The love we lied about
When a leaked single threatens to end her career, pop star Rhea Santiago is forced into a PR-engineered relationship with Cole, a guarded ghostwriter secretly paying off a debt he refuses to explain. Their contract has strict rules, no real feelings, cameras only, an end date, but forced proximity turns performance into something neither of them planned for. Behind it all is Evelyn Cross, the label president’s wife, who discovered Rhea years ago and believes she still owns her success; Cole’s carefully buried past turns out to be tangled in Evelyn’s control too, and unraveling it costs both of them dearly before they can trust each other for real.
What follows is decades, not months: marriage, children shaped by the wounds Rhea and Cole carry from their own childhoods, the identity crisis of loving someone whose fame or usefulness threatens to swallow you whole, and the slow work of becoming parents neither of them had. When Cole is finally diagnosed with a terminal illness, the book’s real question comes due, not whether love can defeat death, but whether Rhea can survive losing him and still call her own life whole. She does. Not because he saved her, but because he helped her discover she could save herself.
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Chapter: Chapter Twelve: The PhotoNeither of us slept. We sat up with the photo still glowing on my phone between us, passing theories back and forth that all led to the same uneasy place. “She wasn’t just watching me that night,” I said slowly. “She was watching you too.” Cole didn’t answer right away. He was staring at the photo again, at his own younger face, at Evelyn’s hand resting on his shoulder like she owned something in that frame that wasn’t hers. “I never thought about it that way,” he said. “I thought I was the one keeping tabs on her. Following the story. I never considered that she might have been keeping tabs on me the whole time too.” “Two obsessions instead of one.” “That’s a horrifying way to put it, but I don’t have a better one.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes, exhaustion catching up with him all at once. “I’ve spent five years thinking I was the one who got away clean, aside from the article. Turns out I might have just been someone she hadn’t gotten around to using yet.” “That’s not much b
Last Updated: 2026-08-08
Chapter: Chapter Eleven: Gerald’s Wife“Say it,” I said. “Say her name.”Cole sat back down on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor like it might give him permission to speak. “Evelyn Cross.”“Gerald’s wife.”“Gerald’s wife,” he repeated, quiet, like the words tasted bad in his mouth. “She wrote the article. I took the blame because she asked me to, and because I owed her, and because five years ago I still believed owing her meant something good.”“What does she have on you.”“That’s the part I’m still not telling you tonight.” He looked up, steady this time, no more flinching. “But I’ll tell you what I can. She’s been controlling more than just that article. She’s been controlling your career since before you ever signed with this label.”“That’s not possible. Gerald signed me.”“Gerald signs whatever Evelyn tells him to sign. He always has.” Cole rubbed a hand over his jaw, and something in his face went distant, remembering. “She was at your first showcase. The one when you were seventeen. I k
Last Updated: 2026-08-05
Chapter: Chapter Ten: The TruthI pushed the door open before I could talk myself out of it. “Who’s going to find out you didn’t write it.” Cole spun around, phone still in his hand, whatever color had been in his face draining out of it fast. “Rhea.” “Don’t Rhea me. I heard you. You said you didn’t write the article. You said someone else is going to want to know who did.” I crossed my arms, notebook still clutched against my chest like a shield. “So who wrote it, Cole. And who are you calling about it at midnight.” He set the phone down on the dresser, slow, like sudden movements might make this worse than it already was. Whatever he’d been saying into it a moment ago hung unfinished in the air between us, and I could see him deciding, in real time, how much of it he was willing to let me hear the rest of. “Sit down,” he said. “I don’t want to sit down. I want an answer.” “Then I’ll say it standing up.” He rubbed a hand over his face, and for the first time since I’d met him, he looked genuinely u
Last Updated: 2026-07-31
Chapter: Chapter Nine: Cracks in the Armor“We’re not fighting it,” I said, before he could answer his own question. “Fighting it just makes a bigger story. Moving in quietly makes a smaller one.” “That’s the practical answer.” “It’s the only answer I’ve got tonight.” He nodded, and that was that. No more discussion, just two moving trucks worth of his life arriving at my building on Friday morning, mostly boxes of books, more books than I’d expected from a man who only ever carried the one with no cover. “You read all of these?” “Most of them. Some of them are for research.” He set a box down in the spare room Gerald’s team had designated his, though we both knew that was a formality neither of us intended to enforce past the cameras. “Don’t touch the ones on top. I haven’t finished them yet.” “I wasn’t going to touch your books.” “You were absolutely going to touch my books.” He wasn’t wrong, and I didn’t dignify it with a response. That first week fell into a strange rhythm, half performance, half something neither
Last Updated: 2026-07-31
Chapter: Chapter Eight: Adjusting to the LieI watched him for a week. Not obviously, not in a way he’d notice, but I watched, waiting for the confession to crack somewhere and show me the real story underneath it. It never did. He showed up on time, said the right things to the right cameras, remembered small details about my life I hadn’t told him twice, and if he was hiding something bigger than the article, he was better at it than anyone I’d ever met. Eventually I stopped watching so hard, because it was exhausting, and because the fake relationship itself had started eating up every spare hour I had anyway. “Left side,” Cole said, one hand light against my elbow, steering me around a photographer crouched by the curb. “There’s a second one by the flower stand. Don’t look at him directly, he’ll think you’re posing.” “How do you know all this.” “I used to be one of them. Different beat, same instincts.” We’d gotten good at this part, at least, the choreography of being watched. He knew which door to hold, which angle ma
Last Updated: 2026-07-31
Chapter: Chapter Seven: The ConfessionI didn’t answer his last text, and he didn’t send another one, and somehow that silence sat heavier between us than any argument could have. It followed me into the next morning, into the coffee I didn’t drink, into the note I found myself rereading on my phone for the first time in days. I’m sorry about the song. It wasn’t me. But I know who it was. I’d been so buried in contracts and cameras since that night that I’d let it slide to the back of my mind, filed away with the shadow on the roof and the message on my glass door. But it was still there. Still unanswered. And the man who’d sent it was currently sitting across my kitchen table because Gerald had decided we needed to “run lines” before tomorrow’s appearance. “You knew,” I said, setting my phone down between us like evidence. “The night the song leaked. You already knew who did it.” Cole didn’t look up from the script pages he was flipping through. “Knew what.” “Don’t do that. Don’t pretend you don’t remember sending th
Last Updated: 2026-07-31
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