Her words pierce at my chest because if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear Ella had written them. But I don’t believe that Ella will run away again. She loves me and I know that, even if she has a hard time expressing her feelings. I know she wants to be with me. She moved the ring to her engagement finger and moved in with me. She won’t run.

She can’t.

I keep reading through and my mom sticks her head into my room to tell me she’s heading out with Thomas to get some dinner.

“Do you want anything?” she asks me.

I shake my head. “No, thanks.”

“Well, there are some leftovers in the fridge if you get hungry,” she says.

“Thanks,” I say and she smiles and then starts to shut the door.

“And Mom?”

She pauses. “Yeah.”

“Thanks for going over to the Daniels’s and doing that,” I say.

She smiles. “No problem. I’m just glad we found you something good to give her.”

“Me too,” I tell her.

When she leaves, I glance at the clock and decide to give Ella fifteen more minutes before I go searching for her. I continue reading the journal, periodically checking the clock. The next several pages are equally depressing and my heart starts to feel heavy in my chest. It’s like I’m reading about a downward spiral, but fortunately I’m the one reading it, not Ella. It was her choice not to, which makes her so much stronger than all this darkness, because she knew it would probably bring her down and she chose not to let it—she chose to be happy.

I’m about to put the journal away when I realize there’s only one more page left and I decide to read it so I can be done with it. But then I’ll have to go and break the news to Ella that I couldn’t find anything happy inside the journal. Hopefully it won’t crush her heart.

But as I read over the last page the heaviness dissipates and the words kind of make me smile. After I finish reading it, I get up to go look for Ella because I’m worried about her being gone for so long and because she needs to read this. I put my jacket on and head to the back door where I left my boots, but as I’m crossing the kitchen, the door opens and a breeze gusts inside. Ella enters looking as frozen as a Popsicle, her lips blue, her cheeks kissed pink, and she’s shivering.

She offers me a small smile as she shuts the back door behind her. “Were you going somewhere?” she asks, eyeing my coat as she hugs her sketchbook to her chest.