The morning Marlena Evans Black returned home from Greece, the sunlight hit the floor of their townhouse like a warm kiss. John Black had made sure of it. He had opened the curtains in every room, even the ones she wouldn't go into yet. Light, he told himself, would help. Light was honest. Safe. He didn't want her walking back into shadows-not after what she'd survived. Marlena stepped inside slowly. She wore a dark blue sweat suit that made her look fragile, though John knew better. She had survived Megan Hathaway's twisted captivity, the chamber, the drug-induced darkness. She had clawed her way back to life. But surviving didn't mean healing. Not yet. "Home," John whispered, pressing a kiss to her temple. She didn't answer. Her eyes scanned the room like a stranger seeing a museum of her former life.

John can't forget the one woman he can't have. Marlena can't stop dreaming of the man she should have let go. What happens when fear, love, and desperation collide? This is a Canon Divergence retelling of the Lady in a Cage storyline with significant canon changes leading to another affair.

I really don't know what will come of this, but I had an idea and had to get it down. Marlena and John have a chance meeting a decade after their affair.

This story is inspired by "A very Salem Christmas" which didn't have enough of the magic that is John and Marlena😍. I hope you will enjoy it☺️

What is Isabella never existed and John was left alone in Mexico assuming Marlena had chosen Roman? Would Marlena show her true colors? And would Romans faults come to light?

Short vignette set in 1999. Marlena muses on the state of her relationship with John.

John left Salem in 1994, after he was no longer able to live on the sidelines watching the life that he once had. No Isabella nor Brady. If the twins were 9 in 91, makes their graduation (in my timeline) 2000. It is soon after this that Marlena and John bump into each other. These chapters discuss the idea of regrets and fate helping two people who are meant to be. Quite the rewrite from the original version out there.

A love too powerful for the spotlight. A goodbye she never wanted to say. Echo of Almost is a sweeping story of first takes and final cuts, of two actors who played lovers for decades - and spent a lifetime pretending it wasn't real. Delilah Hayes was never meant to fall in love with her co-star. But from the moment Dylan stepped onto the soundstage of THE OATH, something shifted. Their characters, Mara and Jonathan, burned up the screen-but it was what happened between takes that changed everything. What began as late-night rehearsals and secret glances spiraled into the kind of love that redefines a life. But when Dylan's past catches up with him, Delilah is the one who makes the impossible choice. She lets him go-not because she stops loving him, but because she believes she can't give him, what he now needs. Now, years later, Dylan is gone. The world knows him as a television icon, half of a legendary onscreen pairing. But only Delilah knows the truth of what they shared. As Delilah opens the letter he left behind, she's pulled back into the fire of their beginnings - the auditions and the stolen weekends, the passion and the silences, the final scene that was never just a scene. And in remembering him, she is forced to confront not just the love they lived, but the choices they never stopped making. Echo of Almost is the story of a once-in-a-lifetime connection tested by timing, sacrifice, and love too deep to ever really fade. It's about the moments we carry, the truths we bury, and the souls we never stop searching for-even when goodbye is the only word left to say. ------- (if you are a J&M fan read it with them in mind) Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Marlena Evans never imagined her carefully ordered world would be ripped from beneath her, nor that she would wake to the cold press of a blade at her throat and the smoldering gaze of a man who is both her captor and her savior. In a world where the past doesn't stay buried, where demons don't die, and where love is the most dangerous trap of all, they must decide-will they fight their fate or surrender to the storm that is pulling them under? ---------- This story is set in 1999!

Can John and Marlena rediscover their love as they fight to save her soul?