Page 118 of Rise
Shepoured it wordlessly into another mismatched glass she retrieved from the kitchen— one of her grandmother’s old ones, delicate around the rim— and handed it to him without touching his fingers. Then she sat down, curling back into her usual spot on the couch after moving the apron to hang over the arm, and waited for the silence to crack open.
It didn’t take long.
“I didn’t mean to stay away,” Beck said, his voice low, shaped by something that sounded like guilt but didn’t try to excuse itself. He sat across from her, not on the edge of his seat like he was ready to run, but low and forward— his forearms braced on his knees, his gaze not yet on her. The firelight flickered between them, casting gold along the ridges of his knuckles, the slope of his jaw. “My sister showed up out of nowhere. She was there when I got back, after I walked you home from the Main Street party. She flew in from New York without telling me. She’s been calling for weeks and I kept ignoring it, so… she decided to intervene.”
Hazel didn’t answer, not right away. Her body went still in the way it always did when something she wasn’t prepared for brushed too close. The wine she’d been sipping earlier had gone tepid in her glass, the sweetness gone dry on her tongue, but her fingers held it anyway— like something to anchor her.
Beck let out a breath, one that clouded faintly in the air between them even though the fire had warmed the room considerably. “She showed up with old photos,” he continued. “Letters. Our dad’s watch.”
His mouth twisted around the words. A laugh caught and flattened in the space between them. “Like something out of a Hallmark movie. We fought for two days, made up for another two. Then she left.”
Hazel didn’t smile, though she wanted to. Or, at least, she thought sheshould.Either way, her mouth wouldn’t move.
She looked down instead, at the coffee table between them, a cluttered expanse of half-folded newspapers, a candle burned halfway down and leaning in its jar, the hardcover book she’d tried and failed to finish twice that week. Just beyond it, near the hearth, a cardboard box overflowed with books and mugs and linen napkins, packed hastilyand never sealed. She hadn’t known he’d be here tonight. She hadn’t been ready to be seen like this.
“I went to the bakery the morning after she left,” Beck said, quieter now. “But you were closed. The sign was up. And I—“ He trailed off, turning the wineglass slowly between his hands. “I didn’t know what to say in a text. So I just didn’t say anything at all.”
Hazel nodded, but the motion was thin, mechanical. The fire snapped next to them, but the heat felt far away.
Her voice, when it came, was fragile around the edges. “I thought maybe I’d scared you off.”
Beck looked up at that—reallylooked. The lines around his eyes deepened, not in anger, but in something quieter. Something like regret.
“Or that I was asking for something you didn’t want to give,” she added, and this time, her voice carried more weight. She wasn’t being loud, just honest.
Beck held her gaze, steadier now in that familiar way of his. There was no shift in his expression, but Hazel felt the change in the air between them like a change in pressure, like the room had exhaled.
“I’m not scared of you,” he said.
Hazel’s throat worked around nothing. “No,” she agreed, after a beat. “Not me. But something else, maybe.”
The words landed harder than she meant. They always did, when she was trying not to sound like she needed more than she was allowed to have. But Beck didn’t pull back, he didn’t deflect. He just looked down at the glass again, his fingers curling around it in silence.
“I’m not good at this,” he admitted, shaking his head. His free hand lifted to the back of his neck, rubbing the skin there absently. “At saying what I mean. How I feel.”
Hazel studied him. The shape of his hands. The faint, jagged scar just above his wrist. The way his shoulders seemed too big for the chair, like they carried more than they let on. She felt something twist low in her chest, something thick with longing. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the sound of his voice until it filled the room again.
“I noticed,” she said, her voice gentle.
A faint smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. It didn’t last.
“But I want to try,” he whispered, his eyes lifting to meet hers. “With you.”
Hazel’s throat tightened. Her hand trembled slightly around the wineglass and she set it down before she risked dropping it. Her eyes flicked to the corner of the room, where boxes were stacked unevenly near the window. Next to the boxes, there was a framed photo of Hazel and her grandmother that she’d removed from the mantle but hadn’t yet packed, sitting awkwardly on the floor like a piece of unfinished grief.
“I’ve been meeting with a realtor,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I’ve been packing.”
Her gaze dropped to her hands, the raw curve of her knuckles. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I just… I got tired of trying to be okay when I’m not. This house—this life—I thought I could build something here. But it’s hard to build when everything inside you still feels broken.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty, it was thick. Waiting.
Beck didn’t fill it. He didn’t rush to reassure her. He just waited, watching her like she might unravel if he moved too fast.
So she kept going.
“My dad just left me here, all those years ago,” she said, her voice trembling beneath the weight of the admission. “And for a while, he said it was temporary. Said I could come live with him, that he’d come back for me when things settled. But he never did.” She shook her head, the motion small, almost like she was trying to dislodge the memory itself. “I don’t talk about it. Not because I’m ashamed… just because I hate what it does to people’s faces. That look they get, the pity. The way their voice changes when they talk to you after, like you’re made of glass and grief and nothing else. Like you’re something broken they have to tiptoe around.”
She lifted her eyes to his. Her pulse was roaring in her ears.
