Beck reached for her leg again but this time with the gloves on. His hands hovered for a moment.
“I need to clean it,” he said, calm and steady, his eyes meetings hers. “It’s gonna sting.”
Hazel nodded, bracing herself. “Go ahead.”
He rolled the fabric of her sweatpants a bit higher, careful not to press anywhere it would hurt. She flinched as the antiseptic touched skin a moment later, the sensation of it sharp and cold, but he was already pressing gauze against it, absorbing the worst of the blood, working in slow, measured movements.
His hands were large and completely certain, even beneath the latex of the gloves. There was no tremor in them, no doubt. Just quiet, meticulous care.
She watched him work; watched the furrow between his brows, the way his mouth tightened in concentration. The storm cracked again outside but neither of them looked toward the windows. Hazel couldn’t bring herself to look away. She was captivated by it, the ease with which he worked, the unruffled calmness in his movements.
“You’re good at this,” she murmured.
He gave the barest smile, eyes still focused on her leg. “I’ve had practice.”
There was something in the way he said it that made her want to ask this time. She pressed her lips together, fighting off the urge.
Beck applied a final press of gauze, checked the bleeding, then reached for the bandages.
“You’ll need to keep this dry as best you can for the next couple days,” he said, voice still low, but a bit of warmth had returned to it. Like the worst of this was behind him, behind them both. “Change the dressing tomorrow morning, if you can manage it. I’ll leave you with a few extras.”
She nodded again, biting the inside of her cheek. “Okay.”
He wrapped the bandage around her thigh, not tight enough to hurt, just enough to hold. His movements were precise, almost reverent, and when he was done, he sat back on his heels with a quiet breath. The gloves came off with a practiced flick, one then the other, and he dropped them into the small waste bag he’d unfolded beside the kit.
Hazel stared down at the white stretch of bandage now circling her thigh. The pain hadn’t disappeared, not entirely, it still hummed beneath the skin, deep and hot, but something about it felt contained now. It had a boundary, now, a place to stop, and that felt like something.
She swallowed and blinked once, then again.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice coming out rougher than she intended. It was small and hoarse and cracked around the edges, like the words had caught on something soft inside her before they made it out.
Beck’s gaze lifted. His eyes met hers, steady and unflinching, and for a long moment, he didn’t say anything at all.
And when he did, he whispered, “Always.”
And that one word landed like an anchor.
Not heavy, not dragging, butgrounding.Like something tethered itself to her chest in that exact moment and held. Like she’d been drifting without realizing it and he’d just offered her a place to stay.
It wasn’t grand or loud. It was solid.
It was Beck, steady and spare with his words, but never with his care. And somehow, that made it worse.
Because it meanthemeant it.
Not justyou’re welcomeorit was no problem— not something polite or something transactional. Justalways, like this wasn’t new, like it wasn’t conditional. Like it had already been true before she ever asked. And that it wouldstaytrue, as long as she wanted it to. Maybe even after that.
Hazel’s eyes burned again and she had to look away. Her gaze was drawn to the window at the front of the living room, the one that faced the driveway. It was too dark to see much of anything outside, and so instead, she simply watched as the rain traced dozens of paths down the glass pane.
She didn’t know how to hold this kind of constancy. She wasn’t used to someone offering themselves without qualifiers or expiration dates. But here he was, kneeling in front of her on her grandmother’s old rug, his palms resting open on his thighs, his body a little tired from the effort but his presence utterlyunshaken.
She turned her eyes back to him as he returned the supplies to his bag, methodical and practiced. He moved with an easy sort of competence, but there was something else behind it, too, something heavier in the curve of his shoulders, the faint tension in his jaw. He zipped the case closed and set it aside, resting his forearm on one knee for a breath, his fingers curling loosely.
Then he took another breath and looked up, meeting her gaze.
“I’m going to check the front,” Beck said, his voice even and measured. The kind of calm that had nothing to do with ease and everything to do with choice.
Hazel blinked at him, caught off guard by the words. “Now? Are you sure?”
