All Chapters of Echoes of Tomorrow: Loving You Was Just a Detour: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

8 Chapters

Chapter 1

My phone slipped from my hands and clattered against the floor, but I didn’t even notice.The name my future self mentioned—Seraphina Carter—belonged to my absolute best friend from college.With trembling hands, I picked up the phone, my chest tightening as I stared at those terrifying timestamps. I quickly typed out a response.“Who are you? And who is he?”The reply came almost instantly, still carrying a timestamp from five years in the future.“I’m thirty-year-old Alivia Sinclair. And he is Ethan Cross.”And right now, I was a twenty-five-year-old Alivia.The man I had loved for five entire years was currently in the kitchen. The sheer absurdity of the situation made my head spin.As if terrified that I would let my hopeless romantic tendencies blind me, the future me fired off a few more messages in rapid succession.“He only picked up your coffee every evening because it gave him a convenient excuse to drive Seraphina home first.”“He never walked away from his father’

Chapter 2

The moment Ethan saw Seraphina, he walked straight over and plucked the iced slushie right out of her hands.Without missing a beat, he reached into his small bag, pulled out a thermos of hot chamomile tea, and pressed it into her palms.That bag used to carry only a small bottle of warm water and my stomach medication. I’ve always had a weak stomach, prone to nausea and painful cramps.I had no idea when the contents of that bag had quietly changed to hold Seraphina’s chamomile tea and her favorite painkillers.Seraphina pouted and playfully whined, “It’s scorching outside, and you’re seriously making me drink hot tea?“Ethan, you are so cruel to me!”As she spoke, she reached out and pinched his ear.Ethan didn’t get angry. Instead, he just laughed. “Don’t come crying to me when your cramps act up later!”They playfully bickered as they walked deeper into the shop, leaving me standing there with nothing to look at but their retreating backs.The bakery owner sighed warmly. “

Chapter 3

The person who walked through the door wasn’t Ethan, but Seraphina’s young assistant. She had been sent to deliver a container of fish chowder to me.As it turned out, Ethan had accompanied Seraphina to the neighboring city to scout locations for her new boutique bakery franchise.I hated seafood. Ethan, on the other hand, loved it. They really were thoughtful, always remembering each other’s favorite things.The rich, fishy aroma drifted up to my nose, and a wave of nausea hit me instantly. I lurched toward the sink, dry-heaving as though my stomach were about to turn itself inside out.I glanced out the window. Dark, heavy storm clouds blanketed the sky, threatening a massive downpour.By the end of the afternoon, every single item in the bedroom belonging to me was completely packed away. My phone remained dead silent; neither of them had sent a single text.However, Ethan did post an update on his social media feed.In the photo, he was sitting in a café, looking down as he

Chapter 4

They didn’t come back that night, nor the next morning.The only sign of life from Ethan was a single, curt text message lying in my inbox, telling me to stop throwing a tantrum. My head felt incredibly heavy, and my skin burned hot—a lingering consequence of getting caught in yesterday’s torrential downpour.On social media, Ethan and Seraphina stood shoulder to shoulder at the grand opening, cutting the ribbon together. They looked like a picture-perfect power couple. Looking at it just made me feel physically sick.I swallowed some fever medication and forced my aching body out of bed, packing the absolute last of my belongings into my suitcase.It was already noon by the time Ethan finally bothered to call.“Liv, the ribbon-cutting ceremony is over. We’re just going to grab a quick bite to eat, and then we’ll head back,” he said casually over the video call. “Sera even went out of her way this morning to track down one of those limited-edition designer blind box figurines for

Chapter 5

The atmosphere in New York City was incredible, and when things got busy, it was easy to completely forget the pain of the past. I even came to fully understand the saying that love, at its absolute best, should only account for ten percent of a person’s life. I used to revolve my entire existence around Ethan, which had delayed so many things I truly wanted to achieve. Now that I had settled my mind, I realized I possessed quite a bit of potential. Several of my projects in a row had already received top evaluations.I rented a beautiful ground-floor apartment with a private garden patio. Living right upstairs from me was Lane Walker—the very man who had held the umbrella over my head in the pouring rain that night.Recently, our old university had been organizing a class reunion, and Priscilla Morgan, our former class president, started keeping in close contact with me. She was one of the rare people who wholeheartedly supported my breakup with Ethan.“Liv! I’m so glad you dumped

Chapter 6

Ethan showed up two weeks later.I came home from the office that evening and pushed open the garden gate, only to find him crouching beside my hydrangea bushes. He had lost a massive amount of weight; his suit was rumpled and creased, and his jaw was covered in a thick layer of dark stubble. He sat there tracing the edge of a hydrangea leaf with his finger, looking less like a former heir and more like a lost, stranded drifter.I stood by the entrance and didn’t move.Hearing the gate click, he lifted his head. The moment his eyes fell on me, his lips trembled violently.“Liv…” His voice was incredibly raspy and torn.I looked down at him. His eyes were bloodshot, and his entire frame looked hollowed out, as if he had physically shrunk. Every last trace of the proud, high-spirited man he used to be was entirely gone.I walked right past him toward the front door. He scrambled to his feet to follow me, but his knees buckled violently, and he nearly crashed to the ground.“Liv, p

Chapter 7

I pieced together the aftermath of Ethan’s ruin mostly from financial news articles online.The boutique bakeries, dining brands, and investment holding firms under Cross Enterprises were systematically liquidated and auctioned off one after another. The sheer volume of their total outstanding debt was staggering. His father had fled the country, never to return, dumping the entire crushing burden squarely onto Ethan’s shoulders.The court froze every single asset under his name, including the luxury car that had carried me through the city countless times. Priscilla told me that Ethan had even sold his apartment, moving back into a cramped, rundown rental unit in the old historic district. It was the same three-hundred-square-foot studio apartment we had rented right after our college graduation—where the kitchen and the bedroom were squeezed into a single suffocating room, with a north-facing window that let in a bone-chilling cold all winter long.“His life is a total disaster ri

Chapter 8

Three months later, Priscilla told me that Ethan’s condition had deteriorated drastically.She said he spent every waking hour in his hospital bed scrolling through his phone, reading our old text history from the very beginning, over and over again. The nurses mentioned that he woke up constantly in the dead of night, staring blankly at the ceiling, sometimes whispering a specific name.Priscilla didn’t say whose name it was, but I already knew.That day marked my first spring in New York City. The second bloom of hydrangea out on my patio garden had just opened, and Lane was helping me fix the clothes rack on the terrace. Standing next to the cluster of white blossoms, I let out a soft sigh. Only a single year had passed, yet the life I lived before felt as though it belonged to a completely different lifetime.Some people are simply meant to be buried deep within dust-covered memories, never to be disturbed again.Ethan passed away late the following autumn.Priscilla said he

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP