"This," Emma whispered. "You're the warmest color I've ever known."

Emma didn't answer. She just picked up her brush and painted a single stroke across Adèle’s palm. Not on skin—on the canvas of the moment itself.

Years later, Emma would become a painter known for her use of color—specifically, the way she could make blue feel like a fever, a promise, a wound. Critics would ask where she found her inspiration.

She would just smile and say, "A Tuesday. A bookstore. A girl who needed an outlet."

Adèle looked down at the imaginary paint on her hand, then back at Emma. Her eyes were the color of a stormy sea, but in the dim light of the studio, they burned like the heart of a flame.