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"You look beautiful."

"You should be sleeping."

"You're crying."

"I'm leaving."

"I know."

"Are we sure this is what we want to do?"

"I think it's what we have to do. It makes the most sense, doesn't it?"

"Nothing ever made sense until you."

"You had a valedictorian medal hanging from your rearview mirror and a scholarship when you met me, so some things must have made sense."

"I'm trying to express my feelings."

"I'm trying not to fall apart."

Erin blinks awake, her chest aching and her head pounding. She wipes at her blurry eyes and feels the wet press of tears that she must have cried in her sleep. Letting out a staggered breath, she glances to the space beside her.

He's still asleep, and Erin breathes a sigh of relief before slipping quietly out of bed.

Grabbing her fluffy robe from the hook on the bathroom door, she pulls it on over her pajama pants and t-shirt and then makes her way through the loft to the kitchen. A soft moan crawls up from her throat as she brews a pot of coffee and lets the aroma filter in, and once she has dropped in a few teaspoons of sugar, Erin carries the coffee with her to the far side of the loft. She knows she won't be getting any more sleep tonight.

The sectioned-off studio is accessed through a large, sliding metal door that Erin keeps locked with a padlock, for which only she has a key. She grabs her key ring from the shelf near the door and selects the small silver key. Once the door is unlocked, she slides it open and breathes in the smell of paint and oil and charcoal. It's a comfort unlike any other.

The dream, or rather, the memory, is still fresh in her mind, tugging at places inside her that only a pencil or a paintbrush has ever been able to reach, and Erin knows she has to get it out.

She pulls her messy blonde hair up into a tangled ball on the back of her head and secures it with one of two bands she keeps on her left wrist. Once it is out of her face, Erin drops onto her stool in front of a clean canvas and reaches for a brush.

All her strokes are black and white, mixing into shades of gray—the curves of bare hips, the shadows in the dip of a strong back, the small swells of toned calves, and the sharp angles of shoulder blades; the cascading falls of bed-mussed hair. She can sometimes still feel the ghosts of those tendrils between her fingers. A thin yellow glow, peeking through the large paneled windows where fingertips press and breath fogs, is the only touch of color.

The sound of knuckles rapping against the metal door pulls Erin back to reality, and she wipes quickly at her wet cheeks, accidentally streaking them with paint. She slips off her stool and pads to the door, only letting it slide a foot or so open before she squeezes through and pulls it shut behind her. No one has seen the inside of her studio in years, not since it was a bedroom.

"Hey," she sighs, glancing to the large clock on the far wall. Quarter past four. She has been at it for hours.

"Hey," Finn rasps, his voice heavy with sleep. He wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her in for a hug that Erin can't bring herself to sink into, not now, not with that image still seared into her mind. Chuckling, he rubs his thumb over a gray streak on her cheek. "Midnight inspiration again?"