Prologue
Let me tell you a story.
Not the kind with a perfect ending. Not the kind that fits into some neat little box with all the right moments happening at all the right times. No, this story is messy. It’s raw. It’s full of every beautiful, painful, gut-wrenching thing that love is made of.
Because love—the real kind—doesn’t follow the rules. It doesn’t fit inside a timeline. It doesn’t care about logic or reason or whether you’re ready for it. Love happens to you. And once it’s there? It never really leaves.
I learned that the hard way.
I used to think love was a choice. That if you were strong enough, disciplined enough, you could decide when to let someone in and when to walk away. That you could control it. Shape it. Keep it from wrecking you.
Then Savannah Monroe happened.
And nothing has made sense since.
She was never supposed to be mine, not really. Not in the way that counted. But that didn’t stop me from wanting her. From loving her in a way that changed me. From losing her in a way that nearly destroyed me.
I used to sit on this dock and stare at the water, trying to convince myself that time would wash her away.
That if I stayed still long enough, the ache in my chest would dull, that one day I’d wake up and not feel her absence like a ghost wrapped around my ribs.
But no matter how many nights passed, no matter how hard I tried to move on, she was still there.
In the way the wind brushes against my skin.
In the way the tide rolls in, unrelenting, impossible to ignore.
In the whispers of the past that never quite let go.
I’ve spent a long time trying to rewrite the ending. Trying to be the man who lets go, who moves forward, who builds something new. But the truth is, some stories aren’t meant to be rewritten.
Some stories are meant to pull you back in.
So, if you’re looking for something simple, something easy—this isn’t it.
But if you want the truth, if you want to know what it’s like to love someone so deeply that they become a part of you, even when they’re gone—then keep reading.
Because this?
This is the Echoes of Us.
-Chase Montgomery