Their love was rumored fact and fiction, blurring the lines between reel and real. After a decade apart, John Black, a retired baseball player and now Hollywood star, reaches out to Marlena Evans with an opportunity she cannot refuse. The challenge? They must contend with feelings of longing and attraction, leading to an arrangement.

2015. I always wanted more build up to their reunion. I wanted to see them dating and actually finding their way back to one another.

John and Marlena have their 1993 but it lasts for six months, before Marlena pleads with John to help her break it off. John leaves. Fast forward 5 years and the two bump into each other in Chicago, both attendees at the same wedding.

John Black's world changed forever in February of 1995. Losing his son and the one woman who always held his heart nearly killed him. Five years later his marriage to Kristen is falling apart. His obsession with finding the last of Stefano's clones might destroy him... or possibly bring him back from the darkness he's called home for the last five years.

Three years after they said goodbye in Mexico, John is engaged to Kristen Blake, and Marlena is living a quiet, if not boring, life with Roman. One fateful choice, a flight to Seattle, and Stefano's desire to rip John from his daughter's life changes everything forever.

When love and pain intersect, and life altering decisions aren't easy. Sometimes saying goodbye is easier than actually letting go. Set in 1991, this retelling of John, Marlena, Isabella, and Roman's story comes after Mexico. It examines the pain of abandonment that comes from a father saying goodbye, the ultimate betrayal, a love denied, and the impact of C-PTSD on a man who refuses to acknowledge he needs help coping with seven years of torture.

After Marlena divorced John after the Kristen/Brady debacle of 2013 - it's not over. It was never really over. Short little story I couldn't get out of my head.

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 holds 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. ------- 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.

I wrote this many moons ago and never got to finish it up. Going to try to rediscover the story and characters as I go. You're welcome to come along for the journey, if you wish. This is my take on the affair from 1993, set in that moment in time. Hope you enjoy (:

Post Marlena's 1992 return to Salem. Marlena made the decision to give her marriage to Roman a try, but is struggling. John, putting his own pain aside, is frequently there to help her. Thank you to Ms. Goldie for the cover art and for inspiring me to revise and continue this story!