Chapter 13 #4
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 said It 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 and responsibility.
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 to him.
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.
She reached for her phone, thumbed open her texts, and without overthinking it, began to type out a message to him.
What are you doing?
She watched the message go through, her breath shallow in her chest.
Seconds passed. Then her screen lit up, phone buzzing against her thigh.
Beck calling…
Hazel hesitated, just for a breath. Then she pressed Accept and brought the phone to her ear.
“Hey,” she said.
Her voice was rough. Lower than usual, as if she’d swallowed a handful of the gravel currently beneath her car. She cleared her throat, but it didn’t help much.
There was a pause on the other end. Nothing awkward, just that particular kind of Beck-specific silence.
She could hear background noise through the line, the wind through the trees, the faint crunch of his boots on packed snow, maybe even the distant call of a gull. Then his voice came through, steady and low.
“You okay?”
Hazel turned her head to look out the window. The trees were thick here, tall pine and brittle maple, all dusted white at the edges. Her windshield was fogging up again.
She could lie. She could say she was fine, say she just needed to kill time before heading home, say it wasn’t a big deal.
But something in his voice, the way he asked it, undid her just a little. Like he already knew the answer but wanted to ask her, just in case.
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I just... I didn’t want to go home yet. I was visiting my mom.”
There was a beat of silence, though it wasn’t hesitation. Just Beck thinking, the way he always did. She could feel it in the air between them.
“I’m up at the lighthouse,” he offered, letting out a long exhale. “Was clearing the path up before more snow comes in.”
Hazel released a soft sigh, her eyes tracing the snowflakes as they fell against the windshield before her.
“It’s quiet up here,” he added. “And I’ve got hot coffee.”
The invitation wasn’t dramatic— wasn’t even really an invitation. It was just… a place being offered. A place held, for her, if she needed it.
She closed her eyes for a moment.
The image rose unbidden: Beck at the top of the lighthouse, snow clinging to the shoulders of his jacket, thermos in one hand, leaning against the railing like the sky wasn’t pressing down on him the way it was pressing down on her.
The thought of standing beside him and saying nothing at all felt more healing than any words could.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” she said.
Hazel eased the car to a stop beside Beck’s truck. A dull hush had fallen over everything, the kind of stillness that felt suspended, like the world was bracing for heavier snow but hadn’t yet been given permission to fall.
She sat there for a beat too long, her hands still wrapped tight around the wheel. Then she forced herself to move.
The cold met her like a slap the moment she opened the door, bracing and immediate.
But it helped. It gave her something to focus on besides the ache in her ribs, the rawness behind her eyes, the fragile fullness in her chest she didn’t yet have the words to describe.
She pulled her coat tighter, buried her chin deeper into the collar, and began walking.
The lighthouse sat at the edge of the bluff, wind-swept and weatherworn, rising like a sentinel above the sea.
There was no sound but the wind and the distant, rhythmic press of waves breaking against frozen rock.
Beck’s footprints were still visible in the freshly cleared path leading to the door, firm, sure, and direct.
Of course he’d been the one to shovel it.
Of course it would be cleared just enough for her to walk through without effort, without needing to ask.
The door was open by just an inch, and inside, the air was warmer than she expected. Not cozy, exactly, but lived in. There was a lamp on a table near the far wall, its glow low and golden against the stone.
The spiral stairs rose into shadow. She climbed slowly, her boots clanging against the metal, the scent of salt and old wood settling around her like memory.
With every step, her heartbeat seemed to slow— still ragged, still aching, but steadier now, like her body was beginning to understand that she didn’t need to brace, not here.
She reached the top and found him there.
Beck stood near one of the tall glass windows, his hand braced against the frame, the other wrapped loosely around a travel mug— one she recognized instantly. Hers.
He wasn’t moving, just watching. The sea, the sky, something far off that didn’t need naming. His jacket was open, the flannel beneath buttoned to the top, hair ruffled from the wind. He looked like he’d been carved from the same stone as the tower— solid, quiet, older than he let on.
And then he turned.
His eyes met hers, warm and sharp, but softened in a way that undid something knotted in her chest.
“Hey,” he said, lifting his arm out into the space between them, offering the thermos to her.
“Hey,” she whispered back, that same dull burning sensation beginning to rise once more against the backs of her eyes. She took a few steps closer and lifted a hand, taking the outstretched mug from him. It was warm and the heat bled into her fingers, into her bones, like it belonged there.
They stood together in silence for a few minutes after that, Hazel occasionally lifting the mug to her lips and letting the bitterness of the coffee inside push the emotion back down into her chest where it belonged. After she’d had a few sips, she handed it back to Beck.
His eyes were on the horizon, the faintest movement of his thumb against the mug the only sign that he, too, was circling something wordless.
After a long pause, he nodded toward the corner of the room, where an old folding chair sat beneath the narrow window, a crooked stack of worn paperbacks beside it.
There was a thick jacket draped over the back of the chair and a water bottle in the mesh cup holder, half-hidden in shadow.
It looked like a quiet little shrine to time spent waiting, or escaping, or surviving.
“This is where I come when I don’t know what else to do,” he said, his voice steady, low, worn thin at the edges but still intact. “Figured it might work for you, too.”
Hazel followed the line of his gaze, eyes landing on the modest arrangement.
It was practical, makeshift, and comforting in a way that tugged hard at her ribcage.
She could picture him there, his spine bent, wind howling through the windows, his broad hand resting on the page of a book he wasn’t really reading.
She could feel the weight of what he wasn’t saying and the space he had made for her inside it.
Her chest ached with the shape of it. The intention, the quiet kindness of it all. She turned back to the view, the horizon stretching before them in all its bleak, endless honesty. The sea was bruised and thrashing, but it hadn’t broken. It just kept moving.
“It does,” she said, voice shaky with the effort of holding everything back.
Something loosened in her ribs, an invisible fist unclenching, letting the breath move through her body without catching in her throat.
The weight she had carried from the moment she left the care facility— this muddled tangle of grief and tenderness, of shame and warmth, of longing for something that could never quite be reclaimed— shifted in her chest, less like a burden and more like something that might be carried if she let it.
She hadn’t said what she wanted to say. Hadn’t said enough.
Hadn’t stayed long enough. Hadn’t been there the last time, or the time before.
She blinked hard against the sting rising behind her eyes again, her shoulders beginning to curl inward as though her body knew what was coming before she did.