All roads lead back to you and me.

You’re my destiny. The road stretching to the sunset on the cover is the song itself — a journey that always returns to the one you’re meant to be with. That’s destiny.

This is a song about timeless love — the kind that survives every bend in the road. “Without you, I won’t make it alone.” It’s devotion, plain and simple, and a love so deep it’s always been there: “Tangled up in memories / Can’t remember when / You weren’t here beside me.” Life throws its turns — “Skid around the bend / Crash into reality” — but the love holds. “I hope in time that you will see.”

The song took its own long road to get here. Franklin McKay wrote it in 2007 and kept working on it for years, finishing it with Harry Hess in 2012 — five years from first spark to finished record.

Then it went somewhere nobody saw coming: the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. An unsigned artist, carried onto the chart by AC radio and the listeners who believed in the song, peaking at #27 in November 2012. Franklin’s take: believe in yourself, and surround yourself with people who believe in you. His all-time favourite movie is Rudy, after all.

The solo version is the one that charted. The duet with Heather Rankin came after. And if you love Jason Mraz’s “I Won’t Give Up” or Train’s “Drive By,” this one’s for you.