His eyes closed, for just a beat, like the contact unraveled something in him he hadn’t realized he’d kept so tightly wound.
And then he kissed her.
Not a collision, not a crash.
But a meeting.
A slow, aching convergence of breath and skin and every soft, unspoken thing that had lived between them for months. His lips found hers with a reverence that made her knees go weak, like he was afraid the moment might vanish if he moved too fast. The press of his mouth against hers wasn’t practiced, it was a quiet marvel unfolding in realtime.
Hazel’s breath hitched, and she felt it, the shift. Like the world around them had tilted just enough to loosen gravity’s grip, enough to let them drift a little closer to something they hadn’t dared name.
The kiss deepened, though not with heat, withweight.With meaning. With the ache of having waited so long to be certain. His hand came up, gentle and slow, to cradle the side of her face, thumb resting just beneath her cheekbone. He held her like something precious, like something breakable.
On the next breath, it was Hazel who pressed forward, her lips seeking out Beck’s.
Because how could she not?
How could she do anything but give herself over to this— this quiet surrender, this storm of stillness?
It was not just a kiss, it was an offering, a confession. A door opening in the dark.
And Hazel felt it everywhere.
In the hollow of her chest, where hope had lived too quietly for too long. In the trembling of her spine. In the way both of her hands drifted to clutch the front of his coat like they couldn’t bear to let him go. She tasted pine on his lips, and the faint bitterness of whatever he’d been drinking, and the crisp cool of winter. But mostly, she tasted the truth of him, unspoken, unyielding, and alwaysthere.
When they broke apart, it wasn’t because the kiss had ended. It was because it had said everything it needed to say.
Their foreheads rested together, breath warm in the space between them, still mingling.
Neither of them spoke. There was no need.
Hazel’s eyes were closed, lashes damp with the effort of staying still, of not floating up into the high cathedral hush of the ceiling where dried flowers hung from beams and the scent of rosemary and cedar lingered.
Her voice came at last, low and wrecked in a way that had nothing to do with pain. “I can’t go back to the party. Not afterthat.”
“Then don’t.”
