16. The Canvas Between Us #2
Mirrors flatten people. Cameras freeze them between blinks. They capture structure, not truth.
Bliss has somehow painted the spaces between those things.
The tiredness around my eyes isn't hidden behind a practiced smile.
The careful restraint I carry into every room isn't discipline here. It's kindness held so tightly it has become part of my face.
She found the grief too. Not as something broken. As something I chose to carry because putting it down would have meant leaving Thandiwe behind.
And beneath all of it, she painted hope.
Quiet. Uncomplicated. Still alive.
"I've never seen myself," I hear myself say.
Bliss says nothing. She doesn't need to. The portrait answers for her.
"I remember the gallery," she says softly. "I remember wondering why one face refused to leave my mind. I painted you over and over, thinking I was trying to solve a composition."
She smiles.
"I was trying to solve my heart."
My eyes close briefly.
"Bliss..."
"I remember everything now." Her voice steadies. "The gallery. The painting. You. Every time your face appeared before I even knew your name."
She walks toward me, slowly enough that every step is unmistakably her own choice.
I stay exactly where I am.
Not because I don't want to reach for her.
Because wanting has never been permission.
She stops in front of me and lifts her paint-stained hands to my face. I don't stop her.
"I've been in love with a face in a painting for three years," she whispers. "Now the face has a name."
Every ethical instinct I've lived by rises at once.
"Bliss… You're recovering," I tell her quietly. “I’m not your doctor anymore. Dr. Santos and Dr. Tran are handling your care now, but that doesn’t erase what I was to you inside the institute.”
Her thumbs rest lightly against my jaw.
"You were my rescue."
She holds my gaze without wavering.
"Now be my choice."
The words settle somewhere far deeper than reason.
She's asking as the woman who painted the portrait in Montreal.
As the woman who painted me again today.
As the woman who remembers every piece of herself.
I search her eyes one last time, looking for hesitation.
I don't find any.
Only Bliss.
She lets her hands slip from my face and walks quietly to the door.
The lock turns with a soft click.
When she faces me again, the uncertainty that shadowed her inside the institute is gone.
She chose this room.
She chose this moment.
She is choosing me.
I remain seated on the wooden stool, my hands resting flat on my knees, watching Bliss cross the floor.
Every wall is lined with her canvases, the wet oils catching the low light in strokes of deep crimson, bruised blue, and the warm, bright gold she reclaimed only hours ago.
Between us, a massive canvas drop cloth is spread over the floorboards, splattered with the drops from her frantic, beautiful work, the center still wet with the fresh paint she used to capture my face.
She has yellow on her collarbone, a streak of cobalt along the curve of her ribs where her shirt has parted, and her fingers are stained like a map.
She stops when her knees brush mine.
When she leans down, her mouth finds mine in our first kiss.
For one suspended heartbeat, I barely move. My hands hover at her waist because restraint has become instinct.
Then Bliss kisses me again, deeper this time, answering every question before I can ask it.
She isn't asking to be rescued.
She isn't asking to be protected from herself.
She's simply loving me.
"So careful," she whispers against my mouth.
"You deserve careful."
Her forehead rests against mine for a heartbeat, her green eyes searching mine one final time.
"I choose you, Matthias."
The last thread of restraint inside me finally lets go.
My fingers sink into her wild curly hair as she pushes my jacket off my shoulders and begins undoing the buttons of my shirt, her paint-slick fingers leaving small, chaotic marks of color on my clothes and across my body.
I reach for the hem of her shirt, sliding the fabric up and over her head, then help her step out of her trousers until there’s nothing left between us.
We sink to our knees together on the painted drop cloth, the cool, damp fabric shifting beneath our shins. The scent of turpentine and warm skin fills the space as we touch, our hands tracing paths over shoulders and hips, spreading the wet pigments of cobalt, gold, and red across our skin.
I watch the colors blend and smear over her pale curves and my dark thighs, a living canvas created by our contact. Every color that passes between us feels like another piece of Meridian being left behind.
We lay down together on the drop cloth, her back pressing into the colorful chaos below us, her green eyes clear and focused entirely on me.
I lean over her, supporting my weight on my forearms, and enter her slowly. I make love to her with a gentle, reverent patience, guiding my hips into hers with a quiet respect for everything she has survived and everything she is reclaiming.
But the slow rhythm isn’t what she wants now.
Bliss wraps her legs tightly around my hips, her heels digging into my back as she arches off the drop cloth, demanding a harder, deep-seated friction.
I pick up the pace, my thrusts turning heavy and urgent, driving into her as the colors on our skin smear into a rich, blurred violet. The friction builds, hot and breathless, until her fingers tighten in my hair and we come together in a sudden, shattering wave of heat.
We do our best with turpentine first, laughing as the paint proves more stubborn than either of us expected. Even so, streaks of blue, yellow, and red cling to our skin.
Later, we stand together beneath the warm spray of the shower, the water carrying the last traces of color toward the drain. I use my soapy palms to coax the stubborn yellow from her collarbone while she scrubs the blue from my chest.
"You've been blue long enough," she murmurs.
I smile.
Neither of us hurries.
Neither of us speaks for a while.
The silence isn't empty anymore.
It's full.
I pull her close against my wet skin, her cheek resting against my throat, and finally tell her the truth I've carried since I first saw her across a crowded gallery in Montreal.
"I loved your paintings," I whisper.
She tilts her head.
"No."
I brush a damp curl behind her ear.
"I loved the woman who painted them."
Her eyes search mine.
"For three years?"
"For three years."
Fresh tears mingle with the water running down her face as she smiles.
"I think," she whispers, "I loved the man in my painting just as long."
Outside, the recovery floor remains quiet.
Inside, two people who found each other first on canvas finally stop living across one.