Recap of Story

Recap and Explanation: Covers all our collaborative work: Dark December; Rafe's Journal; South Beach; The Other Side of the Stage; Rising Above; Passages; Chameleon; and Sessions.
This recap contains spoilers. It is organized by character instead of a straight story line. The major characters' lives intersect and intertwine, but they have their own stories. The links on the characters go to their bios.

Please let us know if you have any suggestions. Boiling down three years worth of character development and some pretty intense stuff into a recap wasn't easy. I wrote the recap, and it sounds lame to me, but it's all I could come up with.

And this is an adult story. Nudity, language, adult situations.



Cooper Stanfield: Lead singer and frontman for the rock band Mercury Rising.

(Mercury Rising: Cooper Stanfield, Heydon Mitchell, vocals and guitar; Daniel Whitney, drums; Aidan O'Malley, bass guitar)

Cooper married Julia Wilson when they were both very young, right out of high school, after knowing each other only one week.


Julia became the target of a psychotic fan who kidnapped her and held her and her infant son, Wyatt Stanfield, captive.


Cooper believed Julia was dead and was driven almost insane when he believed he was being haunted by her. Eventually both Julia and Wyatt were rescued by Cooper and his best friend and business partner Slim Savage. Cooper was seriously injured, shot and caught in a burning house, and, although he escaped with his life, he lost his memory.


He lived with Stevie Willows, a drummer for a local band, for some time as her lover until his memory returned. Stevie basically saved his life, scraped him up off the sidewalk when she didn't know who he was, and took a chance with him. Cooper will always have a special place in his heart for her.

When he returned home, both he and his wife had changed; she was unable to provide the kind of emotional and mental support he needed, and he had drifted away from her, and the marriage failed. Julia never got over the loss of her husband. Their son Wyatt grew up resenting his father for making his mother miserable, a bad situation made worse when Julia was murdered on Christmas Eve when he was a teenager, and he discovered her body.


Shortly after splitting with Julia, Cooper met Elizabeth Johnson, who was in the process of breaking up with her long-time lover, Tony Lombardo. She was reluctant to get involved with Cooper, seeing the situation with Julia as too similar to the problems Tony had with his ex, but Coop persevered and eventually married her.


The relationship was solid until Cooper decided to hire Ryan McDermott as a bodyguard for his wife, and then proceeded to spend most of his time on tour with the band.




A natural and enthusiastic flirt, Cooper was constantly in the tabloid and entertainment news photographed with other women.


The bodyguard and Cooper’s wife became extremely close, the attraction both physical and emotional, culminating in an affair.



Cooper decided to quit touring after the affair between his wife and Ryan became public, an impulsive decision made in a confrontation with Ryan, and a decision he quickly regretted.


The frustration and restlessness threw him back into close contact with Stevie. The flirtation made tabloid headlines and alarmed Stevie’s husband Shaun.


Shaun gave Stevie an ultimatum, which only made her realize how much she felt for Cooper.


After a provocative photoshoot, Stevie initiated an intense and sexually charged encounter with Cooper in the men’s room in the photographer’s studio.

Although Cooper subsequently cut off the relationship, his wife left him, and Shaun walked out on Stevie.

Wyatt Stanfield:


Cooper’s oldest child. Raised by his mother, Wyatt is romantic, sometimes to a fault, and emotionally fragile. He never got over discovering his murdered mother’s body, and he has always wondered why his father left his mother.


During his first year at university, he became involved with his music professor, Bailey, a torrid affair that eventually came to the attention of his stepmother’s bodyguard when Wyatt took the woman to his father’s resort beach house for a weekend. Wyatt suspected that his stepmother and the bodyguard were more than employer and employee, so he resented being called on the carpet by the man. Cooper eventually discovered his son and the professor together and forced the woman to choose between Wyatt and her career, partly by bringing up the fact that they’d met before and challenging her to admit that she was fantasizing about him when she was making love to his son, a confrontation that occurred in front of his son. She chose her career, breaking Wyatt’s heart.


Wyatt has become very close to Cadence Mitchell, the daughter of Heydon Mitchell, one of the members of the band. Both of them believe they are in love (they had sex when she was still in high school) but Wyatt is concerned about repeating his father’s pattern.

Rayne Stanfield:


Cooper’s daughter and Wyatt’s younger half-sister. Rayne grew up with her mother and her mother’s bodyguard, Ryan McDermott, since her father was touring more often than he was at home. A childhood encounter with Gabe Lombardo, a man she remembers only as ‘the prince’ who rescued her, changed her life.


She has been haunted by dreams and frustrated by her inability to find anyone who matches the standard set by a very hazy memory of someone whom, in reality, is definitely no prince.


The search for that man prompted her to seduce Ryan at a time when he was very drunk and vulnerable, immediately after he had just been publically kicked to the curb by her mother. Regretting her action, Rayne eventually confessed to Ryan that it was not her mother who came to him, a confession that destroyed his last hope.


She continues to run through men (most recently Cruz Delgato) in search of her the man she remembers distantly but is not certain was ever real. Cruz is his son, although no one but his adoptive parents know that.

Ryan McDermott:



Ex Navy SEAL and celebrity bodyguard. Employed for years as the personal bodyguard for Cooper’s second wife, they grew very close, living together in what was virtually a family unit while her husband toured. Ryan’s relationship with his girlfriend Landry collapsed when it became apparent to both of them that he was in love with Beth Stanfield. Shortly after they split, Landry died giving birth to their son, Riley.

A single intense sexual encounter between Ryan and Beth was photographed in graphic detail, and eventually published. Ryan made a last ditch effort to get Beth to leave Cooper, a man he is convinced considers her just one of many toys and conquests. It was dramatically unsuccessful. Emotionally gutted and unemployed, Ryan has recently accepted a dangerous job offer from Melinda Owen. (See The Chameleon)

Rafe Taylor:


Journalist for Rolling Stone. Rafe is the son of Tony Lombardo and Eden Westover Lombardo Taylor. His father was involved in a long and intense relationship with Beth Johnson Stanfield before she met Cooper. The relationship ended badly when Tony refused to commit, and caused a long and heated family feud between the two families, primarily carried on by Tony’s younger sister Camilla. Rafe has a very close and mutually protective friendship with Beth Stanfield whom he never blamed for the breakup with his father. Rafe is married to Beth Stanfield’s best friend Gayl. Rafe is a dark horse – moody, sometimes volatile, and occasionally dangerous. He killed his half brother and engineered his own mother’s death. He was a serious player during college until he met his wife; he has settled down but can turn it on when he wants to. Rafe and Cooper have a longstanding and acrimonious relationship – Rafe shares Ryan McDermott’s opinion of Cooper.

Gabriel Lombardo (Gabe):


Gabe lived on the edge from the time he was old enough to realize what he could do with his looks, charm and intelligence. Very close to his cousin Camilla Lombardo, about the only person who could be called a friend. He clashed early with his cousin Rafe, whom he envied since Rafe consistently outshone him, briefly taking the girl he wanted (Amanda Alcaide, the woman who would eventually bear Gabe’s son Cruz and who never stopped loving him although he cheated on her constantly and finally ditched her and disappeared) and the attention he wanted from Rafe’s father Tony, whom he looked up to as a father figure.

As adults, Rafe and Gabe had a poisonous relationship. However, Gabe has his own code of ethics and did Rafe more than one favor as repayment for favors done for him by people who care about Rafe.


When he was faced with a debt he could not repay, and knew for certain he’d overreached and would probably not survive, as his last gesture Gabe provided Rafe with intel Rafe needed to bring down Rafe’s mother Eden Westover, an abusive sociopath Rafe hated and Gabe considered the ultimate challenge.


Shortly before the end, Gabe stumbled onto a runaway child and rescued her without knowing who she was, an act totally out of character for Gabe who never did anything without the prospect of personal gain. The emotional connection was instant and mutual. The child was Rayne Stanfield.



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