|SAMPLE ONLY||THE FICTION AWARDS 2019 WINNER|
EVIE CHASE has it all--fame, fortune, the career of her dreams--but things weren't always that way. Three years ago, before her skyrocket to teenage stardom, she was a small town girl in northern Connecticut who dealt with anxiety, bullies, an unrequited love for her best friend, and, just before moving to Los Angeles, being humiliated in front of everyone she knew.
When a terrifying nervous breakdown leads to the conclusion that her newfound life of fame is getting the best of her, it's a mutual decision amongst her and her parents that she needs a break. But what she doesn't expect is for them to send her back to her hometown, back to her old school, to live with her crazy aunt while donning a new identity.
But things aren't so simple, because there are FOUR things that cannot long be hidden in the town of Anadale--the sun, the moon, the truth about what happened in that courtyard freshman year . . . and a teenage superstar.
BOOK ONE OF THE EVIE CHASE SERIES
*this is a rough draft of the manuscript, please excuse any spelling/grammatical errors, and/or plot inconsistencies*
The love you ruin doesn't just fade, it becomes the anchor of your entire life, dragging you under with every passing year.
For Ethan, adult life is a landscape of self-inflicted misery, defined by the crippling silence of his anxiety and the knowledge that he deliberately destroyed the one perfect thing he ever held.
It all started at a freezing, anonymous church camp where sixteen-year-old Ethan fell instantly and devastatingly in love with Brooklyn. Their connection was a blinding sanctuary, a fierce, protective bubble of first love that was utterly, beautifully real.
But the purity of that love couldn't withstand the pressure of Ethan's own darkness.
Beneath the surface of their perfect union, jealousy and agonizing insecurity curdled every promise. Ethan didn't just love Brooklyn; he tried to possess her. He built their world on manipulation, empty promises, and a suffocating need for control, until the foundations of their fierce love finally gave way.
Years later, Ethan is tormented by the ghost of the man he was and the indelible scars he left on the only person who ever truly saw him. He knows there is no forgiveness for the way he drove Brooklyn away, yet he is bound by the desperate, futile hope that he could somehow go back to that snow filled night.
The Love That Haunts is a raw, emotional reckoning with the consequences of self-sabotage. Can a man defined by the ruin he caused ever truly heal, or is he destined to be haunted forever by the precious love he violently broke?