This Summer Will Be Different(86)

“I want to show you something,” I say when he pulls out of the parking lot. The snow has melted in Toronto, but it still blankets the ground here.

He lifts an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”

“Not like that.” But god, just like that, too. I recite the address from memory.

“Point Prim Road?” Felix asks, confused.

“Point Prim Road. Want me to put it in your phone so you can use the GPS?”

He shakes his head. “I know my way.” He glances at me. “Do you want to fill me in on what this is all about?”

“Not yet.”

I’m too nervous to say much the rest of the drive. When Felix pulls up to my dream, which amounts to little more than a metal gate across a snowy path, I’m breathing heavily. Perspiration beads at my hairline.

“What is this, Lucy?” He looks at me. “Are you carsick? I have a snack bar in here.” He reaches into the center console, but I put my hand on his wrist.

“Let’s take a walk,” I say, digging the book out of my bag.

We get out of the truck. I climb over the gate, and Felix follows.

“I didn’t take you for an outlaw,” he says once we’re walking across the field. Snow crunches under our boots, our words turn to fog from our lips.

“I’m not,” I say. I take a deep breath. “I own this land.”

Felix stops walking. “You what?”

I turn to face him. “I bought it,” I say. “For my farm.”

He blinks like he’s misheard me. “For your farm?”

I nod. “This is the first time I’m seeing it,” I tell him. “I had Zach check it out.”

“You had Zach check it out?”

I nod again. “He’s been really helpful.”

“Zach,” he says slowly. “Has been really helpful. To you. While you were buying a farm. Here. On Prince Edward Island.”

I look around at the plain of white, the snow-covered pines that surround it. “I wouldn’t call it a farm. It’s more of a field, really. But it goes all the way to the ocean.”

“To the strait, you mean.”

I smile because islanders are so particular about how they label bodies of water. “Yes, it goes all the way to Northumberland Strait.”

He still looks stunned. “Why? Why would you do this?”

“Because,” I tell him. “I love Prince Edward Island more than I love anywhere else, and I want to make it my home one day. I want to build a life here. I want to grow flowers here.” Even if Felix doesn’t want to do it with me, this is where I want to be.

Felix is staring at me with big blue eyes, but he hasn’t spoken. Before I lose my courage, I hold the book up. “I brought you something.” I wrapped it in pink paper because this book is a gift as much as it is a message. “I wanted to give it to you in person.”

If I weren’t wearing mitts, Felix would see my fingers tremble when I pass it to him. He pulls off his gloves and removes the paper, turning the novel over in his hands, then looks up at me.

“Anne of the Island?”

“It’s the third one in the series,” I say. I annotated it on the plane, underlined all my favorite parts, wrote notes in the margins for Felix to read.

He tilts his head. His eyes search mine for meaning.

“Have you read it?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “Only Anne of Green Gables.”

“With all the reading you do, you should have finished the complete works of Lucy Maud Montgomery by now.” I tap the cover. “In this book, Anne leaves Prince Edward Island and goes to college in Nova Scotia. Gilbert proposes twice. The first time Anne’s not ready and takes up with a man who is completely wrong for her. In the end, though, she realizes that the island is her home and Gilbert is her true love.”

“Smart woman, that Anne Shirley,” he says, scanning my face.

Nerves zip through my limbs, ripple in my chest. They aren’t going to stop me. I’m afraid, but I’m not going anywhere.

“Felix, I brought you here to tell you that you are in every one of my dreams. I came here to ask whether I’m in any of yours, too.”

I barely have time to register before his mouth is on mine. I rope my arms around his neck, pulling off my mittens so I can slide my hands into Felix’s hair. My fingers curl into the thick strands at the nape of his neck like they’ve always belonged there. His lips are reverent, the most devout kind of worship, as slow and sweet as jam. My lips part and a sob escapes, but it dissolves on Felix’s tongue. Warm like hot honey butter, even in the last weeks of winter. When he pulls back, he rests his forehead on mine.

“All of my dreams, Lucy. Every single one.”

I kiss him again because I’ve missed how he tastes, and I haven’t had nearly enough. One hand tilts my head, the other finds my waist, towing me to him. I melt into his mouth, his chest, his hips, and a familiar growl sounds in the back of his throat. I devour it. I devour him. Felix’s mouth coasts along my jaw.

“I didn’t know if I’d ever feel your skin again,” he rasps against my throat. “I missed you. I missed this neck.”

I take his face in my hands, bring him back to me. “The neck is all yours.”

He runs his nose against mine. A thumb traces my cheek. “I’ve always thought we fit perfectly together,” he says.