Iris stood on the sidewalk just outside the door to Greyfin, heading inside with a short glass of something amber in her raised hand. Her cheeks were pink from the coldandthe drink, and she leaned easily into the arm of the woman beside her— a tall, striking figure with pin straight blonde hair and a soft, amused smile curling at one edge of her mouth.
Hazel hadn’t met her yet, but she knew immediately that it was Iris’s wife, Claire.
It wasn’t strange that their paths hadn’t crossed, not really. Claire worked late hours in a lab just outside of town, and Hazel spent most of her own days tucked inside the warm repetition of Rise or curled into herself at home, sorting through the quiet wreckage of the life she’d stumbled into. And when shedidgo out, it wasn’t usually to the places where couples lingered— galleries, patios, parks at dusk. Without meaning to, she’d started orbiting around them. Not because she didn’t want that kind of closeness, but because being near it too often felt like pressing on a bruise that hadn’t faded yet.
Some things still hadn’t fallen into place. And some days, it was easier not to look at what you didn’t have.
Claire stood like someone who’d spent years learning to listen before she spoke. Calm where Iris was animated, intentional where Iris moved like wind. Her coat was open just enough to reveal a charcoal grey turtleneck and a necklace with a small silver charm at the end that caught the light with every step forward.
Iris grinned across the street, seemingly too distracted to notice Imogen just a few feet away, half-hidden in the darkness now that she’d shifted backwards by a few steps. “Get over here already!”
Hazel lifted her hand and gave a small wave, a gentle smile blooming across her face. “I’ll be right there,” she called.
But she didn’t move, not right away. She watched, instead, as Iris and Claire pushed open the door and settled into the warmth of Greyfin, the golden light spilling across the street, not quite touching the other side where Hazel stood.
Beside her, Imogen shifted, just a flicker of motion. The angle of her shoulders pulled tighter and the set of her jaw changed like she’d remembered something inconvenient. Her hands disappeared deeper into her coat pockets. And when Hazel turned to glance at her again, she caught it, the small, faltering line that had formed between her brows.
“You should go,” Imogen muttered after a moment, her gaze still fixed somewhere far off. “Your people are waiting for you.”
There was no malice in it, no bite. Just the exhausted certainty of someone who had learned how to anticipate being left behind before it even happened.
Hazel didn’t answer, not immediately. Instead, she looked at Imogen—reallylooked. Not the way she had before, through the lens of wary comparison and unspoken competition. But now, beneath the weight of falling snow and the faint sound of piano music bleeding through the street, Imogen didn’t look like an adversary.
She looked like someone trying very hard to hold herself together with too few hands.
And Hazel— whose entire life had been stitched together by the one person who stayed when no one else did— felt something inside her tilt. There was no sympathy in it, no softness, either. Just a silent knowing that she couldn’t ignore, steady and sharp.
She didn’t know Imogen, not really. And what she did know of her… she hadn’t particularly liked. But now, looking at her andreallyseeing her, Hazel saw more than poise.
She saw pieces. Fractures, familiar ones.
The kind that didn’t show in someone’s words but in their restraint. In the way their eyes slid to the sidewalk instead of meeting yours. In the way they spoke like they were already halfway gone, already anticipating the door that would eventually shut them out.
Hazel had known that feeling. She still carried it.
Some nights, it still scratched at the inside of her ribs, the memory of standing at the top of the stairs, watching her father speak in hushed tones to her grandmother, whose eyes had often travelled toward her, sadness etched into the lines of her face. The weight of his words when he explained that he was heading to Hartford for a new job and that he didn’t have the money to support them both, notyet.But soon. And then the sound of a door that didn’t slam but might as well have.
And then, over time, the quiet knowledge that someone had chosen a new life. A new family. And had decided not to bring her with him.
It stayed. It echoed.
And now, without meaning to, she saw it in Imogen’s eyes, too.
Imogen wore it differently than Hazel did. Where Hazel was soft and malleable, Imogen was sharp and distinct. She wore her pain defensively, like armour, ensuring no one would get close enough to hurt her. Often, she would adjust her pain and wield it like a weapon. She would lash out first, if only to anticipate the blow they were surely preparing to land.
So Hazel said the first thing that came to her, something small and uncomplicated, something with no sharp edges. Something Imogen didn’t need to defend herself against.
“You know,” she murmured, pursing her lips. “I could use your help.”
Imogen turned, slow and wary. Her gaze landed on Hazel like she was trying to place her, like Hazel had just spoken in a dialect neither of them had agreed to use.
Her brows pinched together, confusion flashing raw before she remembered to mask it. “With what?”
Hazel tilted her head toward the bakery behind her, her voice steady. “I have a few boxes of baked goods I need to bring over to Greyfin.” She nodded to the storefront across the street, where golden light flickered behind tall windows. “I could use an extra set of hands. If you have the time.”
Imogen blinked, once and then again. A pause stretched long and uncertain, then she huffed a laugh, the sound low and brittle, with no real mirth in it. It broke like glass too thin to hold weight.
“You want me to help you carry desserts to a party I wasn’t even invited to?”
