Chapter 9 #3
“It’s at the end of the hall on the right. There’s an ensuite attached… or the main bathroom’s the first door on the left.”
Hazel shifted, her arms folding tight over her chest. “Beck, I can take the couch. I don’t want to take your room from you… you’re already doing so much for me.”
He turned then, leaning one hand against the edge of the counter, fingers curling around it.
“I’ve slept in worse places,” he said, lifting a shoulder in a shrug. “And the couch is just fine. You need the door that closes. Locks.”
A frown tugged at the edges of Hazel’s lips and furrowed across her forehead. “I don’t need a lock. I trust you.”
“I know,” he replied, his gaze remaining on hers. “But still.”
Hazel’s lips parted, prepared to push back on his offer further, but Beck let out a low sigh. She paused, watching his expression as it softened.
“Please, Hazel.”
Her name landed soft and sure in the room. Not tender, not coaxing, just anchored— like a line cast out from solid ground.
She looked at him for a moment longer, searching for a reason to argue with him, to say she was fine, that she didn’t need this. But her chest was already aching from the weight of what he was offering without making her ask.
So instead of fighting, she nodded. “Okay.”
Beck let out a quiet breath and pushed off the counter.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you where you’re going.”
He passed her as he headed down the hall, and for a second— just a second— the scent of him brushed against her skin: clean rain, warm flannel, and cedar pressed into skin.
She followed after a beat, but not before toeing off her boots and nudging them into place beside his sneakers on the shoe rack.
The gesture was instinctive, domestic, and it made her stomach tighten for reasons she didn’t fully understand.
As she padded down the short hallway in her socks, Beck reached back into the living room, grabbing her bag with one hand. He didn’t ask if she wanted help. He just took it, one more thing off her shoulders and onto his.
The bedroom was dark until he flipped the switch.
Warm light spilled out over the space, golden and soft from the dimmable lamp tucked behind a wide, rounded chair in the corner. Hazel stepped over the threshold behind him, her eyes sweeping the room like she was seeing inside a part of him she hadn’t been meant to witness.
The bed was a queen, large enough to stretch out in, but not extravagant.
The frame was dark wood, clean-lined, and solid.
One corner of the navy comforter was slightly rumpled, like he hadn’t bothered to smooth it fully before leaving earlier that morning, but it was made, which was more than Hazel could say of her own bed most days.
Along one wall, a long dresser sat tucked between two windows.
And next to it, pressed up against the far corner, was the rounded chair and matching foot stool.
The chair was oversized, the kind meant to be curled into.
A forest green sweatshirt was draped over one of the arms, sleeves limp, the collar stretched slightly like it had been tugged off in a hurry.
She could see him there. Sitting with one leg stretched out, the other tucked under, a book in one hand and the other behind his head. Reading in that quiet way he seemed to exist in— low, still, and unbothered by the world rushing outside his door.
Her chest pulled tight again.
It was intimate, standing here.
Not because anything romantic had happened, but because something real had. This was his space, his private world. And he’d let her in like it was nothing, like it wasn’t a threshold most people never crossed.
Beck crossed the room and opened the closet, reaching to the top shelf for a folded towel. He handed it to her with one hand, and then set her bag at the end of the bed.
“There’s more in the hall closet if you need another,” he offered, his eyes drawn in the direction of the door. “Blankets, too.”
“Thanks.”
He nodded once. Not curt, just Beck. Then he paused, glanced around the room as if checking that it was enough, that she’d be comfortable, that this was okay.
“I’ll bring your tea down in a minute.”
Hazel nodded, unable to trust her voice with the weight of his space and his kindness curling all around her.
And then he stepped past her, brushing her shoulder lightly as he went. He didn’t look back.
She stood there long after he was gone, her hands still clutching the towel like it anchored her in place.
The room wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t designed for guests.
But it was clean, comfortable, and quiet.
And the man who lived here— who had made her tea without asking, who had picked mugs to match the one she gave him every morning, who had brought her here without hesitation or condition— was somewhere down the hall, as steady as ever.
She stepped farther inside and nudged the door closed behind her with one foot.
She padded across the room, her socked feet silent against the hardwood, and set her towel down at the end of the bed.
The zipper of her backpack rasped through the quiet as she opened it with one hand, the motion swift, practiced.
Hazel pulled out the change of clothes she’d grabbed earlier, whatever had been on top of the laundry basket in her room, folded and clean, chosen without thought.
She hung her dripping jacket over the door of the ensuite, watching for a moment as water leaked from the hem of it and created a small pool on the grey tile below.
As she changed, her damp clothes clung to her skin, the cold lingering in her joints, her muscles, the bend of her neck.
It wasn’t the kind of chill that passed once you were inside, it was the kind that settled, that crept in through the cracks and curled up behind your ribs.
The shorts she pulled on were a soft, cream cotton, loose but short enough that they left most of her thighs bare.
The hem of them just barely brushed the bandage Beck had settled against her cut.
The matching tank top clung to her body, snug, and it was ribbed and warm, but thin— better suited for summer nights with open windows than Maine in the throes of a coastal downpour.
She switched out her damp socks for a pair of long wool ones, pulled up to her calves.
The moment they were on, her body sighed with something like relief.
One by one, she folded her discarded, damp clothes and tucked them back into her backpack.
When she reached for the sweatshirt she’d worn earlier, her hand paused.
She lifted it to her nose, breathing in the familiar, worn scent buried beneath the dampness.
Her fingers lingered at the collar, then traced the sleeves, still soaked through at the cuffs.
She considered pulling it back on, purely for the comfort it would provide. But the fabric was too cold, too wet, and the thought of dragging it over her already chilled skin made her flinch.
With a quiet sigh, she folded it, too, and pushed it into the pack with the rest.
And then came the knock. A soft, measured sound at the door— three taps, evenly spaced apart.
Hazel turned, startled out of her thoughts. “Come in,” she called, tugging at the hem of her tank instinctively.
There was a pause, a breath of hesitation. Then the door eased open and Beck stepped inside.
He was holding a mug in both hands and for a second that was all she saw: the gentle steam curling up toward his chin, the curve of his fingers wrapped around the ceramic.
There was quiet care in the act and an odd sort of irony struck her, then, with Beck being the one cradling a mug intended for her, rather than the other way around.
But then he looked up and everything shifted.
He froze in the doorway, barely two steps into the room, and his gaze dropped, slowly at first, like gravity had taken hold of it. Hazel felt the air go thick around her.
His eyes moved over her bare legs first, olive-toned, long, and exposed all the way up to the hem of her sleep shorts.
She swore she could feel his attention like a hand, warm and dragging over every inch of her skin.
Then his gaze traveled up, following the line of her thigh to the curve of her hips and the dip of her waist beneath the thin cotton.
Her tank top didn’t cover much— her shoulders were bare, the slope of her collarbones fully exposed, a faint trace of goosebumps already rising in the chill.
The neckline dipped slightly between her breasts, and it was there— right there— his eyes hesitated.
Hazel didn’t move. She couldn’t.
Her skin prickled all over, flushed and electric under the weight of his stare.
He wasn’t doing anything, wasn’t even speaking, but his silence roared. Louder than the storm continuing on outside, louder even than the racing of her heart, pressing heavy against her temples and the cage of her ribs.
She watched the muscles in his jaw flex once, then twice, like he was grinding back words, or breath, or something else entirely. His throat bobbed as he swallowed, hard. And his grip on the mug tightened, knuckles straining faintly against the heat.
He looked like he was trying to move, but couldn’t. His entire body had gone still, like a wire pulled taut, one spark away from snapping.
Then, finally, his gaze lifted and met hers.
And everything in the room burned.
There was heat there, raw and startled and deep.
He looked at her like he didn’t know what to do with the sight of her, like some part of him had imagined it before and wasn’t prepared for the reality of her standing in front of him like that— in his room, in her socks and shorts and bare skin, her dark hair falling in loose waves around her shoulders.
His mouth parted, just slightly, but still no words came.
The mug in his hands trembled, and Hazel almost reached for it out of instinct, afraid he might spill it just standing there.