I was impatient to know what was going on with Elliot. After brunch, we all sat down to open gifts.

"No way." My mom said as she saw the cruise ticket for the coming summer and she looked at Elliot.

"Hope you liked it." He said, nervously.

"Of course." Dad said. "We hoped you like your gifts too."

"I did." He said looking at the jersey of one of his favourite basketball player. He seemed thrilled by that.

"Can I steal Everly for a quick moment?" Elliot asked my parents, ignoring Cole and Abby who was opening their gifts.

"Yes, go ahead." Mom said as Elliot give me a hand to stand up.

We walked to my room as he pulled me close to him as soon as I shut the door behind me.

"Merry Christmas, baby." He whispered as his forehead touched mine.

"Merry Christmas." I said.

He pulled back as he pulled out a small box from his pocket and said, "I bought you something, but I don't know if you will like it." He said, nervously.

"I am sure, I will love it." I said to him as I unwrapped the box. There sitting in the box was a bracelet, gleaming because of the light from the outside. There were two bracelets, one had Elliot written in cursive and diamond on the name, and the other one had Everly. My mouth dropped opened. This has to be the most expensive gifts I have received and I was very hesitant to accept it.

"I can't." I said.

"I promise that this money, I earned it and not my parents or from the fights." He said.

"You work part-time? That's way too much money for this."

"Part time at my family business." He said. "Please."

I didn't know what to say as he took out his name's bracelet and took my hand as he slid the bracelet in my wrist. He handed me my name's bracelet and was waiting for me to put it on for him.

I took out the bracelet and slide it to his wrist and he smiled, "You never answered me, can I be in your better future?"

"Yes." I said. "But you need to control your money spending though."

He laughed. "I want to give you the world."

"Don't we all want to give the world to the people we love?" I asked.

"Then I should correct and say, I want to give you my world, only you get to come to my world."

I chuckled at his words and hugged him. "I hope you liked my gift, it's not as expensive as this one, but I hope you liked it."

"I loved it." He said as he showed me the necklace on his neck. The necklace was of two leaves together, it was to symbolize Fall, the season that we met.

That night, we went for the gathering at Cole's place, his house was beautiful as expected, the decoration was very expensive and lavish. All the houses in that street had lavish decoration for Christmas. Cole's parents was very welcoming. I expected a lot of people, but it turned out it was just us and Abby's family. They were very down-to-earth and mostly a happy and funny family. They shared memories of them with us and we shared ours.

Elliot pulled me with his to outside. "Where are we going?" I asked as he wrapped me in my down jacket and walked us to the balcony.

We stood in the balcony and I could see the neighbourhood, it was beautiful. I looked at him and he was already smiling at me as he took my hand and made me turn to look at him.

"I know, I learnt your secrets through your diary, it was unintentional and it may seem like an excuse but I swear it was unintentional. I want to ask you today, if we can work together in this relationship. Thank you for holding on to us, thank you for holding on to me. I want to share a secret with you."

"What?" I asked confused.

"I love you, I love all of you. I love how strong you were since the beginning, I love how you are trying and living like a strong woman. Your birth parents may have had a reason to give you up, they better had a good reason because they lost someone so beautiful."

My eyes was turning moist because of his words.

"You are loved, you are appreciated by the people around you, you just have to start noticing."

"I-I love you." I said, choking as I fell my tears dropped.

"Shh, don't cry." He said as he wiped my tears. I looked at his eyes and at his lip and stood on my tip toe as I made the first move as I kissed his lip.

Everything around us currently was beautiful and right then, we heard a loud boom and we moved away as we see fire works playing and we chuckled. He pulled me in for another kiss.

He give me a back hug as we watched the firework together.

"I told you I heard something." We heard Abby complaining to most likely to Cole.

Elliot and I give each other a look and laughed at their friendship.

"How do you tolerate her?" Cole asked. "She is annoying."

"Annoying? You love hanging out with annoying people then?"

Cole give her an exasperated look and looked at us. "Did we miss anything?" He asked.

"Not that we know of?" Elliot said.

We were then distracted by more firework and things couldn't have been much more better as I looked at my friends, my family in the room and looked at the guy, who taught me to appreciate everything in life. I am so grateful for meeting him, for knowing him and for loving him and I hope he feels the same for me too.

: ❤️❤️