The apartment felt too big without him.
Amelia didn't light candles anymore. She painted with the curtains open, letting Paris's cold gray bleed into every corner. She didn't stop creating—but the colors changed. Bolder, sharper. Less longing. More defiance.
In the week after Daniel left, she finished three pieces. None of them were of him.
But he was everywhere.
The way the brush hesitated before touching canvas. The way she stared too long at her phone, rereading messages that had long since dried up like old paint. She didn't text him. She didn't call. He hadn't either.
It wasn't silence. It was restraint.
Because if she reached out, she knew she'd never let him go again. And she wasn't ready to ask him to give up everything—for her.
---
She met with a Berlin curator over lunch. Took a call from an American magazine. Posed for a photo shoot in her studio with unbrushed hair and paint under her nails. People called her fearless.
They didn't know she cried when she rinsed his coffee mug.
They didn't know her most intimate self had been poured into someone who now existed oceans away.
She was building the life she'd dreamed of. But she couldn't stop asking herself: at what cost?
---
One night, just past midnight, she stood before the sketch she'd given him—the version she had kept for herself.
She whispered to the empty room, "What if I made a mistake?"
She didn't expect an answer.
But when the knock came, she froze.
Barefoot, paint-streaked, heart thundering—she opened the door.
Daniel stood there, soaked from the rain, duffel bag over his shoulder, eyes like the storm he'd walked through.
"I couldn't stay gone," he said. "I kept waking up without you and it felt wrong."
She stared at him, chest tight. "I didn't ask you to come back."
He stepped inside anyway. "I know. That's why it matters that I did."
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out her sketch—creased at the edges, stained slightly at one corner.
"I kept it by my bed every night. But it wasn't enough. I need the artist. I need you."
She touched his face, real and wet and warm. "You left."
"I know," he said. "But I came back. Not because you asked. Because I choose you. Even if it complicates everything."
She closed her eyes and exhaled the breath she'd been holding since he left.
Then whispered, "So do I."
---