“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this,” Noah said, trying to comfort me.

“Oh Noah.” I cried into his chest and found I couldn’t stop.

We’d been sitting in the waiting area for about twenty minutes. My flight was in an hour. I was all checked in, just waiting for the flight to be announced so I could board, so I could board and leave like I’d never been here.

“Brooke, look at me.”

I lifted my head. “Noah, why don’t I feel like I’m doing the right thing? This was supposed to happen. I was supposed to go home on this day, and get back to my life. I don’t just miss them. This feels like something else. I want to make sure Aria has everything she needs to get all she wants. I want to be there when she needs to talk about boys and makeup and magazines, and…God, I want Ryan.”

Noah frowned at me. “Then what are we doing here?”

I shook my head at him. “I…I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know.”

“Have you thought about the situation and everything?”

“Yes. Maybe …I think I have.”

“Well, I can’t tell you what to do. You have to do what feels right.” We’d talked about this already. Like Sally, Noah hadn’t told me what to do. I suspected it was because this was the sort of thing that was difficult to advise someone on.

“I just don’t know, Noah.”

He sighed and gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “Why don’t you open Ryan’s gift? Maybe that will cheer you up.”

I didn’t think anything could cheer me up, but I’d try it. Ryan’s present felt like a book.

I tore at the beautiful wrapping paper and gasped when I saw a little notebook. It was a book, indeed, but it was one of his notebooks. I’d seen it before.

This was his Brooke 101 book.

I opened it and gasped when I saw the first page. He’d crossed out Brook 101 and written just above it:

My heart stilled. It stopped beating within the walls of my chest, and I couldn’t breathe. I’d seen him with this book a few times but had never looked inside it after seeing it that first time. I’d gotten lost in the joke about our 101 courses.

A tear ran down my cheek when I flipped the page and started reading all he’d listed.

1. I’ve decided Brooke’s not on drugs.

2. Brooke likes sex on the beach with a dash of a screaming orgasm

3. Brooke’s the most kind-hearted person I’ve ever met. She always thinks of others first, before herself.

4. I love her Brookisms and how she thinks I’m half monk. Who talks like that? Lol.

5. Brooke healed my broken heart. I’ve known heartbreak enough to destroy my soul and leave me lost in the wind not knowing if I was coming or going. Then I met her and she fixed me. She healed my heart and it started beating again. I felt it the first time I saw her coming down the hill in that God awful car.

I stopped reading and brought my hand to my heart as the darkness over my mind started to fade. It receeded to the back of beyond and love filled me.

I continued to read on, taking in everything Ryan had learned about me. All that he loved about me.

Everything he wrote was beautiful. But the last thing tapped into that void in my soul, just like that first night I fell for him.

101. I love the way you came into my life and gave me the honor of knowing you. The real you, the one I can compare to a summer’s day. I love the way you loved Aria and treated her like she was yours. I love all that you are and best of all that there are more than 101 things I love about you. To know you is to love you and I knew I had to let you go because that was what you needed. But really I just wished I could have asked you to stay. To stay in my life for me because I love you.

I stood up immediately.

This felt wrong because it was wrong. God, it was all wrong—all of it.

And I was an idiot.

“Brooke, you okay?” Noah asked.

“No.I’m not.”

Sally’s words screamed in my head. Be true to myself and true to my heart.

For that to happen I knew I had to answer this very simple question.

When I looked ahead to the future, could I see my life without Ryan?

It was the key question, that summed it all up and the answer was no.

I couldn’t imagine a world without him. I couldn’t imagine living without him. I didn’t want to. The feeling that brewed deep within burst inside me and filled me with new life and suddenly I wasn’t scared anymore.

I didn’t want to be.

Falling in love was like a story where anything could happen. Like a favorite book you never wanted to end. Our story didn’t have to end.

“Brooke.” Noah rested his hands on my shoulders and gave me a little shake. “Talk you’re freaking me out.”

“Noah, please take me back. Take me back home.”

“Home?”

“I need to get back to Ryan and Aria. He’s right. Aria does feel like mine. My daughter. They both feel like mine. I need to tell him how I feel and that I love him too. I don’t care about anything else. I’m so crazy stupid Noah. How could I leave them? Please take home.”

He started to laugh, then he looked ahead at something and smirked. His brows rose like he was surprised but there was a twinkle within his eyes.

“You know how I said I was going to love watching things play out with you over the next few months?”

I smacked him in his chest. “This is not the time to be funny with me Noah. I am being serious.”

“Me too. I love how it ended. Played out well.” He laughed and turned me around.

My heart skittered to a stop and my jaw dropped open when my eyes landed on Ryan standing only paces away from us.

The look of awe and adoration on his face told me he’d heard me. He’d heard all that I said.

“This guy’s alright in my book and I’ve decided it’s not karma that brought you two together. It was fate.” Noah laughed again.

I was listening but I couldn’t answer. I was too fixated on the man before me.

The man who stole my breath away from the first time that I saw him and the man that healed my heart and soul.

When he looked at me it was like the world stopped and we were the only two people left on earth.

My heart moved me to him. It propelled me straight into his arms. Straight to his heart where I knew I would feel his love forever.

I actually knew it, and knew more as he held me tight like he never wanted to let go of me.

“I love you.” He whispered into my ear. “I came to tell you I love you. It’s different to say it. I wanted you to remember me saying it to you.”

I Iooked up at him, gazing deep into his eyes that took me back, once again to the beautiful sea of the Santorini coast.

“I love you Ryan.” I told him, words from my heart and my soul. “I love you too and I don’t want to live without you.”

He smiled when I said that.

“Then stay in my life. Don’t leave me.”

“I will stay. I’m never leaving you ever again. I’m so sorry. I was scared and it made me freak out and almost lose you. It’s just all that happened to me in the past. I thought it would kill me if the day came and you didn’t want me anymore.”

Tears spilled down my cheeks as I said that.

He shook his head at me. “That day won’t come Brooke. I know you, and to know you is to love you. I want you in my life always.”

True, undiluted happiness warmed me from deep within. My spirits soared and every cell inside my body came alive with it.

It felt like sunshine and my spirit soared.

“I want you in my life always too.”

That smile I loved so much came back as he guided my lips to his for a sweet kiss that sealed my soul to his forever.