Chasing Shadows

Stalled by writer’s block, poet and high school English teacher Eliot Hayes has nearly forgotten what inspiration feels like—until a school fundraiser brings him together with Rose Arden. Beautiful, brilliant, restless, and disarmingly easy to know, she awakens his creativity and unsettles the careful life he has built. With Rose, Eliot feels understood. Alive. For the first time in years, the poems come faster than he can write them. He wants more. Then he learns Rose is engaged. As their friendship deepens, Eliot becomes increasingly certain that Rose returns his feelings—and increasingly unable to separate the strength of that connection from the future he wants it to promise: Rose leaving her fiancé. But the more he invests in that possibility, the harder it becomes to tell the difference between what Rose feels and what Eliot needs to believe.