Chapter 19
The bed was cold when she woke.
Not startlingly so, just noticeably empty.
The blankets had fallen in soft waves around her, the sheets beneath slightly rumpled on the other side.
Hazel stirred slowly, her body heavy with the kind of quiet ache that came from being held all night.
Her limbs were sore in places she hadn’t realized had gone still.
There was a tangle of hair at the nape of her neck, and her skin still smelled faintly of firelight, of him, of salt and sleep.
For a moment, she didn’t move. The silence of the house was different this morning than it had been the last few days, calmer.
It held a kind of hush that felt ceremonial.
Outside, snow drifted down past the bedroom window in soft, deliberate flurries, powdering the glass like confectioner’s sugar.
The sky was still pale and soft, uncertain.
Then she smelled the coffee.
It crept into the room like a hand on her shoulder, warm, familiar, and promising something steady. She closed her eyes and breathed it in. There was a sweetness to it, too, something richer than sugar, and the faintest undercurrent of pine, likely from the fire crackling downstairs.
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and reached for the nearest thing to wear.
It was Beck’s sweater from the night before, still slung across the chair.
She pulled it over her head. It hung to the middle of her thighs, the sleeves falling past her knuckles.
Then she grabbed a pair of wool socks from the dresser drawer, tugged them on with a kind of sleepy reverence, and padded out into the hallway, her hair loose, her body still sore and humming.
The stairs creaked beneath her feet, but she moved quietly. Slowly. As if to preserve whatever this was— this moment, this morning, this impossible feeling she hadn’t yet been brave enough to name.
When she reached the kitchen, she paused in the archway that separated it from the living room.
Beck stood at the counter, barefoot, wearing only the grey tee he’d worn under his sweater and a pair of navy boxers that hung low on his hips.
His hair was tousled and sticking up in the back.
He looked domestic in a way that should have felt out of place— should have felt borrowed— but instead it filled something hollow in her chest. He was buttering toast, the plate already dressed with two pieces slathered in peanut butter and honey.
Next to him, two mugs steamed gently in the light from the window.
He didn’t see her at first.
She just stood there, leaning against the doorframe, letting the heat of the room melt into her like balm.
A new fire in the hearth crackled in the living room, casting golden light across the hardwood floor.
The windows behind him were pale with morning, the snow outside falling in soft, drifting curtains.
She hadn’t put up a tree. There hadn’t been time.
But there were pine boughs still strung across the mantel that Iris had insisted she take home one day, and a bowl of clementines sat on the table, their scent bright and citrusy in the warm air.
It was enough.
She cleared her throat. “Merry Christmas.”
Beck looked up, startled at first. Then he smiled, slow and warm, like sunlight spreading across snow.
“Merry Christmas,” he said, setting the knife down. He crossed the room before she could move, one hand reaching to cup the back of her neck as he bent to kiss her. It wasn’t rushed, just quiet. Full. His mouth was warm, his touch familiar now in a way that unraveled something inside her.
“Coffee?” he asked, brushing his thumb over her cheek, that small smile still curving at his lips.
She nodded. “God, yes.”
They didn’t talk much over breakfast. The toast was too sweet, the coffee too hot, the quiet between them too full of things not yet ready to be said aloud.
They sat in the living room with their plates balanced on their laps, the fire casting a drowsy heat into the room.
The morning stretched around them like a held note, easy and soft. Comfortable.
Later, after the dishes were left in the sink and the coffees refilled, they found themselves back on the couch.
Hazel curled her legs beneath her, Beck sitting close enough for their knees to touch.
The table before them was cluttered with their mugs, a sprig of fir from the mantel that had fallen loose, and two small, wrapped gifts.
Hazel’s reached for his first.
“This one’s for you,” Hazel said. Her voice had a tremble she didn’t mean to let through.
He peeled the paper back slowly, his movements deliberate and careful, like he couldn’t dare rip the wrapping paper. Beneath it, he found the narrow wooden box that had once belonged to her grandfather. She’d found it in the attic weeks ago, tucked among a box of old maps and outgrown coats.
When Beck opened the lid, his brow furrowed. Inside sat a compass— old, brass, and worn smooth from decades of handling. The face was scratched but still readable, the needle shifting gently with each movement.
“It’s been in my family for years,” Hazel whispered, peering up at him from beneath her eyelashes. Her cheeks had begun to warm with that familiar crimson blush, the same one he often drew to the surface. “My grandfather used it when he worked the ferries. Said it always brought him home.”
Beck didn’t say anything at first. But the way his fingers curled around it, slow and reverent, said enough. She saw his throat move as he swallowed, saw the way his jaw clenched like he was holding something back.
Hazel looked away, blinking hard.
“Thank you, Hazel,” he whispered, his hold on the compass still firm, like he was afraid to let it go.
Then, as if he needed a moment to breathe, he reached for the gift he’d brought her. “Your turn.”
The package was flat and roughly bound, tied together with string. She ripped it open, a soft smile curving at the corners of her lips, curiosity biting at the edges of her chest.
Inside was a book.
Hazel froze the second she saw the cover. Her breath hitched.
The title was lettered in soft gold script. The Art of Rising.
Her throat closed.
She turned the cover and found her own handwriting looking back at her— recipes she’d written over the years, tucked into corners of napkins and receipts, now transcribed in careful ink.
Each page was laid out like a real cookbook: measurements, ingredients, instructions.
But there were photos, too. Crisp, warm-toned ones that Juno had clearly taken.
Close-ups of latticed pies, sugar-dusted loaves, her hands rolling dough on the butcher-block counters.
On the bottom of each page was a quote from a townsperson— Malcolm, Iris, Sylvia, Elise, Connor, even Mr. Everett— and little notes about what the dish meant to them.
Hazel didn’t speak, she couldn’t.
“I had help,” Beck admitted, quiet now. “Juno and Iris. Malcolm found some of the handwritten ones you’d stuck inside the cupboard. We tried to keep it true to you.”
Hazel pressed her hand to her mouth. Her eyes were burning, the threat of tears imminent and not something she could fight for long.
“This is—“ she began, her voice cracking beneath the weight of the emotion. “This is too much.”
“It’s not,” Beck said, shifting closer. “It’s exactly what you deserve.”
Hazel closed the book and launched herself into his arms. He caught her easily, her face buried into his neck, his hands wrapping around her like he’d done it a hundred times before.
She didn’t sob, not quite, but the tears came anyway.
She wasn’t used to being seen like this. And certainly not held through it.
After the tears had begun to slow, Hazel drew back just enough to see Beck, her palms still pressed against his chest. His eyes were steady, searching hers in that patient way of his, like he’d wait as long as it took for her to speak.
Somewhere along the way, this pull between them had stopped feeling like something she could resist. Maybe it was never something she could resist. The pull toward him had been there from the start, quiet but unyielding, threading itself through every look, every brush of his hand, every unspoken thing left hanging in the space between them.
Like the tide to the shore, inevitable and constant, until she couldn’t tell where she ended and he began.
The words rose up from somewhere deep, older than the moment, older than even her understanding of them— certain, whole, and impossible to swallow back.
“I love you,” she whispered, the syllables breaking open in her mouth like something she’d been holding too long.
His breath caught, just the faintest hitch. His lips curved and he smiled, really smiled, in that way she’d only seen from him once or twice.
“I love you too, Hazel,” he whispered back, in that low and steady way he said all the things he’d never take back.
For a moment they just stayed there, forehead to forehead, the weight of those words settling between them like a place to rest.
The house was quiet again.
Like the kind of stillness that came after a storm, soft and heavy with relief.
Hazel stood barefoot in the kitchen, her coffee cradled in both hands, the sweater she had stolen from Beck still wrapped around her shoulders like a second skin. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been watching him.
Out the back window, through the blur of frost-laced glass, she could see him in the yard.
His jacket sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, boots crunching in the snow as he moved from the woodpile to the chopping block.
He hadn’t said anything, hadn’t asked. He’d just slipped on his pants and coat after breakfast, grabbed her grandmother’s old axe from the shed, and gone out to replenish the dwindling pile of wood around the back of the house.