Lirik Everybody Knew

Maria Walker has spent her entire life under the weight of expectations in a world where reputation trumps happiness. As the daughter of the respected Walker family, every choice—including her relationship with kind, loyal Noah Bennett—is judged by high society, who see him as far beneath her standing. Daniel Rothfield faces a different pressure. The powerful, emotionally guarded CEO of Rothfield Holdings has avoided relationships since a devastating breakup left him unwilling to risk love again. Yet his parents and business partners insist a man of his status needs to project stability—and a serious relationship is the perfect image. When Maria and Daniel unexpectedly arrive together at a prestigious charity auction, a fleeting moment ignites rampant speculation. Within hours, social media explodes with rumors that the billionaire CEO and the Walker heiress are secretly dating. Rather than deny it, Daniel proposes a solution: pretend the rumors are true. A fake relationship solves both dilemmas. Maria’s parents would stop pressuring her about Noah, while Daniel’s family and associates would see him finally settling down. It’s meant to be simple, temporary, and strictly controlled. Rules are set: No real feelings. No crossing boundaries. No forgetting it’s just an act. But pretending to be in love proves far more complicated than planned. As they appear together at events, family gatherings, and public functions, undeniable chemistry emerges—shifting from performance to something dangerously authentic. Meanwhile, Noah grapples with quiet jealousy fueled by headlines and photos, Daniel’s past resurfaces to threaten the facade, and their carefully built lie begins to crumble. In a society that measures love by status and appearances, Maria and Daniel face an undeniable truth: the relationship they pretended to have may be the most real thing either of them has ever felt.

In the sixth year of our long-distance relationship, I told my boyfriend I was too busy with work to spend his birthday with him. In secret, I boarded a ten-hour flight to Harborwick with the deed to the condo I'd bought. I was going to propose in front of all our friends and surprise him. While I waited for a car, I answered a few work messages and scrolled through social media. The first thing I saw was a post from my best friend. "I'm a godmother! Nine-pound baby girl. I'm so happy." I opened the photo and found my boyfriend, Lucas Wynn, standing beside another woman with a newborn between them. My mind went completely blank. I kept scrolling back through her older posts and found their entire life documented there. Meeting, dating, marriage, pregnancy, birth-six years of it, without a single gap. Several of my closest friends were smiling in their wedding photo. Something cold went through me, because now I understood. All of them had known. Only me. I'd been lied to for six straight years.

All three of our families gathered for Thanksgiving. During dinner, the topic of Samuel Stanton and Tina Hayford's childhood engagement once again became the center of attention. "Plenty of people get married while they're in graduate school. Have you two thought about it?" "Exactly. You two are so close. Why not get engaged this summer? It'll put both families at ease!" As the relatives on both sides teased them, I looked up and met Samuel's eyes across the table. However, the moment our eyes met, he looked away. Lowering his head, he casually placed some roasted turkey on Tina's plate. "We'll see. It's still too early." My heart sank instantly. This was already the fourth year of our secret relationship. It had been four years, and Samuel still refused to tell anyone that I was his girlfriend. He still used matching mugs with Tina, wore matching outfits with her, and merely smiled whenever their childhood engagement was brought up. He never once denied it. He always said he didn't want to disappoint either family and that he needed to wait for the right moment before telling the truth. This time, I didn't want to wait with him anymore. "Mom, didn't you once say I also had a childhood engagement?" I put down my fork and asked Mom, who was watching Samuel and Tina with an envious smile. "W-Who could that be?" nt our eyes met, he looked away. Lowering his head, he casually placed some roasted turkey on Tina's plate. "We'll see. It's still too early." My heart sank instantly. This was already the fourth year of our secret relationship. It had been four years, and Samuel still refused to tell anyone that I was his girlfriend. He still used matching mugs with Tina, wore matching outfits with her, and merely smiled whenever their childhood engagement was brought up. He never once denied it. He always said he didn't want to disappoint either family and that he needed to wait for the right moment before telling the truth. This time, I didn't want to wait with him anymore. "Mom, didn't you once say I also had a childhood engagement?" I put down my fork and asked Mom, who was watching Samuel and Tina with an envious smile. "W-Who could that be?"

I never believed someone could love me the way Daniel did. Not in movies, not in books, not in real life. But he saw me—the real me. Every laugh, every tear, every secret I tried to hide. He made me feel… enough. And then I destroyed it. One moment of pride. One moment of judgment. I made him feel small, crossed a boundary he set, and he walked away—just like he said he would. But I didn’t know that while he stayed silent… I was carrying his baby. Now I’m terrified. Will his silence push him further away? Will the truth destroy what little we have left? Or could our unborn child be the one thing that brings him back? He was never just anyone. He’s the man I love, the man I hurt, the man I can’t forget. And I’m running out of time to fight for a love I almost lost forever.

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.

The day my girlfriend and I were supposed to get our marriage license, she suddenly disappeared. That night, I accidentally came across a social media post she had forgotten to hide from me. "From twenty to twenty-eight. We finally made it." Attached was a photo of two marriage certificates. In the wedding photo, she leaned against a man I had never seen before, smiling with effortless joy. Furious, I opened the comments, ready to confront her. Then, I saw a message from my best friend. "Congratulations to the lovebirds. After everything you've been through, you finally made it." My chest tightened. With shaking hands, I called him. After a long silence, he finally confessed. "Yeah. They've been together for eight years. Everyone in our circle knew. We weren't trying to hurt you. We just thought you'd take it badly and make a scene. "Oliver and Fiona belong together. It wasn't easy for them to make it this far. We're all friends here. Just be the bigger person." Tears hit the floor like ice, yet they burned a hole straight through my heart. Only then did I realize that during the twelve years Fiona Frost and I had been together, she had spent eight of them loving another man. Everyone knew. Everyone except me.