There are moments that live in your blood long before you understand their meaning. The scent of her hair the first time she leaned in close. The sound of her laugh echoing against a late summer sky. The way her name felt like home the first time you said it out loud.

I met Briana when I was twelve, and somehow, even then, the world tilted slightly to make space for her. She was fierce in her honesty, wild in her laughter, and radiant in ways that made you believe in fate. We grew up wrapped in overlapping dreams—hers full of purpose, mine full of fire—and even when life pulled us in opposite directions, the rhythm of her presence never left me.

She called me chocolate. I called her everything.

We were each other’s firsts in a hundred little ways. First real kiss. First heartbreak. First glimpse of what it meant to build something beyond ourselves. But love, I’ve learned, is not always a straight line. Sometimes it’s a spiral—a path that returns again and again to the same soul, only deeper each time.

This story begins with a first date. It stumbles into mistakes, heartache, and the wreckage we never thought we’d survive. But it also finds forgiveness, resilience, and a kind of love most people don’t believe in anymore.

We lived our vows long before we ever spoke them. Through breakups and babies, betrayal and healing. Through meals shared and meals missed. Through absence. Through fire. Through grace.

This book is for the believers—and the broken. For the ones who know that love isn’t perfect, but it is possible. For those who understand that sometimes the most beautiful stories are the ones you have to fight your way back into.

Before every chapter, before every fall and rise, there was her.

There was us.

And there was a pulse—steady, unwavering, waiting to be heard again.

This is how I found my way back.

This is how I learned to listen.

This is how it was always written in her pulse.