She had been working on the same canvas for four months. He had not been allowed to see it.
He stood in the doorway of her studio — turpentine, linseed oil, the north light gone gold at four o'clock — and she watched him look at the painting before he looked at her. That was right. She had known he would.
"Well," he said.
She had nothing to add. She had said everything already, on the canvas.
He crossed the room and stopped just short of the usual distance between them. That small adjustment was the thing she had been building toward without letting herself name it.
"How long did this take you?" He was still looking at the painting.
"The whole winter."
"It shows." He turned. The look on his face was the same one from December — the party where they'd almost — and from January, when he'd called just to talk, and from March, when they'd sat in her car outside the restaurant for an hour because neither of them was ready to go.
Her brush was still in her hand. She set it down on the ledge.
"I've been afraid to come," he said. "In case it changed things."
"Did it?"
He looked at the canvas once more, then at her. The answer had been there so long it was almost tired of waiting.
She felt his thumb against her jaw before she understood he had moved at all.