He loved her in silence

She thought he felt nothing… until the day she learned he had felt everything.

She thought he felt nothing... until the day she learned he had felt everything.
Ethan Ward mastered the art of pretending--until the day life stopped giving him tomorrows.
Ethan Ward had loved Amelia Grant for as long as he could remember. Not with fireworks or dramatic declarations--his love lived quietly, tucked inside him like a fragile secret. Every night, after classes, he wrote about her in a small leather diary no one knew about. He wrote about the way her laughter felt like sunlight, about how she pushed her hair behind her ear when she got shy, about how her voice could soften even the worst of his days.
But in front of her, he acted like he didn't care at all.
Whenever Amelia asked, "Ethan, are you alright?" he would shrug and say, "Yeah, just tired," even though his heart was begging to tell her everything. He made jokes, teased her, rolled his eyes when she worried about him. And she believed him--because Ethan was good at pretending. Sometimes he fooled even himself.
They spent their days walking to university together, sharing coffee, sitting on the same bench every morning. Everyone around them assumed there was nothing between them,
Amelia said softly, "You matter to me, Ethan," he would laugh it off with, "Don't be silly."
But at night, in his diary, he wrote:
"If she ever said that again... I think my heart would stop."
He wrote so many things he never dared to say out loud.
The day everything changed, it was raining. Amelia waited on their bench, tapping her foot, checking her messages. Ethan wasn't late--he never was--but her calls went to voicemail, her texts stayed unread. That uneasy feeling grew heavier by the minute.
By evening, she found out from Ethan's younger brother that he had been rushed to the hospital early in the morning. A heart condition. One he had known about for months. One he never told her about.
Amelia ran through the corridors with her heart in her throat, but she was too late. Ethan had passed away hours before she arrived. No goodbye. No last smile. No chance to ask why he hid his pain behind jokes and eye rolls. Just silence.
The next day, Ethan's mother handed Amelia a small leather diary. "He wanted you to have this," she said gently.
Confused, trembling, Amelia opened it--and her breath broke.
Every page was about her.
"I love her more than she'll ever understand."
"I pretend not to care because I don't want to lose her."
"I wish I could tell her the truth, but I don't want my feelings to ruin what we have."
Her tears fell onto the ink, smudging the words written with so much hope and so much pain. Then she reached the last page, dated a week before he died.
"If anything happens to me, I hope she remembers me on sunny days.
She doesn't know, but she's the best part of my life.
If she ever reads this... I hope she knows she was my favourite chapter."
Amelia closed the diary and pressed it against her heart as if holding it tightly could bring him back. Her voice cracked as she whispered into the quiet room, "Ethan... you idiot. Why didn't you tell me? I loved you too..."
She broke down completely. The kind of crying that shakes the whole body. The kind that comes when love arrives too late.
Now, every morning, she returns to their bench. She places the diary beside her and reads a page, pretending he's still sitting there, teasing her, pretending not to care. But now she knows the truth, and knowing hurts more than anything.
The boy who hid his heart in a diary died with her name on the last line.
"Some people leave quietly, but the echoes of their love never fade."
"He left the world, but his words stayed behind to teach her what she meant to him."