There was something solemn about Jude, now, and Kieran didn't know what he had done to cause it. Maybe it would add to the mood of the painting, which was — already so permeated with yearning that Kieran thought it would be abundantly obvious to anyone who so much glanced at it. There was a reason he didn't show people his sketches of Jude. It felt abundantly obvious to him that Jude was his favorite subject, any time he looked at his art.

So his gut response, the instinctual thing he wanted to say when Jude asked about seeing the painting, was of course no. But he couldn't very well say that when he'd talked Jude into giving him his whole afternoon.


"Yeah," Kieran said, "You can see it after."

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