“He dreamed about that girl, lived for her smile and the moments he caught sight of her. She kept him dreaming, kept him hopeful and believing there might be good in the world. That someday, he might have a friend again. Every time the boy drifted too far into the cold and distant place where he couldn’t be reached, she’d come and smile and yank him back into the world.”

I squeeze his hands and let him know I understand. He presses another kiss to my palm.

“Then the girl said she was going to marry the boy’s brother. And since the boy had loved the girl for years and would go on loving her for the rest of his life, he decided to stop her.”

“Thank goodness,” I say.

“Thank goodness,” he agrees. “Because I knew from the minute I laid eyes on you, that you and I were meant to be.”

My heart feels so happy and so full.

“We made it,” he says. “We should be friends.”

My breath catches in my throat. “What did you say?”

He nods, and his eyes are a clear chicory blue. “We can take care of each other.”

My body tingles as I take in what he’s saying. It’s not the boy in my memory saying it, it’s Will.

“You?” I ask.

The side of his mouth lifts up in a half-smile. Then he opens the drawer of his nightstand and pulls out a leather-bound book. He opens it to the center page and holds it up to me.

It’s the chicory flower, dried and faded with time, but there it is—the flower I gave…to him. To Will.

“It was you?”

He sets the book aside and pulls me into his lap on the floor.

All those years I’d thought the boy in the tree was Gavin, and it was Will.

He sets his forehead to mine and looks into my eyes.

“You’ve loved me from the first,” I say. My voice is full of awe.

“And you’ve always loved me,” he says, a smug note in his voice. His lower lip curls into a smile and I think about kissing him.

“But your dad called for Gavin and you ran…I thought…I…” All these years.

It was Gavin who pushed me in the mud. It was Will who was in the tree.

Will quirks an eyebrow. “Whenever my dad called one of us, he expected both of us to come. I never said my name was Gavin.”

My cheeks heat. All these years. A thought strikes me.

“Erma was right! You’re my soul mate.”

Will shakes his head. “We were right. We knew it twenty years ago. We just had to figure some things out between then and now.”

I smile and rub my hand down his cheek. “Like what?”

“Like what books we love.”

I curl into his warm chest. “Mhm.”