“Yes,” she whispered, eyes still closed. “It’s beautiful.” When she opened them, she found him watching her. “But—what makes it your favorite place?”
Chase’s expression shifted—something deeper, something unguarded. He inhaled slowly, then said, “Savannah, this place—this dock—it’s the echoes of us.”
Her breath hitched. “What do you mean?”
He looked out at the water for a long moment before answering. “Because of me—you, it's the Echoes of Us.”
Her lips parted, but no words came.
“No matter how breathtaking this place is… it will always be my second favorite.”
His fingers tightened around hers.
“My first?" A brief pause, "Well, my favorite place is wherever you are.”
Savannah inhaled sharply, her heart pounding. Because for the first time in years, she realized—he wasn’t just the echoes of her past.
He was the promise of something more.
Something worth taking a chance on.
Savannah tried to steady her breath, but it was impossible with Chase so close, his forehead still resting against hers, his fingers still tracing the edge of her jaw like he was memorizing her. Every touch sent a shiver through her, every breath between them thick with tension.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
And yet… it was inevitable.
She swallowed hard, pulling back just enough to meet his gaze. “Chase—”
His name was a warning. A plea. A whisper of something both fragile and unbreakable.
But he just smirked, like he knew exactly how this would play out. Like he knew she was already his, whether she admitted it or not.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” he murmured, running his thumb over her cheek, his voice soft but weighted with something dangerous, something consuming. “Why haven’t you settled down?”
Savannah exhaled, looking past him, out at the water. Because the truth—the real truth—was something she had never spoken out loud.
Not to Trevor. Not to herself. Not to anyone.
“I stayed with Trevor because he was good to me,” she confessed, her voice barely above a whisper. “Because he was easy.”
Chase’s jaw tensed. His fingers flexed against her skin, his body coiled like he was holding himself back. “And I was never easy.”
She looked back at him then, eyes locking, something raw twisting between them, something that had never faded.
“No,” she admitted, her voice uneven. “You weren’t.”
Silence stretched between them, thick and heavy, laced with all the things they had never said. It pressed against her ribs, settled in the spaces between every heartbeat, every inhale, every stolen moment they had let slip through their fingers.
Then Chase leaned in, his voice so quiet, so certain, it sent a shiver down her spine, "But I was yours.”
Her breath caught.
Her fingers curled around the stem of her glass, gripping tighter as the moment expanded, as the air crackled between them.
"You still are." She said softly.
The words hovered in the space between them, unspoken but deafening.
