Prologue
The last time Zavien Ermington stood beneath a spotlight, thousands of people were calling his name, while he smiled, he delivered his lines, he played the part everyone expected him to play, and when the cameras stopped rolling, he went home and realized he couldn't remember the last time his smile had been real.
There was a photograph on his desk, a woman stood beside him in it, laughing as though the future belonged to them. He had once believed it did, that photograph remained long after she was gone.
So did the memories, so did the questions.
Why wasn't he enough? Why did she leave? Why couldn't he let her go?
Months passed, then years.
The world kept asking when Zavien Ermington would return to acting. He never answered, instead, he disappeared behind the doors of his home, surrounded by everything money could buy and nothing he actually wanted.
Until one ordinary day, someone knocked on his door.
A girl stood on the other side, she wasn't famous, she wasn't part of his past, and she certainly wasn't the woman in the photograph.
She had only come because she needed a job, she had no idea who she was about to meet, and Zavien had no idea that the stranger standing before him would eventually become the person who made him question everything he thought he knew about love.
Because sometimes, the hardest thing isn't letting someone go. It's realizing that the person you're holding onto isn't coming back, and sometimes...
the echo sounds so much like the person you lost that you don't notice when it finally becomes someone else.
