Page 131 of In Somnis

“Dreams,” he says sagely.

“Ridge.”

“I was actually thinking more like this.” He turns his hands over once, and when he turns them back, the nails are black and white, not in my clean geometric shapes, but in a more checkerboard pattern.

I look at them. Then at the polish I just spent twenty minutes carefully applying, currently sitting in a neat row beside us.

“You could have done that yourself.”

I have never wanted to throw someone into space more.

He grins, and it’s the most genuinely delighted I’ve seen him look. “Yep. It’s a dream.” He stands, brushing petals off his jeans, and reaches down to pull me up beside him. “You can be whoever you want to be in here. Look however you want. Change anything.” His short beard thickens, turns enormous, and spills down his chest, making me laugh. Then it’s gone, but there’s a mess of short red curls on his head now that are so spectacularly wrong for him that I have to press my hand over my mouth.

“Stop,” I choke out.

“What?” He flicks one of the curls out of his eyes. “Don’t like it? Oh, wait, I know…” He stretches taller, broader. “You like your men tall, right?”

He grows another few inches just to be obnoxious.

“You’re so annoying.”

He shifts again, and suddenly Nevan is standing in front of me. Freckles. Tousled dark blond hair. That stupid sunshine grin, but his eyes are all wrong. Blue.

My face heats anyway at the reminder that Ridge has seen me kiss him in my dream.

“You’re such an asshole, you know that?” I snap and shove him hard, both palms flat against his chest.

He laughs—Ridge’s laugh, low and rough—coming out of Nevan’s mouth, which is deeply unsettling.

Then he flickers back to himself in one smooth, almost lazy motion. Hair settling into the loose bun. Beard trimmed. Dark eyes amused.

And God help me, he’s hot.

“Your turn,” he says.

“Absolutely not.”

“Come on.” He tilts his head. “You’re wasting premium dream real estate.”

I hesitate, but then shrug. “I always wanted to know if strawberry blonde was my color.”

It happens immediately when I think about it, my hair shifting in my peripheral vision, lighter, warmer, and faintly reddish in the starlight. Ridge reaches out before I can look down at it and catches a strand between his fingers, rubbing it once like he’s testing the texture.

My heart does an embarrassing flip, making the dreamscape flicker, barely a tremor, but I feel it. So does he.

His eyes lift to mine, and there’s that smirk again. “No,” he says. “Blonde.” He lets the strand go. “Blondie.”

“Don’t call me that.”

He grins, letting me know he will absolutely continue calling me that.

I turn my hair back without another word, but when I glance down at myself and think about what I could do with my outfit, the old, ugly feeling creeps in. That familiar pull, the one that shows up uninvited in dressing rooms, photographs, and any mirror that catches me from the wrong angle.

Before I can stop myself, my waist pulls in. My stomach smooths. The soft places tighten, reshaping into something smaller. Something prettier.

“No.” His hands are on my face before I even register that he moved. “Don’t.”

“Why?” I ask when he brings my gaze up to his, and I hate that my voice comes out thinner than I meant it to. I hate that I sound caught.