All Chapters of What We Pretended To Be : Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

Maria: By midday, the house had started looking slightly less like Daniel and slightly more like it could tolerate me. Not much, just enough to be noticeable if you knew where to look. A small stack of books on the table near the window, my mug wedged between his immaculate row of identical white cups like an act of quiet rebellion, a cardigan folded over the arm of a chair, a candle on the dresser I hadn’t lit yet but liked seeing there anyway. Tiny things. Easy things. The sort of details that didn’t ask too much of me, which was useful, because the larger reality was still sitting somewhere in the background — too large to examine directly. I had moved into Daniel’s house this morning. I had arrived with luggage and legal documents and the sort of polite silence that follows a wedding and an unresolved argument, and now I was in our bedroom rearranging a bookshelf like that was the part of this worth focusing on. Honestly, it was either that or spiral. I checked my phone f

Maria: By the third day in Daniel’s house, I stopped thinking of it as Daniel’s house every time I crossed a room. That should have felt more significant than it did. Or maybe it did, and I was doing what I always do when something starts to matter too much. Keeping busy until I could pretend I had not noticed. The week slipped by like that. Work in the mornings. Calls in the afternoons. Quiet coordination disguised as ordinary routine. Somewhere in the middle of all of it, domestic life with Daniel stopped feeling like something temporary I was trying not to get used to. Soft morning light filtered through tall windows, warming the wooden floors and highlighting the small traces I had left behind. Nothing about it was dramatic. That was what made it dangerous. He liked quiet in the mornings and never asked me to fill it. He learned I only wanted my tea stirred once and then left alone. I learned he answered emails at an hour no sane person should be conscious and loosened his tie

Maria:I woke to daylight and Daniel kissing my forehead like he’d been doing it for years.Not careful. Not tentative. Just warm and absent minded and easy, like this was the most ordinary thing in the world and not the kind of intimacy I had spent most of my life pretending not to want. Before I could make sense of that, he was already shifting away, one hand sliding from my waist as he sat up.“Morning,” he said, voice still rough with sleep.I stared at him for a second too long. He looked unfairly composed for a man who had spent half the night undoing me.“Morning,” I managed.He looked calm. That was the first unsettling thing. I had expected at least a trace of awkwardness. Some careful posturing. A little distance to help us both pretend we had not crossed a line we had spent weeks circling. Instead, he kissed my forehead, got out of bed, and moved through the morning like he had already made peace with what happened.I was the one lying there, suddenly too aware of my own sk

Maria:By the time we got home, the champagne had softened into that pleasant hazy kind of tired that made everything feel quieter than it was. The house was dark except for the low lights we had left on, warm and familiar in a way it had not been when I first moved in. Back then every room had felt too polished, too deliberate, too much like I was standing inside someone else’s life. Now there were books on the side table that belonged to me, one of my cardigans draped over the arm of the sofa, Daniel’s watch on the kitchen counter beside a mug I had left there that morning. Small things. Ordinary things. Enough to make the place feel lived in.We moved through the night easily. Shoes abandoned by the door, clothes traded for something softer, lights switched off one by one. By the time we got into bed I was too tired to think too hard about the fact that I curled into him without hesitation. I just did it. And Daniel, like this had become normal enough not to comment on, pulled me c

Maria: The first time I saw the blog, Lily sent it to me with one text. Do not read the comments. Which was a ridiculous thing to say to someone like me because of course I read the comments. I read all of them. Then I read the post again. Then the replies under it. Then the older posts. Then the other posts linked under those. By the end of the hour, I was deep enough into that ugly little corner of the internet to feel vaguely humiliated by myself. Whoever was behind it had made me their personal project. Not just gossip. Not just speculation. Me. Entire posts dedicated to dissecting my marriage, my face, my family, my intentions, my clothes. A running commentary on what kind of woman marries a man like Daniel Rothfield and what she must have had to do to get him there. The worst part was that none of it was even lazy. It was specific. Mean in that deliberate way that told me this was not casual cruelty. This was studied. “Even born into money, she still carries herself like