Chapter 4 #2
Hazel exhaled, but it wasn’t a laugh, not quite. Her cheeks were already warming, the kind of heat that bloomed behind the ears and settled low in the chest. She shook her head, slow and unconvinced.
“It’s a small town,” she said. “People get coffee.”
“Sure,” Malcolm replied. “But Beck doesn’t usually get coffee, not from people. Not from anywhere that requires eye contact.”
Hazel made a strangled noise in her throat, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead.
“I will cut you both off from sticky buns. Indefinitely.”
Malcolm grinned. “Empty threats. You like us too much.”
“But not enough to validate your conspiracy theories,” Hazel muttered, though her tone had lost its edge.
Iris tapped a fingernail against her cup. “There was this one time, though… last fall, maybe? Fire alarm went off at the hardware store. Total false alarm— some issue with the wiring, I guess.”
Malcolm glanced over, nodding. “Yeah. I was there.”
“Right,” Iris said, lifting her brows. “Everyone kind of froze, just standing around, but not Beck. He was out the side door in about two seconds, still holding a shopping bin full of stuff.”
Hazel stilled, her hand pausing mid-reach. “He left with it?”
“Mm-hm,” Iris hummed. “Didn’t even look back. It was weird— not like, criminal weird, just… fast. Like it kicked something in him. Fight or flight, maybe.”
Malcolm gave a little shrug. “The owner, Grant, said Beck came back first thing the next morning. Paid for everything, plus a couple extras he hadn’t even taken.”
“Didn’t say much,” Iris added. “Just put the cash on the counter, gave this little nod, and left again.”
Hazel didn’t speak. Her hands resumed their slow, automatic rhythm adjusting a tray that didn’t need adjusting, smoothing parchment that wasn’t wrinkled.
The sugar-and-butter warmth of the bakery, so comforting just moments before, now felt a little thinner. More fragile. As if the story had shifted the shape of the air around her.
“Anyway,” Iris said, leaning back again. “He’s not the easiest guy to figure out, that’s all I’m saying.” She hesitated, then added, softer, “Just… be careful.”
Hazel didn’t answer right away. Her gaze dropped to the counter, fingers pressing lightly into the edge of it. The caution wasn’t unkind— it didn’t feel like gossip— but it still landed somewhere tender. Somewhere she wasn’t sure she wanted touched.
Noticing the shift in her, Iris softened.
“We’re not judging,” she said, her voice warmer now. “Honestly? We’re kind of impressed. The man’s like folklore. And somehow you’ve cracked the code.”
Malcolm nodded, thoughtful. “He’s like a cryptid who likes cinnamon and moody lighting.”
That broke Hazel, easing the tension that had settled between her shoulder blades.
Finally. She let out a laugh, short and helpless, and brought her hand to her mouth to smother the worst of it.
It wasn’t even that funny. But it was all too much— the ridiculousness of it, the ring of truth, the part of her that didn’t want to admit how deeply she felt all of it.
Because they weren’t wrong.
Not about Beck. And not about the way she’d started watching the door without realizing it.
How his presence— quiet, grounding, and watchful— had begun to shape the start of her day, every day.
She couldn’t name it, not yet. But something inside her knew; she’d started building her mornings around the possibility of him.
And he was still, for the most part, a complete mystery to her.
“You two are unbearable,” she said at last, voice fond and defeated.
“But lovable,” Iris offered without missing a beat.
“Deeply lovable,“ Malcolm echoed.
Hazel moved back behind the counter, hands finding the clean mugs stacked neatly by the espresso machine.
Her fingers traced the bottom of one, not because it needed adjusting, but because she wasn’t quite ready to speak again.
The laughter still hung in the air, bright and warm, but beneath it something quieter had taken root.
Something that felt a lot like hope. Like wonder.
Beck was a mystery to her, still, but she liked that about him.
There was a sort of quiet respect that he gave the space around him and the way he didn’t fill the air just to fill it.
Some mornings, they barely spoke beyond a gentle good morning and a comment or two on the weather.
Other days, he’d offer a line or two about the smell of the scones, or something he’d fixed up the night before that had kept him awake too late.
He never stayed long, never took up more than a sliver of time.
But it was enough.
She was just about to suggest a second round of drinks when the door creaked open again.
It was a small sound, barely a breath, the sigh of wood and hinges and the faint pull of cool September air from the street, but Hazel heard it immediately. Felt it, more than anything. The subtle shift in pressure.
Her head lifted, instinctive now, muscle memory etched into the start of every morning.
And there he was.
Beck.
He never asked for attention— actively shied away from it, even. But the room always gave it to him anyway, just as it did now.
He stepped inside with the kind of quiet that made the whole room seem to pause.
He wore the same dark green sweatshirt he’d had on that morning, sleeves pushed up over strong forearms, the fabric soft and worn at the cuffs.
His jeans were dusted faintly with dirt and grass, the knees faded from real use.
Wind had left his hair mussed at the edges, curls settling at the nape of his neck.
In one hand, he held a small brown paper bag. It was folded tight at the top and slightly more worn at the corners, like he’d fussed with it a few times too many on the walk over.
His eyes did one slow pass of the room. They found Hazel first and then held there for a beat too long.
Then they flicked to Iris and Malcolm, still perched at the counter mid-conversation, drinks in hand, both frozen in place.
His jaw shifted slightly, the movement subtle, not sharp. It was a flicker of something that might have been hesitation, like he wanted to turn back around and pretend he’d never stepped inside.
As it all happened, Hazel had forgotten how to breathe.
Her entire body flushed, heat racing up the back of her neck and into her cheeks so fast it felt like her skin might spark. She straightened abruptly from where she’d been leaning, palms flattening against the counter in hope it might anchor her in place.
Behind him, the door closed on a draft that had been carried in from the harbour.
Iris and Malcolm didn’t speak, not yet, but she felt them stiffen on the other side of the counter. She felt the ripple of oh my god energy pass between them like they’d conjured him just by saying his name. Iris shot Malcolm a look that was so sharp, so stunned, that Hazel almost laughed.
Except she couldn’t.
Because Beck was here. And she hadn’t been ready.
It wasn’t just before opening— he’d already been by once today, ordered his usual and sat by the window, exchanged a few words with Hazel before she had to move back to the kitchen and pull some more sticky buns out of the oven.
They had become so popular in the opening week that she had been doubling the batch, and even then, they often sold out in an hour or two.
There was something about him standing there, now, that made the whole space shift, like someone had reset the order of things.
The heat that had built from their teasing moments earlier now bloomed into something much heavier, something that pulsed low in her chest and crawled all the way down her spine.
Her fingers curled slightly against the edge of the counter and she forced herself to inhale.
Keep it together. This is fine.
Beck was just here. Again.
“Hey, Beck,” she managed, finally, the word small and round in her mouth. Not casual. Not anything close.
Beck nodded once, his own form of greeting. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
His voice was exactly the same as always— quiet, even, and slightly weathered— but it felt louder somehow, louder than the jazz playing faintly overhead, louder than the blood rushing in her ears.
“You’re not,” she said, trying once more for casual, but missing the mark again. “They’re just harassing me.”
“That’s true,” Malcolm admitted, lifting his cup like a toast. “But it’s emotionally constructive.”
“Also highly entertaining,” Iris added, already smiling like she knew something was about to happen. And like she was really glad she had a front row seat to whatever it was.
Beck gave them both a polite nod, but didn’t look their way long. He turned his attention back to Hazel and held up the bag in his hand.
“I brought something,” he said simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “For the door.”
Hazel blinked, the words settling over her like mist. She searched her memory for some forgotten conversation painted with early morning light, one she might’ve moved through on autopilot, too distracted to commit it to memory.
When nothing came to her, she pursed her lips and met his dark gaze. “The door?”
He nodded, stepping closer as he unrolled the top of the bag with one hand, pulling out a small brass bell with the other.
It was simple, but lovely, worn smooth with age.
It was the kind of thing you’d find on the door of a lighthouse keeper’s cottage or a century-old mercantile.
Its clapper had been wrapped in cloth, probably to keep it from rattling as he walked and the edges were tarnished in a way that felt deliberate. Beautiful, even.
She stared at it, then at him. The pieces of the puzzle he’d set before her still wouldn’t press into place.
“You… brought me a bell?”