I wasn’t expecting her to cry. I knew the song was really intense and emotional, which is why I’d never sung it to anyone before, but Ella’s not a crier and her tears only added beauty to the moment.

I hold on to her as the sun disappears behind the mountains and the room shifts to a dark gray, the lamp the only source of light in the room. Finally her tears subside and she moves away from my chest. Her eyes are red and puffy as she dabs her fingers across her cheeks. “So what did you find in my mom’s journal?” she asks.

I raise my eyebrows. “You want to read it now? I thought you wanted to wait?”

She brushes her hair out of her face. “I guess so, since you said I had to read them before the wedding and it’s tomorrow.”

I smile as she traces the cursive lines of the tattoo on my rib cage. “Tomorrow and you’re all mine.”

Her lips itch to smile as she stares down at the tattoo. “I think I was yours a long time ago.”

“You think so?”

“No, I know so, at least I do now.” She tilts to the side and grabs the journal off my nightstand and then hands it to me. “Will you read it to me… the page you said I need to read?”

I nervously nod, hoping she’ll take what I read as a good thing, and then I lie us down on our sides, facing each other with our heads on the pillow and our legs tangled together underneath the sheet. Her fingers fold around my ribs as I hold the journal up, turning it to the page that I marked. “I think it’s the vows she wrote right before she married your dad.”

“Really?” She seems shocked. “Are you sure they’re her vows, because it didn’t seem like she was too eager to marry him.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure this is about your dad, since it says To Raymond on the top,” I say with a smile. “And it’s nice, what she wrote. Short and simple, but nice.”

“Is that how our vows are going to be?” she asks, peeking up through her long lashes, giving me a hopeful look.

“They can be however you want them to be,” I reply. “And if you still want to back out, you can.”

“No thanks.” She nestles her head into the crook of my shoulder. “ ’K, I’m ready. Read what she wrote.”

I take a deep breath.