Chapter 5
Hazel took one long breath, gathered herself, then crossed the bakery floor and stopped beside Beck’s table, her coffee cup in one hand. He looked up at her, calm and unreadable, but with the faintest softness around his eyes. He seemed to settle into the space more, now that they were alone.
“I’m really sorry about them,” she said, breath a little uneven, heart still recovering from the ten-minute emotional whiplash Iris and Malcolm had inflicted. “They aren’t usually— well, no, that’s a lie. They are usually like that.”
Beck’s mouth ticked at the corner, just barely. “They’re not subtle.”
Hazel laughed— soft, breathy, and grateful for the ease in his voice. Grateful that he didn’t seem at all perturbed by her friends. “No. But they mean well.”
He gestured toward the chair next to him. “You wanna sit?”
She hesitated, then pulled the chair out, the legs scuffing lightly across the worn floorboards.
When she sat, the distance between them felt both impossibly small and impossibly vast, though it was just a few inches.
If Hazel were to shift wrong, their thighs would brush against each other beneath the edge of the table.
The silence between them wasn’t uncomfortable.
It stretched, slow and gentle, filled with the low hum of jazz.
For a moment, Hazel just watched him, really watched him.
The way he held his cup. The way his thumb traced absently along the rim.
There was something about the way Beck existed in a space…
how he let silence stand. It intrigued her; it made her want to know more.
“So,” she said, her voice soft, fingers curling around her mug. “What does your morning usually look like? After you stop by and grab your coffee?”
Beck didn’t answer right away. His gaze drifted down to the surface of the table, to the faint ring of moisture left behind by his cup. Then back up, towards Hazel’s.
“Depends on the day,” he said.
Hazel didn’t fill the silence. She just took another sip, barely registering the warmth, the flavour. Her attention was focused on Beck, on trying to interpret each and every one of his dozens of micro expressions. He gave so little away, she felt she was always a few steps behind.
He leaned back in his chair, one arm draped along the armrest, fingers curled loosely around the end. “Usually up by five, sometimes earlier. I like the quiet before everything wakes up.”
Hazel nodded, her gaze catching on the way the morning light spilled across the sleeves of his sweatshirt, softening everything in its path. “That makes sense.”
He paused, then added, “Got a boat I’ve been fixing up.”
There was a note of casualness in his voice, like it wasn’t much, like he wasn’t inviting interest.
“She’s old and stubborn. Wood hull warped a bit from storage between maintenance cycles. Needs more work than I thought.”
“You’re doing it yourself?”
Beck nodded. “Most of it. Keeps my hands busy.”
Hazel smiled to herself. She liked that, the quiet utility of it. The way he said stubborn like it wasn’t a flaw, but something worthy of time and care. The way his voice dipped when he talked about things that required patience.
“Is that what you were doing this morning?” she asked, tilting her head.
His mouth didn’t quite shift, but something flickered in his expression— an ease at the corners, a quiet amusement that lived more in his eyes than anywhere else. “No,” he said. “This morning I was working on getting the bell.”
Something in her chest shifted, quiet and warm. She looked down, her mouth curving despite herself. “I still can’t believe you did that.”
Beck shrugged, but the warmth in his expression betrayed him. “Didn’t like the thought of you getting startled. Seemed simple enough.”
Her eyes lifted to his, and when their gazes met, her voice dropped. “It wasn’t simple.”
He held her gaze and didn’t look away. Something unspoken passed between them then, something Hazel wasn’t sure she had the ability to name. His eyes didn’t flicker, didn’t falter, just held hers with a kind of quiet intensity that made her chest feel tight.
“Didn’t feel simple, to be honest,” he admitted, and Hazel couldn’t help but watch the way he swallowed, how the motion pulled at the muscles in his throat, the sharp line of his jaw shifting as he did.
She could feel it again, that hush between heartbeats, that low thrum beneath her skin that only seemed to draw awake when he was near.
She pressed one hand to the edge of the table, fingers flat against the smooth wood. The handle of his mug sat just inches from her knuckles, close enough to reach, close enough to imagine what it might feel like— her hand brushing his, just once. Just briefly.
Instead, she shifted in her seat and asked, “So… is this your routine now?”
Beck tilted his head in silent question.
“Coming here,” she clarified, voice low. “In the mornings.”
His eyes drifted toward the window, catching on the shifting sun. “It is lately.”
She smiled, a little bolder now. “Because of the coffee?”
He looked at her then, direct and unflinching. “Not just the coffee.”
The light had shifted again, catching the slope of his bare forearm where it rested along the table.
She traced the details with her eyes without meaning to— freckles, a scar near his elbow, the faint hollow between muscle and bone.
They were quiet, ordinary things, but they made her want to reach out. To touch.
“You always this straightforward?” she asked, voice softer now. Teasing, but almost breathless.
Beck considered that, leaning back in his chair, his eyes drifting from hers. “Not really.”
Hazel raised a brow, a soft admission of surprise. “Lucky me, then.”
That did it and finally, something in him loosened.
A small shift, easy and unforced, like warmth rising through still water.
His eyes held to hers, losing a bit of their guarded edge.
He looked at her like he just liked being there, like she was a place worth returning to. And she liked the way it made her feel.
Because there was a part of Hazel, small but ever-present, and buried deep beneath the flour-dusted routines and practiced smiles, that had always believed she wasn’t someone people stayed for. That she was a place people passed through, not back to. Easy to leave and easier still to forget.
Her father. Her mother. Even her grandmother, in the end, had gone and left her behind, no matter how unintentional. The wound of it lived quiet and sharp under her ribs, shaping everything she did— this bakery, this life, this need to matter to someone in a way that lasted.
She felt flushed and a little unsteady beneath the weight of it all, like the world had narrowed to just this table, just this air, just him.
Like something was about to happen. She leaned in, just by an inch or two, and Beck’s eyes flickered from hers to somewhere lower, somewhere painstakingly close to the bow of her lips.
And then her phone rang.
The shrill chime cut through the quiet like a snapped thread and Hazel startled, her chair scraping softly as she pushed back.
“Shit, sorry, just a second.”
Beck nodded once, leaning back in his seat, his eyes still on her as she crossed the bakery. She could feel his attention like a tether trailing behind her, steady and silent.
She picked up her phone from it’s spot on the back counter without checking the screen. Just a quick, practiced motion, like muscle memory or reflex, her fingers curling easily around it as she pressed it to her ear.
“Hello?”
There was a pause on the other end, a faint breath and the soft crackle of static, like the line wasn’t quite sure it wanted to hold.
Then, on an exhale, rough and unceremonious, came a nickname. One that only one person in her life ever really used.
“Hey, Haze.”
Her stomach dropped. Not sharply, not all at once.
It was slower than that, like the ground tilting beneath her feet just enough to make her reach for something solid.
Her throat closed, dry and tight, and she found herself blinking hard at nothing in particular, as though her body had gone into autopilot, preparing to brace.
There was no warmth in his voice. No Hi, sweetheart, or I’ve been meaning to call, how are you holding up? Just her name, clipped and clean, like someone checking off a task on a list.
Her hand tightened around the phone.
It had been months. Nearly a year, maybe, since she’d heard that voice. And still, it threaded through her like it always did— sharp in some places, dull in others, never quite where she expected it to land.
She pressed her free hand to the countertop without realizing it, anchoring herself to the edge.
“Dad,” she said, though her voice didn’t sound like hers. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you.”
And she hadn’t been.
Not after the silence. Not after the years of staggered phone calls and last-minute apologies. Not after the way he’d slipped so easily into a life that didn’t include her.
And certainly not now— when the grief was still soft and unformed, when her world had already shifted sideways and she was barely getting her feet under her again.
Across the room, the bell above the door swayed gently in a breeze Hazel couldn’t feel. And beyond it, Beck, still seated and turned slightly in her direction, his posture easy but attentive. His eyes, when she risked a glance, were already on hers.
She looked away just as quickly, a slow, invisible wave of heat crawling up the back of her neck. It had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with the way the call had cracked something open, something she’d much rather keep boarded up.
“I heard about your grandmother.”
The words landed without weight. A formality. A line from a script someone else had written. His voice, as always, felt scrubbed of context. No hesitance, no hurt, just statement.