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“Can you…” My voice disappears.

Adrien turns his head toward me and asks softly, “Can I what, baby?”

I swallow down the worry. “Could you… do mine?”

“All of them?” he asks, voice low.

I drop my gaze to my knees. “Maybe.”

“We can stop whenever you want.”

I nod once, sharply.

Adrien turns to get in a better position for what I’ve asked of him. “Which color?”

My fingers reach out almost on their own, brushing against the cool glass of the lavender bottle. “The same.”

A small, quiet smile touches his mouth. “Matching.”

Heat rises in my cheeks. “If that’s okay.”

“Kammie, I’m sitting here with lavender fingernails already. I think matching is more than okay.”

I extend my left hand toward him. It shakes slightly, a fine tremor running through my fingers.

Adrien takes it carefully in his left hand, opening the bottle with the other. The brush emerges, wet and gleaming with pale purple polish.

It moves toward my thumbnail, and I flinch—a tiny, involuntary recoil that I have no control over.

Adrien stops. “Look at me.”

I drag my eyes from the brush to his face.

“What happens if you want me to stop?”

“I tell you.”

“And what happens then?”

“You stop.”

“Exactly.” His thumb strokes once across the center of my palm, a slow, grounding pressure. “Nothing bad happens either way.”

I take another shaky breath and nod, looking back at the brush. “Okay.”

He brings it to my nail again. One slow stripe down the center. Then another alongside it. Then careful strokes along the edges until the entire nail is covered in a smooth, glossy layer.

In just a few minutes, I’m looking down at ten little lavender nails. I spread my fingers, admire them from different angles.

I don’t feel ten.

I don’t feel stupid.

I don’t feel wrong.

I just feel—

Pretty.