I move behind her. Not touching yet. Just close enough to see the tension along her wrist, to feel the heat radiating from her core.
“You’re resisting the fall.” My voice drops.
“I don’t trust it.”
“You don’t have to.”
My hand lifts slightly. Her bow responds.
The line fractures. The sound opens in a way that makes something inside my chest tighten unexpectedly.
For a moment neither of us moves. Then she turns slightly toward me, violin still raised.
“How did you intend it to continue?” she asks breathlessly.
I shake my head, voice hitching in my throat. “I didn’t.”
“You must have.”
“Not on paper.”
She lowers the instrument slowly. “Then how?”
I take a breath. The answer lies somewhere between memory and instinct.
“It interrupts,” I say.
Her eyes soften with recognition. “Yes.” The word is almost a whisper.
We’re standing closer than either of us had noticed.
Her hair has come loose from the twist at her neck, a few strands falling forward as she adjusts her grip on the violin.
Without thinking, I reach past her to guide the bow again. My hand closes gently over hers. The warmth of her skin is immediate. I shift the angle slightly.
“Here,” I say. My voice comes out darker than I intend.
Her shoulder brushes my chest when she inhales. The contact is brief but unmistakable. Like a frisson of sparks.
She plays the transition again. The note fractures exactly where it should. The sound hangs between us.
Our breathing falls into the same rhythm—slow, steady, almost synchronized.
She lowers the violin. Neither of us steps away.
For a moment, the silence feels louder than the music. Her eyes lift to mine. There’s curiosity there. Something softer, too.
The distance between us has narrowed to almost nothing.
I become acutely aware of the warmth of the room—like sunshine piercing a blizzard. The faint scent of rosin, pine smoke, and lilacs winds around me. The quiet rise and fall of her breath a new tempo.
If I move an inch closer…
It hits like ice in the chest. How intimacy collapsed my life before.
I step back.
The moment breaks cleanly. I clear my throat and turn toward the stove. “That passage will take work,” I say.
