Beck nodded. “Most of it. Keeps my hands busy.”
Hazel smiled to herself. She liked that, the quiet utilityof it. The way he saidstubbornlike it wasn’t a flaw, but something worthy of time and care. The way his voice dipped when he talked about things that required patience.
“Is that what you were doing this morning?” she asked, tilting her head.
His mouth didn’t quite shift, but something flickered in his expression— an ease at the corners, a quiet amusement that livedmore in his eyes than anywhere else. “No,” he said. “This morning I was working on getting the bell.”
Something in her chest shifted, quiet and warm. She looked down, her mouth curving despite herself. “I still can’t believe you did that.”
Beck shrugged, but the warmth in his expression betrayed him. “Didn’t like the thought of you getting startled. Seemed simple enough.”
Her eyes lifted to his, and when their gazes met, her voice dropped. “It wasn’t simple.”
He held her gaze and didn’t look away. Something unspoken passed between them then, something Hazel wasn’t sure she had the ability to name. His eyes didn’t flicker, didn’t falter, just held hers with a kind of quiet intensity that made her chest feel tight.
“Didn’t feel simple, to be honest,” he admitted, and Hazel couldn’t help but watch the way he swallowed, how the motion pulled at the muscles in his throat, the sharp line of his jaw shifting as he did. She could feel it again, that hush between heartbeats, that low thrum beneath her skin that only seemed to draw awake when he was near.
She pressed one hand to the edge of the table, fingers flat against the smooth wood. The handle of his mug sat just inches from her knuckles, close enough to reach, close enough to imagine what it might feel like— her hand brushing his, just once. Just briefly.
Instead, she shifted in her seat and asked, “So… is this your routine now?”
Beck tilted his head in silent question.
“Coming here,” she clarified, voice low. “In the mornings.”
His eyes drifted toward the window, catching on the shifting sun. “It is lately.”
She smiled, a little bolder now. “Because of the coffee?”
He looked at her then, direct and unflinching. “Not just the coffee.”
The light had shifted again, catching the slope of his bare forearm where it rested along the table. She traced the details with her eyes without meaning to— freckles, a scar near his elbow, the faint hollow between muscle and bone. They were quiet, ordinary things, but they made her want to reach out. Totouch.
“You always this straightforward?” she asked, voice softer now. Teasing, but almost breathless.
Beck considered that, leaning back in his chair, his eyes drifting from hers. “Not really.”
Hazel raised a brow, a soft admission of surprise. “Lucky me, then.”
That did it and finally, something in him loosened. A small shift, easy and unforced, like warmth rising through still water. His eyes held to hers, losing a bit of their guarded edge. He looked at her like he just liked being there, like she was a place worth returning to. And she liked the way it made her feel.
Because there was a part of Hazel, small but ever-present, and buried deep beneath the flour-dusted routines and practiced smiles, that had always believed she wasn’t someone people stayed for. That she was a place people passed through, not back to. Easy to leave and easier still to forget.
Her father. Her mother. Even her grandmother, in the end, had gone and left her behind, no matter how unintentional. The wound of it lived quiet and sharp under her ribs, shaping everything she did— this bakery, this life, this need tomatterto someone in a way that lasted.
She felt flushed and a little unsteady beneath the weight of it all, like the world had narrowed to just this table, just this air, justhim. Like something was about to happen. She leaned in, just by an inch or two, and Beck’s eyes flickered from hers to somewhere lower, somewhere painstakingly close to the bow of her lips.
And then her phone rang.
The shrill chime cut through the quiet like a snapped thread and Hazel startled, her chair scraping softly as she pushed back.
“Shit, sorry, just a second.”
Beck nodded once, leaning back in his seat, his eyes still on her as she crossed the bakery. She could feel his attention like a tether trailing behind her, steady and silent.
She picked up her phone from it’s spot on the back counter without checking the screen. Just a quick, practiced motion, like muscle memory or reflex, her fingers curling easily around it as she pressed it to her ear.
“Hello?”
