“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?”
