Page 91 of Rise
Hazel sat there, hands wrapped around the steering wheel, her breath beginning to fog the inside of the windshield in soft, uneven bursts. Her body was upright, but only barely, like she was being held together by the shape of the car, not by her own spine.
She couldn’t move. Not yet.
The scent of rosemary clung faintly to her coat. Or maybe that was her imagination, her memory playing tricks. Her eyes tracked a singlesnowflake as it drifted onto the glass, landed, and melted in a slow, uneven bloom.
The tears came without ceremony.
No hitch in her breath, no gasp— just a quiet undoing.
One drop slipped free, then another. They trailed down her cheeks and along her jaw, soaking into the fabric of her collar. She didn’t reach for them, didn’t bother to swipe them away. They were part of it. Part ofthis,of her.
And she couldn’t even name it— this thing in her chest that felt too heavy and too light all at once. It wasn’t just grief and it wasn’t just relief. It wasn’t just love or guilt or nostalgia. It was the sound of holding on and letting go at the exact same time. It was the weight of two decades spent trying not to hope.
Hazel leaned forward, pressing her forehead to the steering wheel. The leather was cold against her skin. She closed her eyes, breathed through her mouth, felt her heartbeat pulse against the curve of her ribs like it didn’t know where to go.
Even after the tears slowed and the pressure behind her eyes dulled to a throb, she sat for another long minute, watching her own reflection fade and reform in the fogged glass. The clouds above the parking lot had dropped lower, darker now, threatening snow.
After another moment, she reached for the keys.
The engine turned over with a low hum, the heater clicking to life in bursts. She turned the defroster on full blast, adjusted the vents with one hand, and shifted into reverse.
It was two hours back to Bar Harbor. She barely remembered the drive down, and she wasn’t sure she’d remember this one, either. But her hands knew the motions. Her foot found the pedal. The car eased out of the lot and onto the road, tires hissing against wet pavement.
She didn’t turn on the music, she still couldn’t bare the sound of it. There was too much noise in her head already.
The miles slipped by.
As she drove, she thought about her mother’s voice and the way she’d smiled when she said Hazel looked happy. The way she’d asked about Boston like it was still real.
And the way she’d saidIt looks like home— about the bakery. About Rise.
Hazel’s heart clenched around that line like it might never forget how it felt to hear it.
By the time she reached the outskirts of Ellsworth, the sky had gone pale again, scraped clean by the wind. Her throat was raw and her face still ached from crying, the kind of ache that didn’t need tears to keep hurting.
The road narrowed as she veered onto Route 3 and that familiar weight began to build again— the one that came every time she saw the signs.
Bar Harbor – 27 Miles
Acadia Nat’l Park – Next right
And just like that, she realized she wasn’t ready to go home.
Not to the quiet house, not to the kitchen where she’d learned to bake, not to the basket of laundry she hadn’t folded or the emails from her landlord back in Boston that she still hadn’t responded to. Not even to Rise, which somehow always smelled like vanilla and purpose andresponsibility.
She pulled off at the next turnout.
Gravel crunched beneath her tires as she eased onto the shoulder. Her fingers hovered over the keys but she didn’t turn the engine off, she simply settled the vehicle into park.
For a second, she considered calling Iris. Or Malcolm. Or even just driving back into town and disappearing into the stillness of the bakery for an hour, letting herself exist only in motion.
But her mind didn’t stop there.
Her mind went tohim.
To Beck.
To the steadiness of his voice. To the way he didn’t say more than he needed to, and still managed to say exactly enough. To the way he showed up without needing to be asked. To the quiet he made bearable.
