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“Are you telling me you’re not confident enough in your masculinity to wear nail polish?”

“Oh, I’m confident in my masculinity,” he says. “I canshow you just how confident I am, I just don’t need pink nail polish to prove it.”

I tilt my head, batting my eyelashes with mock innocence. “Oh, come on… pretty please?”

He sighs, shaking his head like it’s some tremendous sacrifice, but I catch the softening in his gaze, the warmth he can’t quite hide. “Alright, alright. Enough. You need to rest.”

I blink at him, wide-eyed and innocent. “Is that a yes? You’ll let me paint your nails?”

He cringes, exasperation and amusement warring in his expression. “If I say yes, can we please stop talking about it?”

I nod eagerly, my smile too bright to conceal. “Deal.”

He sighs. Dramatically. “Fine. Yes. But…”

I don’t let him finish. I’m already out of bed before he can stop me.

“Blair…” he warns.

“Don’t move.”

He just chuckles.

I cross the room and pull open the dresser drawer where he leaves his things. I grab one of his white shirts, oversized, smelling like soap and him, and slip it on without thinking. It hangs off my frame, brushing the tops of my thighs.

I return thirty seconds later, slightly breathless, holding a tiny bottle of hot pink nail polish.

Calvin raises a brow. “Blair.”

“I won’t spill it.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about.”

I crawl into his lap, settle there like it’s home. “Give me your hands.”

He groans but gives them to me anyway, palms down, fingers long and calloused.

I unscrew the cap and start with his left thumb. The contrast is almost too much to handle, his too-big, rough handagainst the bright, pink polish. My tiny hand wrapped around his. His forearms flexing every time I paint too close to his skin.

And still, he lets me.

Lets me paint each nail carefully, one by one, while I sit in his lap with the kind of trust that only comes from things we won’t say out loud.

“I feel like you’re trying to humiliate me.”

I grin.

“I would never. Trust me, pink is so your color.”

“Liar.”

Still, he doesn’t stop me.

I finish one hand and gently blow across his knuckles to help them dry. He watches the way my mouth shapes the air, his eyes dark with something I don’t dare name.

“You know,” I murmur, moving to his other hand, “you’re a really good canvas.”

“That supposed to be a compliment?”