They didn't fall back into old rhythms.
They created new ones.
Mornings started slowly. No alarms. Just soft limbs tangled under linen sheets, sunlight slipping over skin, coffee brewed with quiet care. Daniel took up a corner of her studio, sketching while she painted—two artists working in parallel, neither intruding, both expanding.
It wasn't perfect.
Sometimes they fought.
Over space. Over silence. Over the fear neither of them knew how to name.
But when they did, it wasn't explosive—it was honest.
"I'm scared I'll need you too much," she told him once, standing barefoot in the kitchen.
He looked at her for a long moment before saying, "Then we'll learn what enough means. Together."
---
The Berlin invitation still sat unanswered in her inbox.
So did a request for a solo exhibition in New York.
Her agent wanted answers. But Amelia wasn't rushing anymore.
She was painting something new. Something she hadn't shown anyone. Not even Daniel.
It was large. Nearly six feet tall.
It wasn't a portrait.
It wasn't abstract.
It was them—not as they were, but as they felt.
A tangle of bodies and brushstrokes, colors bleeding together. Messy. Tender. Unfinished.
She didn't know what to call it yet.
But it pulsed when she looked at it.
It lived.
---
One night, she found Daniel sitting at the window, knees pulled up, sketchbook open on his lap.
He didn't hear her at first.
"What are you drawing?" she asked gently.
He turned the book toward her.
It was her—not naked, not posing. Just sitting at the edge of their bed, face half in shadow, paint on her fingertips, looking at something far away.
"She looks like she's holding the whole world inside her," Amelia whispered.
"She is," he said. "She just doesn't know it yet."
---
Later, when they lay in the dark, Amelia traced lazy shapes on his chest.
"Do you ever think," she murmured, "that maybe this is it?"
"What do you mean?"
"This. You. Me. The art. The stillness. That we don't need to chase more."
Daniel turned toward her, hand cradling her cheek.
"I think," he said softly, "that if we stop chasing, we finally get to build."
---