Page 135 of Summer of Our True Colours

“That was…” I began, shaking my head.

“Too much?”

“Perfect. Just… perfect, Cohen.” I threw myself at him as carefully as I could, and I kissed him as his growl of annoyance at the use of his last name got swallowed up by everything I poured into him and all the love I felt. Even as the taxi driver chuckled from his seat, no doubt taking us in in the rear-view mirror, I didn’t stop.

Couldn’t at that point.

No one had ever made me feel as adored and protected as he did.

The thought of finding more new things about him, day after day, filled me with such giddiness, I couldn’t help the tears that fell as my smile grew against his mouth, and all my dreams of a life filled with an epic kind of love came true far sooner than I ever could have imagined possible.

Henry was right.

It only had to make sense to us.

I had no doubt it always would.

Epilogue

Phoebe

Almost one year later…

“Remind me where you said you want this.” Henry held the bowl of potato salad out in front of him

“Erm.” I glanced around the small garden that looked like something out of Country Living magazine, with its white wooden tables, chairs, and scattering of English country bunting I’d made Henry spend far too long hanging from tree to tree. “Third table on the left. With the other cold foods.”

I turned back to the task in hand before he could respond, which involved tying ribbons into bows around the adult party bags I’d had made up for our guests, who were due to arrive any moment now. My hands had started to shake with the pressure of time running out—pressure no one had applied to this situation other than myself.

Today had to go well. It had all come down to this. The months of stressing, planning, decision making, relocating…

A warm palm glided over my shoulders before I could spiral, the touch now so familiar to my body, it rarely caught me bysurprise anymore. Henry’s hands spent more time on me than off me, and they had for the last twelve months of our lives together.

“Hey,” he said, leaning closer, his whispered words next to my ear. “Breathe, Phoebe.”

I closed my eyes, soaking in the feel of him like I always did, as though I still couldn’t believe being able to call him my own had somehow become my reality. I turned to look up into those dark eyes as he held me with one hand, the potato salad with his other.

His mouth hitched up on one corner. “You’re doing too much again.”

“I am?”

“Mmhmm.”

I sighed. “I just want to make a good impression.”

“On who? They’re our friends and family. They don’t need you to impress them. They already love you.”

“I know, but…” I paused and exhaled slowly, allowing some of the tension in my shoulders to fall away. “This is the first time they’re seeing us like this, in our new home. I want them to love it as much as we do.”

“You give their opinions too much weight. We both agreed we’d stop doing that, remember?”

“Our parents haven’t spent much time together this last year, Henry,” I said, airing my real concerns to him for the first time, because I couldn’t keep them in a moment longer. James and Nina Hyde had welcomed me with open arms from the moment they’d met me, but my parents had been a different story at the start—mainly in part to their separation not long after we’d returned from Mykonos. Belinda and Declan Turner had finally decided to part ways.

It had been exactly what I’d been praying for in secret for years, and after losing my grandpa—the man who’d taught meso much in life before that terrible disease robbed him from me, only weeks after landing back in England—Mum had realised life was too short to be existing in the mediocre. I sometimes wondered if seeing me with Henry had been the thing to tip her over the edge once and for all. We’d been unable to stop smiling or keep our hands off each other when I’d introduced him to my parents, that new love of ours a powerful thing that refused to be hidden away, and when tears had formed in Mum’s eyes, I’d wondered if they were tears of happiness for me or sadness that her own love had been extinguished by… life.

“Belinda and Declan love me,” Henry said. “And Nina and James love you. There isn’t anything to worry about.”

“What if my parents argue while they’re here, together but not together now?”

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