All Chapters of The love we lied about : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

“You’re in my seat.” I looked up from my phone. The guy behind the counter had already started steaming milk for someone else’s order, and the only open table in the whole place was the one by the window. The one I was sitting at. “There’s no name on it,” I said. He didn’t smile. He didn’t even blink. Just stood there with a book under his arm, no cover on it, spine cracked so many times the pages had gone soft at the edges. “I sit here every day at this time.” “Congratulations.” I turned back to my phone. “Today you sit somewhere else.” For a second I thought he’d argue. Instead he pulled out the chair across from mine and sat down anyway, like I’d invited him. Up close I could see a thin white scar cutting through his eyebrow, old enough that it had faded to nothing but a line. “You’re Rhea Santiago.” “And you’re annoying. We’re even.” That got something out of him. Not a laugh, just a breath through his nose, quick and short. He set the book on the table, face down, so I c

“Sit.” Gerald didn’t say it to me this time. He said it to the room, because when I walked back into his office twenty minutes later, I wasn’t the only one in it. Cole was already sitting on the far side of the table, the same coverless book resting on his knee, looking like a man who’d been dragged somewhere against his will and had decided to be perfectly still about it. “What is this.” “This,” Gerald said, “is damage control.” “He’s a reporter.” “He’s a ghostwriter. Freelance. Very good at making people look exactly how their publicist wants them to look.” Gerald slid a folder across the table, thick, tabbed, already printed like it had been sitting ready for hours. “And as of six this morning, he’s also the reason your leak isn’t the top story anymore.” I looked at Cole. He didn’t look away. “Somebody posted a photo,” he said. “From the coffee shop. It’s already got more traction than your single.” “So?” “So Gerald bought the rights to run with it before anyone else could

“Should we say something,” I asked. “About the photo.” “Say what. That someone in a restaurant took a picture of two people eating dinner.” Cole set his water glass down harder than he meant to, I could tell, because he immediately reached out and steadied it like the sound had embarrassed him. “It’s a fake relationship contract, Rhea. Photos are the whole point. I don’t know why that one felt different.” “Because he ran. Nobody runs from a good photo. They stick around for more.” “Maybe he had somewhere to be.” “Maybe.” I didn’t believe it, and from the look on his face, neither did he, but there wasn’t a version of this dinner where either of us said that out loud without making it worse. He picked his fork back up. I picked mine back up. We went back to performing normal, because that was still the job, whatever that photo had been. A few minutes passed before either of us said anything real again. He told me the specials were overpriced and underwhelming, which made me laugh

I 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

“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