You all have been so wonderful with reviews! I honestly can't thank you enough. Please keep it up! The more reviews, the faster and more inspired I am to write. Please stick with me for the ride that this story will be. I promise that it's all going to be worth it in the end!

I would answer a few questions left in reviews, but I don't want to spoil the story. I'll just say this - Aria isn't being selfish. She has her reasons for acting the way she does...which I'm sure you all are starting to see.

That's about it! Just remember to review! I love seeing what you guys have to say! Following/Favorite-ing is nice too!

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing.


A soft voice floated a delicate "Good morning" through the sticky air of apartment 3B. It was a muggy and hot morning in the midst of August. Ezra could feel a small body curled up against his, their skin sticking together with only a cool sheet covering them both. Soft fingertips traced his lips as he parted them slightly to take a deep breath. A giggle sounded that was unmistakably Aria's. He smiled to himself in his cloudy, sleep-filled haze at the sound, relishing the way he knew her chest moved with a hearty laugh to the bell-like tone.

"Morning," he mumbled, voice thick and somewhat garbled. Ezra tightened his arms around her small frame to hold her closer. Letting Aria go, even in the early hours of the morning when she liked to make coffee, wasn't a viable option to him.

A different sound came from the corner of his apartment. It wasn't Aria's chortling giggle or the rattling of an air conditioner. It pierced the summer air of the apartment with need that couldn't exactly be ignored. Ezra's sleepy eyes remained closed, despite the loud noise. However, Aria's small body wriggled away from his to stand on the small carpet by the side of his bed. "I'll get her," she spoke quietly, pressing a kiss to his temple.

It dawned on Ezra that it was a cry – a baby's cry laced with want for its parents. His eyes flew open, but when they did, his apartment wasn't the same as it had been when they were closed. It wasn't warm and intimate. It wasn't comfortable.

The apartment was barren and cold. Morning sunlight seemed to have been erased within seconds, replaced by a gray downcast sky that blocked light from entering the room. Ezra rubbed his eyes, gaze flitting around the room to find Aria. Perhaps she'd shut the curtains to accommodate the crying infant. But his deep blue orbs couldn't make her slight figure out in the dark. She didn't giggle. The child didn't cry.

Aria was gone, the baby was gone. Everything was gone.

Morning brought along a harsh amount of light, waking Ezra before he was even ready to be awake. His heart was racing under the tight, white tee shirt he'd worn to bed, his dream trapped in the corners of his mind. Aria had been close enough for him to touch, but disappeared the moment he'd opened his eyes. She'd made him let go before he was ready to – his subconscious was imitating his reality. Aria Montgomery had appeared to have pushed Ezra Fitz from her life, even going as far as deleting every photo that she had of them off Facebook.

Ezra's chest seemed to tighten, fraught with denial over the baby he'd found in her arms. It didn't seem possible for her to have been pregnant and at that degree after they'd broken up. They'd been safe when it came to being passionate in between the sheets of his double bed.

The word seemed to be hitting him with curveball after curveball – Ezra was only waiting for the moment they would break him or empower him to do something good…something worthwhile.

Running a hand over his chin, prickly stubble stung Ezra's fingers. He pulled them back abruptly – he never realized just how bad he needed a good shave. "Christ," he muttered before pushing up from his bed. "Jesus Christ." A look in the bright lighting in his bathroom showed him just how badly his whole appearance needed cleaning up. His hair needed a trim as did his face. There was more hair on him than there was when he had hit puberty.

His worthwhile task that morning was making himself over into the Ezra Fitz he recognized. By the time he stepped out of the spray of hot water pouring from his showerhead, he felt like a new man. Well, almost new – his heart still ached. But at least on the outside, he could fake that everything was fine, that he hadn't let himself go. The steam parted from all corners in the bathroom to reveal a clean shaven guy that he seemed to now place as himself. His hair still needed a bit of a trim, but he could do that later. A small sheen of stubble was still present, but not as bushy as it had been before.

Ezra gulped – it was his first step back into his own world.

The next would be finding Aria.

He knew going after her would answer his questions and aid his broken heart. Even if she turned him away, a glimpse of her perfect porcelain face would tide him over until the cracks paved clean. The spout of questions in his head was doubling over – Ezra needed some answers.

But most of all, he needed Aria Montgomery to be back in his life. She was still the center of his world, even when he didn't want her to be. She was the glimmer of hope in the dark, messy sea that was his life. Ezra was a man in the depths of desperation; even he admitted it to himself. He was a hopeless romantic, a man for which love came first above others. Aria was the thing he held onto dearly because when reality smacked him in the face; it only told him that Aria was his soulmate – the one he was supposed to spend his life with. And Ezra was damn determined to make sure she saw that too – regardless of whatever she could say or another jab to fracture his already split heart.

Grabbing his old edition of an iPhone, Ezra dialed the familiar number to Aria's home. His fingers shook as he pressed the touch screen's keypad, the notion of talking to Ella Montgomery, resident spitball of fire, making his nerves quake. It was even worse when she answered on the first ring.

"Ella," Ezra spoke quietly, hoping not to startle her.

"You can't be calling here." Her voice was clipped on the other end – too sharp for Ezra's liking. Before his arrest, they had finally begun to get along as well as they did before she knew about his and Aria's clandestine love affair.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean exactly what I mean, Ezra. You can't be calling here." Each word was punched out with a great amount of diction and articulation. "I'm not going to tell you where she is. She needs to live her life without you."

"How did you know if I was even calling for that?" Ezra's voice shook, trying to get out words he couldn't usually find the courage to say to the older woman.

The line fell silent for minute, the quiet lingering on for what felt like hours upon hours. Ezra waited for Ella's clipped, restricted voice to come back and give him some witty answer that he couldn't give so much as a reply to. But the line continued to stay quiet until the dial tone went off. Angrily, Ezra ended the call and stuffed his phone into his pocket. If she wasn't going to tell him, then there was no shot in hell Spencer or one of Aria's other friend's would.

It just meant Ezra had to go about it himself.


One navy blue duffel bag and a piece of white paper that held Aria's address from an online address book (Ezra was baffled at how everything had translated into technology), he closed the door on his tiny little apartment. The gold 3B sign he'd tacked onto the door last year still gleamed as if it was brand new. Ezra pressed his fingers against the gold metal as if to say goodbye for now. He'd return home as soon as he could – if he even wanted to.

He didn't take an ounce of resolve to leave the apartment building and head towards the Toyota that Hardy had preserved for him out back. Ezra didn't feel the usual regrets sinking in once he made a major decision. The man used to go back and forth as to whether or not something was right or not, but going into Philadelphia felt undeniably right. Staying put would feel wrong.

The car engine started with a guttural revving noise, having not being used in over a year. Driving felt like something of an abnormality but one that Ezra accepted with open arms. There was a certain freedom as he sped out of the small town limits en route towards the big city.

Day number twenty six was the first day Ezra had picked up a pen since his arrest. In rebellion of his apparent fate, he refused to write – hell he refused to talk unless it was needed. But upon suggestion from his inmate, a man wrongly accused of a felony he didn't commit, Ezra picked up the leather bound journal and fountain pen his mother had shipped to him in a care package. Their relationship was growing a bit stronger, Diane becoming more and more sympathetic to her son's feelings and situation.

"So you're gonna do it," Jeremy, the inmate, spoke. "You're gonna write." He rubbed a hand across his quickly growing stubble in observation

Ezra's nimble fingers sifted through the unmarked pages before stroking the soft, new leather that made up the cover of the journal. His hands were shaky, scared at whatever words would pour out onto the paper in his current state of heartbreak, confusion, and frustration. Twenty six days without writing so much as the word "and" or his own name. "Yeah," he said, turning the notebook over in his heads. "I think I am. It'll be a good way to get out frustrations."

Jeremy nodded his head before turning back to a book from the large stack his family had sent him.

Taking up the pen, Ezra opened to the first clean page of the journal. They were a rich cream color – no doubt was it an expensive purchase. He scribbled one word across the top of the page in the largest line. "Dear Aria" it read, but he couldn't find the words to go underneath the title. His intention was to write a letter, but writing to Aria would mean using up the entirety of the journal. There was so much he could say. One of two pieces of paper wouldn't cut it. Ezra wanted to know why she refused to defend him. He wanted to know why she hadn't visited. He wanted to know if she knew she was the reason he was locked up, but would never regret what they had.

But most of all, Ezra wanted to know if she still loved him.

With a great bout of resolve, Ezra put all his focus on the page in front of him. If he wanted to relieve himself of angry, pent up feelings that he couldn't quite say to her face, he'd write them down. And suddenly, the words to go underneath "Dear Aria" made sense and came pouring onto the page.

An hour later, as an old The Cure song played on the radio as Ezra pulled into the apartment complex that the address on the paper had given him. His stomach quaked with fear, knowing that in one of the illuminated windows above, Aria lived her day to day life. It was where she studied, where she woke up and went to sleep. It was where she had friends over and where she laughed. Perhaps it was where she cried from time to time. Ezra could hope he was the only reason for her occasional tears and not something more.

But the more he sat in the car, the more Ezra felt himself wanting to turn back and drive to Rosewood. It hit him at how much of a risky situation he was putting himself in. Yet, even as his nerves piled on, his mind flitted back to Aria – his Aria. And his mind went back to the photo of her and the baby, more determined than ever for answers.

He sucked in his fears and let courage shine through. Ezra Fitz wasn't going to live his life in shadows of his own doubt anymore. He was going to pursue his own happiness. Happiness came closer with every step he took up towards Aria's apartment. Happiness came closer with each light knock he gave on her door. Happiness came with the creaking of her door opening wide.

And happiness had finally arrived full stop as a shocked Aria Montgomery pulled open her apartment door.