Page 29 of Rise
Hazel’s jaw tensed, the muscle tightening so sharply it ached. The anger was back, flaring beneath the surface, sharp-edged and impossible to contain. She was barely holding onto it now.
She didn’t think that Dana had ever had to teach him how to be a father totheirkids. She’d seen the posts all over social media, though she tried desperately to avoid them. All of Collette’s profiles were public and full of smiling photos from holidays and birthdays, handwritten cards, Father’s Day stories captioned with hearts and gratitude.
But there he was, still failing at being anything evenremotelyclose to a dad for her. Even though she’d come first.
“No,” she said in the end, her voice clipped. The edge to it was no longer hidden. “I’ve got it.”
“Haze—“
“I’ve managed on my own before,” she said, the words sudden and rushed, cold and clean and final. “This won’t be any different.”
She didn’t wait for the reply, she just pulled the phone from her ear and hung up. Pressed it down onto the countertop with sudden, unexpected force.
Hazel stood there for a moment, unmoving, her palm still pressing the phone to the countertop, holding it there so that it wouldn’t come back to life. Her eyes slid shut, just for a breath. Just long enough to force the heat in her chest back into place. And then she returned to the moment, a practiced and false sense of calm settling over her.
Hazel crossed the bakery floor with slow steps, as if her limbs had forgotten how to move in their usual rhythm. Her fingers still tingled faintly from the grip she’d held on the phone. The click of it settling back onto the counter echoed in her ears like a stone dropped into still water— sharp, then rippling.
She didn’t meet Beck’s eyes at first. Her gaze caught instead on the soft sway of the bell above the door, the way it caught the sunlight and scattered it in fractured little sparks. Everything looked the same, but she didn’tfeelthe same.
When she reached the table, she didn’t ask if she could sit. She just lowered herself into the chair again, the wood creaking beneath her. Her hand settled on the table like an anchor.
Beck was already watching her— had been, the whole time. He hadn’t moved. One arm rested along the edge of the table, fingers idly tracing the groove in the ceramic of his now empty mug. His posture was loose, casual, but his eyes held something else, something braced. They were open, but alert.
“You alright?” he asked. She gave her head a soft shake in response, the only thing she could manage for the moment.
Beck simply nodded and leaned back in his chair, giving her the time and the space she needed. Everything about him saidI’m not in a rush. Whenever you’re ready.
“That was my dad,” Hazel offered after another few moments, her voice quiet and a little raw. It barely felt like her own. “We haven’t talked in months. And even that… wasn’treallytalking.”
Beck didn’t speak, he didn’t nod or shift or react. He justlistened. And somehow, that steadied her more than any well-meaning response ever could.
“I don’t think he really knew my grandmother, not in any real way, at least. She was a name on a Christmas card or a voice on the end of a phone, maybe, once every couple of years when he bothered to check-in on me. Only when the guilt caught up to him.”
Her thumb brushed over a faint coffee ring on the tabletop, chasing the outline.
“He asked if I needed help selling the house. Then asked when I was going back to Boston.”
She looked up then and met Beck’s eyes. They were the same as they’d always been, a little distant, but also a little warm.
In this moment, she was offering him more pieces of herself than she had before. Their early mornings shared in the quiet cocoon of Rise had never delved this deep. Each word was a new offering, a further step into the deeper waters of the unknown. She paused for a moment, considering this, and took a steadying breath. Fear tickledsharply at the back of her throat, begging her to back away, to deny herself this moment of connection… but she pressed forward.
“I told him I might not,” she whispered, her voice softer now. “Might not sell the houseorgo back.”
The silence that followed wasn’t heavy, it feltsettled, like dust that had been waiting a long time to land.
“Did you mean it?” Beck asked, his voice low and unobtrusive. His question was prodding and curious, but in a soft way. A way that held no real pressure.
She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she let the thought stretch out, unspooling through her chest and curling into the corners of her breath. She imagined Boston, with its sharp edges, the way her apartment caught nolight in the mornings, how the air inside the kitchen at work felt more like pressure than anything else. She thought of walking these streets, instead, breathing in this salt-heavy air and unlocking the bakery before sunrise. She thought of the way the scent of lavender clung to every inch of her here, like a long-since faded hug from the one person she’d always known would be there, waiting for her.
It wasn’t simple, but maybe it didn’t have to be. Maybe it just had to be honest.
Hazel nodded. “Yeah, I think I did.”
Beck’s expression didn’t shift much, but his gaze softened. Something in it felt like agreement, likeunderstanding.
She studied him now, not just the shape of him in the sunlight, the curve of his jaw, the faint mess of wind-pressed hair curling at the collar of his sweatshirt, but the way heheld space. Like he wasn’t waiting for her to snap back to normal. Like he knew this moment mattered and was content to let it be exactly what it was.
Hazel let out a long exhale and leaned back in her chair. “Your turn. Tell me something messy about your family so I don’t feel so crazy.”
