The morning light was quiet.
Not soft—honest. It poured through Amelia's windows in strips of gold that cut across the floorboards, her body, the sheets tangled around her legs.
She lay awake, watching him sleep.
Daniel's chest rose with a steady rhythm, lips slightly parted, hair mussed from her fingers. The kind of sleep that only came after vulnerability had burned everything else down. He looked peaceful in a way that made her throat tighten.
She didn't want to move. Didn't want to break the spell the night had woven between their bodies, their breaths, their silences.
But the world was already knocking at the edges.
Emails waited. The Paris offer loomed. Julian's words lingered in the cracks—"I hope, for your sake, he's worth it."
She ran a finger down Daniel's arm, tracing the line of his muscle, the faint scar near his elbow. Proof of the life he lived before her, outside of her. She would never know it all. And yet… she had painted him from the inside out.
And maybe that mattered more than knowing everything.
He stirred, a low hum escaping his throat as he blinked into the morning.
"Hey," he murmured, voice rough with sleep.
She smiled. "Hey."
For a while, they didn't speak. Just lay there, breathing into each other's warmth.
But the quiet carried weight now. Not distance—decision.
"You're thinking about Paris," he said finally.
She nodded.
"I'm not going to ask you to stay," he added. "But I won't pretend it doesn't scare the hell out of me."
She shifted closer, head resting against his chest. "It scares me too. Not the offer. But what it asks me to leave behind."
His fingers slid into her hair, anchoring her gently. "You wouldn't be leaving me. You'd be following the part of you that's always been waiting to fly."
"What if I lose you in the clouds?" she whispered.
Daniel pulled back just enough to meet her eyes. "You won't. I know what it feels like to be lost. You've never made me feel that."
Tears pressed behind her eyes—unwelcome, but true. "I don't want to choose."
"Then don't," he said. "Just go. And come back. If that's what you want."
Her lips parted. "What if what I want is both?"
He smiled, and there was sadness in it. But pride too. "Then we'll find a way."
---
By late afternoon, she was packing canvases and sketchbooks, her agent already buzzing about flight options and gallery contracts. Daniel stayed, helping her with the ease of someone who understood what mattered—without needing to compete with it.
When she paused, hands still on a stack of brushes, he came up behind her.
"Paint everything," he said softly, "but don't forget to live it too."
She turned, kissed him like it was the beginning of something—not the end.
"I'm not done painting you," she whispered.
"Good," he replied. "I'm not done becoming the man you see in those strokes."