Chapter 18 #3
When he did move, it was with all the care in the world.
One hand lifted and cupped the side of her face, his thumb brushing beneath her eye, tracing the line of her cheek like he was relearning something he thought he’d forgotten.
Hazel didn’t flinch, didn’t speak. Her eyes fluttered closed at the touch, like her body recognized him before her mind could catch up.
“You are worth staying for, Hazel,“ he whispered. “I would never leave you behind.”
And then he kissed her.
Soft and anchored and completely devastating.
It wasn’t a kiss born of desperation or hunger. It was a kiss that said I’m here. I came back. I stayed. I will always stay.
It was the kind of kiss that didn’t rush, didn’t demand, didn’t try to be anything other than exactly what it was— a quiet promise made in the dark. His other hand came up to hold her jaw, and he kissed her again, deeper this time, with a reverence that almost unmade her.
Hazel leaned into him like she’d been waiting her whole life for this exact weight, this exact moment.
Her fingers curled into the front of his shirt, gathering fabric in her fists without realizing she was doing it.
She tasted smoke on his mouth, and wine, and something uniquely him, something familiar, like wind off the coast and pine needles and warmth.
She felt herself trembling. Not from fear, but from the enormity of it.
From the way her heart was cracking open, wide and slow, to make room for something that terrified her.
Because this was no longer just longing, it was presence.
It was yes. It was the shaking, terrible courage of being seen and still being wanted.
His forehead pressed to hers, breath shallow between them, his lips brushing her skin as he whispered, “Hazel.”
And something in her broke.
Not the sharp, clean snap of grief or disappointment, but a different kind of break. A soft unseaming, a loosening. The kind that made space for something new.
“I didn’t think I’d get to have this,” she whispered, her eyes still pressed shut. “Not really.”
“You do,” he murmured back. “You do.”
And then he kissed her again, on the mouth, on the corner of her jaw, on the line where her neck met her shoulder.
She closed her eyes and let the world go quiet.
Let the mess surround them— the half-packed boxes, the cold tea she’d made hours ago and abandoned on the mantel, the apron belonging to her future children hanging over the side of the couch.
She let it all exist, imperfect and unfinished, while she stayed exactly where she was, on this couch, with this man kneeling before her like she was worth falling to the ground for.
She reached for him fully now, pulled him up to her, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders like she’d never let go. And when he pressed his face to the hollow of her throat, she felt him exhale— not just breath, but something heavier, like relief.
They stayed that way for a long time, wrapped around each other in the flickering dark, two people learning the shape of something they thought they’d never have. Something they were both afraid to name.
And yet, here it was.
Alive. And held between them.
She wasn’t sure where the shift came from, next. She couldn’t tell if it was her, or him, but either way, their soft, gentle kisses began to shift. Began to heat, like it had been settled on an open burner, switched to high.
Maybe it was him, his fingers brushing lightly against her knee, his hand resting on the couch cushion like an offering, like a question.
Or maybe it was her, leaning forward slightly, shifting the space between them until it was nothing at all.
When he pulled back from their next kiss, just a breath away, she could feel the rise and fall of his chest, the way his eyes searched hers like he needed to be sure, like he’d stop if she asked him to, like consent wasn’t just the absence of no, but the presence of want.
“I want this,” she said, voice low, and wrecked, and certain all at once. “I want you.”
Something in his face changed then, softening and unraveling.
And she saw it clearly: the weight he carried, the restraint he held, the bone-deep ache of a man who didn’t take things lightly.
Who had lived too long without gentleness.
Who had taught himself how to survive without a single person in the world who was allowed to draw near.
He didn’t speak, he just kissed her again, slower than before, his hand slipping behind her neck, the other settling at her waist. Hazel melted into him, into the solidity of his body, the quiet strength of his arms around her.
There was no frantic need, no rush to undress, just warmth and pressure and the slow unfurling of something that had been building for far too long.
They moved up the stairs to her bedroom in silence.
The house creaked faintly under their steps, as though trying to remember how it once held love.
Her hand brushed the banister, steadying herself, but her chest was a swirl of nerves and heat and a deep ache that hadn’t dulled since the day Beck hadn’t come to the bakery.
But now he was here. And she wasn’t sure if she was breathing more steadily because of it, or less.
Her bedroom door swung open, slow and quiet.
The air inside was cold with disuse but the walls still carried her scent and her grandmother’s— lavender, cedar, something warmer, deeper, like cinnamon tea steeped too long.
Boxes were stacked in one corner, a half-filled suitcase slumped beside them, a few items of clothing folded neatly on top as though she’d lost the will to keep going halfway through.
The bed was made but not untouched, her grandmother’s quilt folded across the foot like a keepsake, the pillows slightly askew.
The bedside lamp was on, casting a warm, amber light across the worn floorboards.
None of it mattered.
The room could have been anywhere. The world could have been ending. All Hazel could feel was him— his breath, his weight, his steady presence behind her as she stepped inside and turned to face him. And when he reached for her again, she went to him without hesitation.
He kissed her, slow and sure, his mouth anchoring hers.
One of his hands cupped the side of her face, the other pressed low at her back, pulling her closer like he couldn’t bear the inches that separated them.
And she kissed him back with everything she had, with all the ache and longing and raw, unfinished grief she’d been carrying in her chest like a keepsake.
She let her hands move up the flat plane of his chest and across the warmth of his shoulders.
He wasn’t a fantasy. He was real and solid beneath her palms. He smelled like salt and firewood and whatever soap he used that somehow smelled exactly like him.
She reached for the hem of his sweater, tugging the material upward.
He let her pull it over his head and tossed it aside, and did the same with the plain grey tee he worth beneath it.
She pressed her hands to the bare skin she’d exposed just a breath later. The heat of him made her pulse race.
Then it was his turn, his fingers gentle as they slipped beneath her cardigan, pushing it off her shoulders, then finding the hem of her long-sleeved shirt and lifting it over her head in a smooth arc.
She was braless beneath it. The cool air brushed her skin, tightening her nipples, but she didn’t flinch, didn’t move to cover herself.
He looked at her for a long moment, breath shallow.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, barely audible. “You’re so beautiful, Hazel.”
Hazel flushed but didn’t look away. Her hands moved again, lower now, unbuttoning his jeans with slow, practiced ease, the tension between them growing with every inch she undid. He kicked them off, then his boxers, and stood before her completely bare.
Her eyes dropped instinctively to the scars that wrapped his thigh, his hip, his knee.
To the jagged lines, the grafted patches, the skin that bore the truth of what he’d survived.
She reached out with slow, hesitant fingers, grazing the longest scar with reverence.
He stood still, not proud, not ashamed, just open, letting her see.
She whispered it then, not for his benefit but because the words were true. “You’re perfect, just like this. Exactly as you are.”
Beck stepped closer, cupped the back of her neck, and kissed her again.
The kiss was deep and aching and full of unspoken things.
Then his hands drifted to her waistband.
He undid the button with care, then slid her own jeans down, inch by inch, until she stepped out of them, her underwear coming with.
She was trembling now, not from cold but from the magnitude of what this was, what this meant.
She stood before him in nothing but her skin and her scars and her silence.
And he didn’t look away.
Hazel’s knees hit the edge of the bed as Beck grew near once more.
She sat with a breath that caught in her chest, legs folding beneath her.
He followed, lowering himself over her, one knee pressing into the mattress.
Then came the other, the heat of his body settling into the space around her like a promise.
They lay down together, skin to skin, beneath the low flicker of the bedside lamp.
Beck kissed her shoulder, her collarbone, the curve of her breast. His mouth was warm and moving slow as he took one nipple between his lips, sucking until her back arched beneath him.
Her hands fisted in the quilt as his stubble grazed her skin.
He moved to the other side and tongued the tight peak there until her breath hitched, until her thighs shifted restlessly beneath him.
“Beck,” she breathed, a sound closer to a prayer than a plea.
He kissed down her stomach, soft and open-mouthed, his shoulders nudging her thighs apart. When he looked up at her, his eyes were dark and steady, his pupils blow.
And then he lowered his mouth to her.
The first stroke of his tongue made her gasp— sharp and sudden, pleasure igniting beneath her skin like flame finding dry leaves.
He licked her again, slower now, more deliberate, using his thumbs to part her gently.
He circled her clit, kissed it and sucked until her hips lifted against him.
Then he flattened his tongue and dragged it through her, tasting her with a low groan.
He sounded like a man who’d finally been given exactly what he’d been begging for.
Hazel’s fingers flew to his hair, her hips rocking in time with his mouth. She tried to hold back— years of instinct telling her to contain, to perform, to hide— but he didn’t let her. One hand settled atop her thigh, anchoring her in place, his tongue working her open with precision and care.
She came like that, after only a few more moments, with a cry that cracked in her chest, her body shaking, her hand clapped over her mouth— not to muffle the sound, but to catch it. To hold it. To survive it.
Beck kissed his way back up her body like he needed every inch of her again. She tasted herself on his mouth when they kissed again. It undid her.
She reached between them, found him hard and thick, and guided him against her hip, then lower, between her thighs. Her whole body ached for him, now. Not just physically, but in that deep, silent place where need had long been denied.
He paused, barely, their foreheads pressed together.
“You sure?” he asked, voice rough.
Hazel nodded. “Yes. I’m sure. Please, Beck.”
He slid into her with a groan, slow and stretching, filling her until her breath broke in her throat. But he didn’t move, not at first. He held there, inside her, forehead to hers, like he couldn’t believe this was real.
Then he began to move.
Each thrust was deep and measured, not hesitant, anchored in something aching and sure. His hands found hers, fingers lacing together. She squeezed back, trying to ground herself in the rhythm of it, in the weight of him. Her body opened around him like something remembered.
Her legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him closer. Her hands slid over the long line of his back, the curve of his spine, the warm, perfect imperfection of his scarred hip. She kissed the hollow of his throat, the corner of his jaw, the sweat-slicked ridge of his temple.
He moved like he didn’t want to miss anything. Like every breath, every shiver, every moan mattered.
They built to it slowly, like a fire tended by careful hands.
Hazel whispered his name like a mantra. He buried his face in her neck, murmured something soft about how she smelled.
Their bodies trembled together, rhythm tightening, sweat pooling between them.
And when she came again, it ripped through her, hot and shattering, her whole body arching.
She cried out, didn’t even try to stop the sound from escaping this time.
Beck followed with a groan, deep and ragged, emptying himself inside her as his body seized, then stilled, breath escaping him in a long, broken exhale.
They collapsed together, tangled and damp and breathless, the quilt half-settled beneath them, the room gone quiet save for the soft rasp of skin on skin.
He stayed on his elbows, pressing his forehead to hers, one hand still holding hers like it was the only thing that tethered him to the earth.
Eventually, he eased out of her and laid down beside her. Hazel reached for the quilt and tugged it up over them both. Beck curled an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in close, her body fitting against his like it had always known the shape.
Hazel pressed her cheek to his chest.
And this time, when her eyes closed, she wasn’t running, she wasn’t holding back.
She let herself fall into the quiet.
With him.
With all of it.