Chase Sterling always felt like furniture. The kind you don't notice, the kind that's easy to shove in a corner and forget. He was used to it: people looked right through him, brushed him off like lint. But it only takes one phone call to erase a lifetime of being overlooked. When his estranged family meets a tragic end, Chase suddenly finds himself in charge of the sprawling Sterling fortune. Turns out, riches aren't the only thing the family left him. There's a curse running through his blood, warping love into something hungry and dangerous, impossible to escape.

Vivian Ashford never set out to blow Chase's life to smithereens. Just one decision (a sharp, ruthless move at graduation) was all it took to set their worlds spinning out of control. While Vivian soaks up the Hollywood limelight and collects red-carpet headlines, Chase slips into his new role as Manhattan's most intimidating heir. But no matter how far they run, something keeps yanking them back together, like a stitch in an old wound that refuses to heal.

I am in the middle of a scene when I become aware of him, which is how I always become aware of Chase Sterling in a space, through the specific shift in atmospheric quality that his presence produces, a change in the texture of the air that I have been registering since college and have never successfully learned to not register. The scene is between my character and the film's male lead, an emotional confrontation that the director has been building toward for three weeks of shooting, and I am in the middle of it, fully present in the technical sense of being physically and professionally present, when the awareness arrives.


Chapter 207 - "Chase Visits London"