Page 106 of Rise
Their mouths moved together with a desperate sort of tenderness, as if they’d both spent years wandering separate paths only to arrive here, in this quiet convergence of breath and skin and longing. Hazel felt it in the way his hands shaped to her sides and in the pause between kisses where his forehead touched hers. It was this sense that they had almost,almostfit all of their pieces together perfectly. That she’d finally traced the shape of his scars well enough to guess at their depth, and that he’d begun to map the fractured outlines of hers.
But still, there were shadows and corners not yet illuminated. Truths tucked away beneath grief and memory, waiting to be shared.
Hazel’s chest rose against his. She could feel the tension thrumming through him, how tightly he held himself, even as he pressed in and even as he let his mouth part against hers in a kiss that tasted like restraint undone.
He was holding back, but onlyjust.
When they finally broke apart, it wasn’t because they wanted to, it was because they had to. Beck pulled back first, but just enough to resthis forehead against hers. His breath came ragged, not from exertion, but from the strength it had taken tostop.
Hazel kept her eyes closed, her fingers still tangled in the back of his hair, the curls soft beneath her touch. She could feel his breath against her cheek, warm and uneven, and the heat of him was pressed through his coat and into her body like a second heartbeat. Her lips were still parted from the kiss, still aching in that way that wasn’t pain, just too much feeling in too small a space.
“Do you want to come in?” she whispered, her eyes flickering open, seeking out his.
It wasn’t a seduction and there was no edge to it. It was nothing more than a question offered gently into the space between them, like a hand extended across a fragile bridge. Her voice trembled, not with nerves, but with the impossible hope of the moment. With want that had crept in so slowly, so carefully, that by the time she’d recognized it, it had already taken root beneath her skin, uncontrollable.
She felt him still. Completely, utterly still. And the air shifted between them.
For a moment, he didn’t move, didn’t even breathe. He just held there, his hands on her waist, his body braced as if a single misstep might tip the moment too far. His dark eyes pinched shut, his brow furrowing as if the mere consideration of stepping over her threshold caused him great pain.
His nose brushed hers, slow and tender, as he sucked in a deep, steadying breath. It was a gesture so intimate it made her breath catch in her throat.
“I do,” he admitted, the words so wild she hardly recognized them as his own. Something about the tone of his voice set fire to that barely contained pit at the bottom of her stomach, the one that had grown a heartbeat in the moments since he’d first kissed her, back at Verdance.
Her heart surged, swelled, and ripped open a little— but then he kept speaking.
“But not tonight.”
His eyes opened, immediately seeking out hers. They weren’t cold and they weren’t guarded. If anything, they weretooopen,toodarkwith want, his pupils blown. But beyond them, his expression was steadied by something softer. Something that felt like care edged with restraint, the kind of restraint that took strength to carry.
The exact kind of restraint she had come to expect from Beck.
“You’ve been drinking,” he said, his voice low and even, but tight around the edges. “And when it happens…” He paused, his eyes dropping to her mouth and then lifting back up, pained and reverent in the same breath. “I want us both to mean it.”
Hazel’s chest ached. Not from rejection, not really, because this wasn’t that. It was the opposite. It was the thing she never expected someone to give her, patience and respect. The refusal to take her in a moment that might blur.
And still… she wanted him. She really,reallywanted him.
Her nod came slow, threaded with every emotion she didn’t have words for. Her hands slid from his hair, drifted to his jaw, and then to the collar of his coat, curling there like she wasn’t quite ready to let go.
”Idomean it,“ she said, the words so soft it felt like a confession, something saved for a booth tucked into the back of a quiet church.
He didn’t answer, not with words.
Instead, he leaned in once more and kissed her. First at her cheekbone, then beside her mouth, then finally, barely, her lips. The kiss was gentle and lingering, a vow made in silence. A held breath, a tether, a promise that this was not a goodbye, simply alater.
Then, carefully— like the moment itself might break— he stepped back.
His absence was immediate. Cold rushed into the space he’d left behind, but the heat of him still clung to her coat, to the velvet of her dress, to the shape of her skin where he’d touched her.
Beck looked at her one last time, his expression so wrecked that she shivered at the sight of it.
“Goodnight, Hazel,” he said, his lips curving at the edges with a soft, gentle smile.
She couldn’t speak, couldn’t trust her voice to hold. So she just watched.
She watched the way he turned from her like he didn’t want to, like he was pulling away from gravity. She watched the set of his shoulders as he descended the stairs, solid and slow, his steps leaving deep, clear prints in the snow. She watched the way his hands clenched, then released again, like something in him was still fighting the part that had wanted to stay.
The wind caught his coat as he turned the corner and then he was gone.
