“Come on,” she coaxed, tugging him down the ramp into her chaos.

He hesitated, feeling the pressure of the preparations he needed to make. But he’d always wanted this. He’d always wanted to see how the magic came to be.

“I’ll even let you pick the song,” she said, positioning him on a paint-splattered stool off to the side of the easel. She handed over her phone and pointed him in the direction of her music app.

He watched her as she pushed the canvas she’d been working on out of the way, replacing it with a fresh canvas.

The drop cloth on the floor wrinkled under her bare feet as she worked her hair into a high knot.

“Did you pick a song yet?” she asked.

He shook his head. “You choose.”

“Gentleman’s choice,” she insisted. “What song makes you think of summers here?”

Inspiration struck. He typed it in with a quirk of his lips and hit play.

“Nice choice,” she said with a sly smile as Neil Young began to sing about harvest moons.

“We danced to this at your sister’s wedding,” he said.

“I know. Crank it loud.”

He did as he was told and watched as she began to sway to the beat. “Good song,” she said again, her body seeming to loosen with every note.

She didn’t reach for a brush immediately. Instead, he watched as she started organizing colors. Pinks, reds, oranges. Cocking her head at the ceiling, she added blue and purple.

He watched in fascination, wishing he could see what she saw. Wished he could be inside her head. Maybe then he’d finally feel close enough to her.

She danced and hummed and swayed to the song as she organized her tools. Brushes, palette knives, jars of cleaner. Her palette was a thin slice of acrylic stained from all the other music, all the other paintings. A rainbow-colored echo of creativity.

Brick watched as Remi dribbled the colors one by one onto the palette and then dragged a long thin brush through the orange and white, swirling until the color got lighter and lighter.

He held his breath as she stretched her arm toward the snowy white canvas. The clean, blank space. With a deft flick of her healed wrist, she swooped a four-inch swatch of tangerine across the white. Just like she’d done with his life, his blank canvas, she added color, layering it, texturing it, turning the void into something more beautiful than he could have imagined.

It was like witnessing a miracle unfold.

His hands fisted on his knees. He wanted to be part of the miracle. Needed to touch her. He rose without making the decision to and closed the distance between them.

It hit him when he saw the painting straight on.

She put the palette down and cocked her head, studying what she’d created so far.

“It’s like the one upstairs.” His voice was hoarse.

She stood there in his t-shirt, looking smug. “Of course it is. It’s the same song. I’m just a lot more talented now.”