It was hard and that Elias could acknowledge that without any sort of qualifier made her feel a little lighter. She'd played this conversation up in her head so much that she was relieved that they were able to just get it out and move on. She smiled slowly, albeit a little sadly, at him. "Everything happens for a reason," Daff had always believed in that. All of life's almost maybes were there to help you grow. She'd learned a lot about herself over the last couple of years that she would have never imagined were possible. Daff wasn't sure she would change a single minute of it if it meant she wouldn't be right here, right now.

Even with a collection of broken things in the wake of everything that had happened that Daff still felt responsible for and guilty over, she knew she couldn't change the past. She couldn't fix Noble's financial problems or Irene's broken heart, no matter how much she wanted to be able to do something. There was no use in looking back. All she could do was focus on the future with Elias. She wanted absolutely nothing else, more than anything else she had ever remembered wanting in her entire life. It was hard to sum up just how much she was looking forward to this next chapter, how excited she was to see what forever looked like with him.

"It feels like a different lifetime," she admitted, hoping that made sense. "Sometimes I look at you and I wonder how I had this whole life before you; the colors aren't as bright, like it's some sort of fuzzy dream, and the details aren't as important." The early chapters in the story were just building up to here. It was good that they had opened the book up to look back and understand a bit more about one another, but it didn't change the plot going forward.