Chapter 16 #2
She exhaled against his mouth as he guided her up the remainder of the stairs and shifted their positions.
He pressed her back against the soft yellow of the front door, the wood cool through her coat, his body warm and solid in front of her.
His fingers found the knotted belt at her waist, tugging it loose until the material gaped around her.
He slipped his hands beneath the coat, palms skating over the velvet along the curve of her waist, her hip, the warmth of his touch sinking through to her skin.
The sensation made her stomach flutter. Her hands found his shoulders, then slid up, curling into the damp hair at the nape of his neck.
Their mouths moved together with a desperate sort of tenderness, as if they’d both spent years wandering separate paths only to arrive here, in this quiet convergence of breath and skin and longing.
Hazel felt it in the way his hands shaped to her sides and in the pause between kisses where his forehead touched hers.
It was this sense that they had almost, almost fit all of their pieces together perfectly.
That she’d finally traced the shape of his scars well enough to guess at their depth, and that he’d begun to map the fractured outlines of hers.
But still, there were shadows and corners not yet illuminated. Truths tucked away beneath grief and memory, waiting to be shared.
Hazel’s chest rose against his. She could feel the tension thrumming through him, how tightly he held himself, even as he pressed in and even as he let his mouth part against hers in a kiss that tasted like restraint undone.
He was holding back, but only just.
When they finally broke apart, it wasn’t because they wanted to, it was because they had to. Beck pulled back first, but just enough to rest his forehead against hers. His breath came ragged, not from exertion, but from the strength it had taken to stop.
Hazel kept her eyes closed, her fingers still tangled in the back of his hair, the curls soft beneath her touch.
She could feel his breath against her cheek, warm and uneven, and the heat of him was pressed through his coat and into her body like a second heartbeat.
Her lips were still parted from the kiss, still aching in that way that wasn’t pain, just too much feeling in too small a space.
“Do you want to come in?” she whispered, her eyes flickering open, seeking out his.
It wasn’t a seduction and there was no edge to it.
It was nothing more than a question offered gently into the space between them, like a hand extended across a fragile bridge.
Her voice trembled, not with nerves, but with the impossible hope of the moment.
With want that had crept in so slowly, so carefully, that by the time she’d recognized it, it had already taken root beneath her skin, uncontrollable.
She felt him still. Completely, utterly still. And the air shifted between them.
For a moment, he didn’t move, didn’t even breathe. He just held there, his hands on her waist, his body braced as if a single misstep might tip the moment too far. His dark eyes pinched shut, his brow furrowing as if the mere consideration of stepping over her threshold caused him great pain.
His nose brushed hers, slow and tender, as he sucked in a deep, steadying breath. It was a gesture so intimate it made her breath catch in her throat.
“I do,” he admitted, the words so wild she hardly recognized them as his own. Something about the tone of his voice set fire to that barely contained pit at the bottom of her stomach, the one that had grown a heartbeat in the moments since he’d first kissed her, back at Verdance.
Her heart surged, swelled, and ripped open a little— but then he kept speaking.
“But not tonight.”
His eyes opened, immediately seeking out hers.
They weren’t cold and they weren’t guarded.
If anything, they were too open, too dark with want, his pupils blown.
But beyond them, his expression was steadied by something softer.
Something that felt like care edged with restraint, the kind of restraint that took strength to carry.
The exact kind of restraint she had come to expect from Beck.
“You’ve been drinking,” he said, his voice low and even, but tight around the edges. “And when it happens…” He paused, his eyes dropping to her mouth and then lifting back up, pained and reverent in the same breath. “I want us both to mean it.”
Hazel’s chest ached. Not from rejection, not really, because this wasn’t that. It was the opposite. It was the thing she never expected someone to give her, patience and respect. The refusal to take her in a moment that might blur.
And still… she wanted him. She really, really wanted him.
Her nod came slow, threaded with every emotion she didn’t have words for. Her hands slid from his hair, drifted to his jaw, and then to the collar of his coat, curling there like she wasn’t quite ready to let go.
”I do mean it,“ she said, the words so soft it felt like a confession, something saved for a booth tucked into the back of a quiet church.
He didn’t answer, not with words.
Instead, he leaned in once more and kissed her. First at her cheekbone, then beside her mouth, then finally, barely, her lips. The kiss was gentle and lingering, a vow made in silence. A held breath, a tether, a promise that this was not a goodbye, simply a later.
Then, carefully— like the moment itself might break— he stepped back.
His absence was immediate. Cold rushed into the space he’d left behind, but the heat of him still clung to her coat, to the velvet of her dress, to the shape of her skin where he’d touched her.
Beck looked at her one last time, his expression so wrecked that she shivered at the sight of it.
“Goodnight, Hazel,” he said, his lips curving at the edges with a soft, gentle smile.
She couldn’t speak, couldn’t trust her voice to hold. So she just watched.
She watched the way he turned from her like he didn’t want to, like he was pulling away from gravity.
She watched the set of his shoulders as he descended the stairs, solid and slow, his steps leaving deep, clear prints in the snow.
She watched the way his hands clenched, then released again, like something in him was still fighting the part that had wanted to stay.
The wind caught his coat as he turned the corner and then he was gone.
Hazel stayed on the porch, frozen in place, her back against the door, breath clouding in short, uneven bursts in front of her face.
Only when the silence settled fully around her, when the last echo of his steps had disappeared into the hush of falling snow, did she lean harder against the door, eyes fluttering shut.
Her chest rose and fell in shallow waves.
She lifted a hand, her fingertips grazing her mouth.
They still felt like him, still carried the heat of his kiss, the taste of quiet restraint and want and tenderness braided together.
The press of his palms at her hips, the shape of his sigh against her skin. It lived there, still.
He was gone.
But the feeling of him— what they’d almost had— lingered.
Not vanished.
Just waiting to return, again, when the time was right. When all the shadowed pieces had been dragged before the light, illuminated and shared.
The smell of cardamom and brown sugar hung in the air like a song still humming in the walls. The ovens were already warm, the mixers already wiped clean, and Hazel moved through Rise like someone floating through the soft afterglow of a dream.
She hadn’t slept much. But for once, it didn’t matter.
There was a sweetness in her limbs, a kind of low-thrum energy that made everything feel brighter and softer, like the morning itself had woken up just for her.
Outside, the snow lay untouched, a muted stretch of grey-blue under the weight of early morning darkness.
The window panes shimmered faintly at the corners, catching the low, flickering light from inside.
She was humming.
Actually humming.
Hazel stirred a bowl of batter with one hand while absently reaching for her phone with the other, snapping a picture of the prep table lined with sugared cranberries and fresh rosemary sprigs, little nests of pastry already curled into shape.
She was trying something new this morning: a spiced blood orange galette with rosemary-honey glaze.
Inspired, perhaps, by the warmth still lingering in her chest, or the kiss still lingering on her mouth.
Her cheeks flushed at the thought, unbidden and undeniable. She smiled to herself, head dipping towards her chest, her body rocking side to side in time with the quiet holiday playlist drifting from the speakers overhead.
The kitchen was bathed in soft gold. The world outside was muffled and peaceful.
And she was… happy.
So happy, in fact, that she paused in the middle of her baking, drawn by the unfamiliar urge to see herself in this light. Just to look.
She stepped inside the washroom at the back of Rise, wiped her flour-dusted fingers on her apron, and lifted her gaze to the mirror.
Her hair was spilling free over her shoulders in loose waves, for once pulled free from the braid she normally wore.
Her skin was warm and flushed from the ovens, lips still faintly pink, like they remembered him, too.
She looked lighter.
Like someone who had been kissed against a front door, like someone who had been wanted. Not in passing and not by accident. But chosen, really and truly, for what might have felt like the first time.
Her reflection smiled first, and she followed suit, shy, instinctive, and real. It bloomed slow across her face, almost as if it startled her. Her eyes sparkled in the glow of it and she tucked a piece of hair behind her ear like it might steady her, anchor her to the moment.
She looked so bright. Not just fine, not just getting by, but full. Filled with something new, something hopeful.