Chapter 1
Jacob
Jacob Wolfe hated auditions.
He didn’t need them—not anymore. He hadn’t needed them in a decade. His agent liked to call it “respecting the process,” but Jacob knew it was bullshit. Power plays disguised as professionalism. Producers loved reminding you who held the strings, who could make you sweat, no matter how many Golden Globes you had sitting on your mantel.
He walked into the casting room anyway, not because he craved their approval, but because beneath all the games and masks, the work was still the only thing that kept the emptiness at bay.
The room was nothing special—small, washed in harsh fluorescent light, and reeking faintly of stale coffee. A camera blinked from the back wall as half a dozen people lounged in their chairs, feigning indifference. But he could feel it, the quiet hunger in the air. They were here to dissect him, to dig through whatever they could find. He didn’t waste a smile on them or bother with charm. He wasn’t here to make friends—he was here to work.
They handed him the script: two scenes, raw with subtext. One was quiet and aching, while the other was explosive and jagged. Both intimate and deliberately uncomfortable.
He was halfway through the first scene when he felt it—that click. That quiet shift when the words stopped being words and started becoming something more. He sank into the role like it was familiar, like he’d been carrying the character around in his chest for months without realizing it.
By the second scene, he surrendered fully. The precision was still there, but now it burned at the edges, raw emotion bleeding through his control, just enough to sting. He didn’t flinch when it hurt—that was the point.
When the final line left his lips, no one moved. For a beat, the room felt still before a producer cleared her throat. “That was… exceptional.”
Jacob inclined his head, nothing more. “You’ve got my number,” he said, already turning.
“Jacob—” Ellen, the director, started, but the door was open before her words could follow him out.
He didn’t wait for their approval. He didn’t need their applause. Deep down, he already knew: the role was his.
***
Hours later, Jacob stood shirtless on his back deck, a glass of scotch balanced in his hand while he stared at the horizon, as if the ocean might give back something he’d lost.
Forty million dollars had bought him a kingdom of silence: stone archways, an infinity pool spilling into the Malibu cliffs, and manicured grounds that looked curated for a glossy spread. It was the kind of place designed to impress. The kind of place that should have felt like winning.
Inside, the house was quiet. His children slept and Caroline was at her Pilates class. On paper, his life was flawless, everything a man could want. Yet Jacob stood at the edge of allthat perfection, staring into the restless sprawl of the Pacific—the waves carrying the same unrest that lived inside his chest.
The audition had gone exactly the way he knew it would. He had walked in, delivered, and left them stunned. Like always.
So why the hell did it still feel hollow?
He had a stunning wife, Caroline, who was all blue eyes and blonde allure, her beauty carrying the timeless glamour of Old Hollywood. She’d been by his side for almost ten years—seven of them as his wife. A marriage polished into something steady and safe, never messy or explosive.
They had two children who undid him with ease: Asher, his fierce, curious six-year-old boy who asked impossible questions, and Rose, his sweet little four-year-old girl who’d already mastered manipulating her dad with a single look. It was the safe kind of family he’d never known, but had managed to find for himself.
Still, he was bored out of his fucking mind. The question gnawed at him, sharp and merciless: why wasn’t it enough?
He sipped his scotch and let the burn steady him.
He hadn’t always lived this way. Once, there had been a run-down apartment in Stockton, with a mother drowning in her addictions, and a father who had vanished without looking back. The smell of beer and smoke clung to the carpet, and broken promises pressed into every wall.
By sixteen, he was on his own, taking whatever work would keep the lights on. Until the day someone looked at him and asked if he’d ever thought about modeling.
Of course he had. He knew what he looked like—tall, dark hair, sharp jaw, those ice-blue eyes people never failed to mention. He’d used it and turned it into a career. Modeling came first, then commercials, then acting classes. One breakout role and the machine swallowed him whole, chewed him up, and spat him out as something larger than life.
Fifteen years had gone by in a blur of nonstop successes: the underdog turned Hollywood star. He’d played the part well: the women, the bad-boy reputation, the silence that let the world make its own assumptions. Brooding, dangerous—whatever label fit the fantasy.
Until one day it stopped being a way to cash in, and started being the only thing that actually mattered. The roles grew darker, harder, and he matched them step by step. It wasn’t the fame he craved anymore, but the challenge, the respect, the brief reprieve from the emptiness always gnawing at his chest.
The audition forWingspanlingered in his mind, impossible to shake. The series had carved into him from the very first page—the silences, the pain, the want buried so deep it ached to touch. It was a love story, but not the kind wrapped in soft music and sweeping strings. This one moved with a slower pulse—visceral, honest, even ugly at times.
It was also gay. Not subtext gay. Not blink-and-you’ll-miss-it ambiguous. It was openly, achingly, undeniably queer. Erotic and tender and infuriatingly human.
