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“I have something for you,” he said. He gave me a flat package wrapped in brown paper that he had stashed under the blanket.

I wiped under my eyes. “What is this?”

“It’s something I want you to have. I marked where you should start, but you can read anything you want.”

“You got me a book?”

“It’s a story, yes.”

I sniffed. “Okay.” I tucked it under my arm.

“If you start now, you’ll be done by the time I get out.” He put a hand on top of mine, which was clutching the rail of his gurney. “I love you,” he said. “I’m always going to love you. No matter what.”

Then they wheeled him through the doors, and he was gone.

I didn’t want to go sit with my mom and Zander and Alexis in the waiting room. I needed a minute alone. So I followed signs for the hospital chapel and took a seat in a pew.

It was serene and quiet. There was a large blue stained-glass window over a small altar. Flowers. Nobody else was in the room, which was good because I was probably going to cry here since I couldn’t seem to stop.

I set the package Jacob gave me on my lap and stared at it blankly.

It had a brown hemp string around it. I took the end in two fingers and pulled and pried the paper off. It was a notebook.

It was a journal.

His journal.

“Oh my God…” I whispered, picking it up.

It was his diary. Why?

I ran a finger over the brown leather. It had his initials pressed into the cover. The leather was soft from handling and the whole thing felt almost warm in my hand, like the hours he spent with it absorbed him.

I opened it to the page with a green Post-it sticking out. It said, This is the day I met you. Start here.

He wanted me to read his diary.

I was breathless.

I couldn’t read this. It felt like a violation. These were his most private thoughts in here, this was more invasive than looking at his search history, I couldn’t.

But he wanted me to. I couldn’t give him much right now. I couldn’t make him promises or even promise that one day I could. But at least this I could do. So I opened it to the page he marked, steadied myself, and started to read.

It was a love story. Our love story.

The day he met me and the first time he laid eyes on me.

…She was so beautiful it caught me by surprise. I just stood there, I forgot what I was even doing…

He wrote about how shocked he was when I told him to bring cupcakes and how grateful he felt. The way his mood lifted when I replied to his first letter. Then a recap of every letter I wrote him and how they made him feel. How he cherished every single one and he had them saved in a special drawer in his desk.

The time I DM’d him on Instagram and then talking to me on a patio in the rain—He sat in the rain? Just to talk to me? He’d been eaten alive by mosquitoes. I remembered that, seeing all the bites on his arms. He didn’t tell me.

I laughed when he talked about how he’d obsessed for hours about what to eat in the supply closet with me. Then it was the moment he decided to donate his kidney to Benny, and how he did it for me. Not Joy. Not Benny. For me.

…Seeing her so happy when she heard the news made everything I’ll go through worth it for that one moment alone…

He wrote about how his heart raced every time he saw me across the ER or every time I touched him, how hard it was to pretend he wasn’t falling in love with me.