Who Does Lily End Up With in 'It Ends With Us'? (SPOILERS)

Spoiler alert: This post contains book and film spoilers for It Ends With Us.

In the best-selling novel It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover, protagonist Lily Bloom finds herself in a dangerous relationship with a neurosurgeon name Ryle Kincaid.

Along the way, Lily crosses paths with someone from her past — Atlas Corrigan, her first love, whom she met in high school, and whom she still has strong feelings for.

But who does Lily end up choosing in the end? There's a lot that goes down in Hoover's novel...

When Lily meets Ryle in the book, she's in a complicated place, emotionally. She's just buried her father, with whom she'd had a fraught relationship. (We come to learn he had been abusive to Lily's mother.) She's also trying to open up her own business.

And she's been in the midst of rereading her old diaries/letters, where she chronicles her intense high school relationship with a homeless student named Atlas, who went on to join the Marines.

So when Lily meets Ryle one night, things only get more complicated — he's not looking for commitment, but she certainly is. But over time, Lily and Ryle eventually start dating, and things get more serious. She also develops a great friendship with Ryle's ultra-rich sister, Allysa, who volunteers her time at Lily's flower shop.

Then, one night, while out to dinner with Ryle, she runs into Atlas, who just so happens to own the restaurant where she and Ryle are dining. While this throws her for a loop, she remains with Ryle — but it's clear that Ryle's alarming red flags are becoming more apparent than ever.

One night, things come to a head when Ryle accidentally drops a casserole, prompting Lily to laugh — and then Ryle pushes her. She falls to the floor and hits her head against a cabinet handle. Ryle is quick to apologize, which reminds Lily of how her dad used to apologize to her mom after his abuse. Lily tells herself that if Ryle ever touches her again, she'll leave.

But over time, Lily finds herself making excuses for Ryle. And she denies there's any trouble going on when Atlas notices the signs of abuse and begs her to leave Ryle. Allysa also tells Lily about a traumatic incident from Ryle's childhood, concerning their brother whom Ryle fatally shot by accident. Lily becomes more sympathetic to Ryle and his anger issues, continuing to lie to herself about the trouble she's really in. Even though she finds herself running to Atlas for help, she stays with Ryle.

The horrifying abuse only escalates, and Lily — who finds herself married and pregnant with Ryle's baby — has to figure out a way to slowly but surely extricate herself from her tangled relationship, which has been made all the more complicated by her expecting a baby. She also wants to give herself time to make careful decisions until after she's given birth.

Once she has her baby, she looks at her newborn girl and decides that "it ends with us" — that is, the cycle of abuse. She leaves Ryle, though they maintain a co-parenting relationship. And nearly a year later, after she runs into Atlas on the street, she feels ready to to be with Atlas. The two embrace, excited to start their life together.

While Lily ends up with Atlas in both the book and the movie, the movie's ending is a bit different. As previously mentioned, Lily maintains a co-parenting relationship with Ryle in the book. But in the film, Lily indicates that she's on her own with her daughter, and that Ryle isn't in the picture.