Page 119 of Rise
Beck still didn’t speak. He just looked at her like he was seeing all the spaces between her words and the weight of what it had cost herto say them out loud. His brow was furrowed, not with pity, but with something heavier— something like grief for the child she’d been and rage for the people who had failed her. His hands had gone still in his lap, his wine glass forgotten on the table, but his jaw tensed like he was holding back the urge to reach for her, to do something—anything— to ease the ache within her he couldn’t soothe.
There was no softening in his expression, no shift toward condescension or pity. Only that steady, storm-scarred kind of quiet that felt like a promise.
“I’m tired of being alone,” she admitted, the words softer than she’d intended. “But I don’t know hownotto be. It’s second nature. And the only person I knew how to be around— well, she’s gone now, too. And I’m sitting here, in her house, feeling like I’ve done nothing but disappoint her.”
The words sat between them, raw and whole and unvarnished. Hazel didn’t regret them, not exactly. They left her feeling empty, hollowed out. Like she’d poured too much of herself into a room that might not have space for it.
Beck didn’t speak right away. He leaned forward again, elbows still resting on his knees, hands loose like the space might help him shape the right words.
“I lost my team in a roadside explosion outside Kabul,” he said, his voice flat, but not empty— just weighed down by the kind of memory that never stops echoing. “We were supposed to rotate out in two weeks. Justtwo more weeks.”He paused, jaw clenched, and when he spoke again, his words were quieter. “They weren’t just soldiers, they were my friends… but more like family, I guess. Men and women I’d trained with for years and slept beside in the dirt. Breathed through firefights with. Laughed with on the rare nights we could forget where we were. They were the kind of people you learn to trust with your life because you already gave them everything else.”
Hazel didn’t move, didn’t breathe. Thestillness between them was sacred now, shaped by grief and the kind of honesty that left nothing hidden.
“I thought I might be one of them,” he admitted, voice shaking. “Didn’t expect to wake up. But I did, two days later in a field tent, missing most of my leg and all of my faith in the world.” His hand shifted, like he was remembering the feel of the cot beneath him, the smell of antiseptic and blood in the air. His fingers drifted over the arm of the chair beneath him, as if the upholstery could ground him in the present, keep him from floating away on the back of a memory he’d tried to lock away. “I didn’t want to live through it. I still don’t know why I did. And afterward… everyone kept telling me how lucky I was. How grateful I should be.” He exhaled, a harsh sound that didn’t quite qualify as a laugh. “But it didn’t feel like luck. It felt like being left behind. I know how it feels, Hazel.”
His voice cracked there, just barely, but enough.
He looked up and met her eyes with something raw and almostsmall.Something fragile.
“I didn’t think I’d ever let someone in again,” he whispered, shaking his head. “Not really. But then there was you.”
Hazel’s breath caught. She felt it lock in her chest and hold there, trembling.
“I still don’t know what I’m doing,” he said. “But I want to try, with you. Even if it’s hard. Even if I mess it up.”
And this time, when he said it, she didn’t look away.
She felt the moment shift, a quiet tectonic movement. Not explosive, just inevitable.
The final pieces of their dark corners had been ripped free, forced beneath the light, exposed and bleeding and bared for all eyes to see.
The fire snapped in the hearth. A book shifted and slid from the stack by the fireplace with a soft thud. Outside, snow tapped faintlyagainst the windows.
Hazel’s hands remained in her lap for a beat too long, fingers curled loosely like she was still holding something fragile.
“I want to try, too,” she whispered, though her voice didn’t waver.
She didn’t know who moved first, not exactly. Maybe it was both of them, pulled by something older than fear, something that hummed beneath everything they’d said and everything they hadn’t. But Beck stood, moving slow, the joints of his body unfolding like someone moving through fog. He crossed the room in three quiet steps, his shadow stretching across the rug like a bridge between them.
And then, he sank.
He dropped to his knees in front of her, his palms flattening against the worn, fraying rug that had belonged to her grandmother, the one she’d once played on as a child with a bowl of dry cereal and a stack of illustrated books. The colours were faded now, the edges curling, but it still smelled faintly of hearth smoke and old wood, and somehow, in this moment, it felt like sacred ground.
Beck didn’t reach for her right away. He just looked at her, his face tilted up toward hers, his eyes dark and steady and unbearably open. The firelight danced across his features— shadow and gold, flicker and burn— and Hazel felt something inside her twist with such intensity it left her breathless. His hands were on his thighs, motionless, but the air between them vibrated like a wire stretched too tight. His closeness made her dizzy. Not with nerves, but with the sheer gravity of him, how solid he was, how still, how impossibly gentle even when kneeling on a rug that scraped against the bone.
When he did move, it was with all the care in the world. One hand lifted and cupped the side of her face, his thumb brushing beneath her eye, tracing the line of her cheek like he was relearning something he thought he’d forgotten. Hazel didn’t flinch, didn’t speak. Her eyes fluttered closed at the touch, like her body recognized him before her mind could catch up.
“Youare worth staying for, Hazel,“ he whispered. “I would never leave you behind.”
And then he kissed her.
Soft and anchored and completely devastating.
It wasn’t a kiss born of desperation or hunger. It was a kiss that saidI’m here. I came back. I stayed. I willalwaysstay.
It was the kind of kiss that didn’t rush, didn’t demand, didn’t try to be anything other than exactly what it was— a quiet promise made in the dark. His other hand came up to hold her jaw, and he kissed her again, deeper this time, with a reverence that almost unmade her.
Hazel leaned into him like she’d been waiting her whole life for this exact weight, this exact moment. Her fingers curled into the front of his shirt, gathering fabric in her fists without realizing she was doing it. She tasted smoke on his mouth, and wine, and something uniquely him, something familiar, like wind off the coast and pine needles and warmth.
