Pretend for Me

Cassie

I used to believe love was enough to keep someone. Turns out I was wrong. Matthew had been my family, my safe place, my dream made real. But when he got the chance to escape our broken beginnings, he had a difficult choice to make: a “real” family, or the one he and I had cobbled together. In the end, it wasn’t me he chose. So I left, too, because running away didn’t hurt as much as losing him did.

Now, a decade later, fate has thrown us back together, and every wound we left behind is ripped open, leaving us more marked than before. The love between us never truly left, but trusting him again might just break me for good.

Matthew

All I ever wanted was to have a name that mattered. To be somebody. So when the opportunity finally came, I latched onto it with both arms, letting go of the only person who ever loved me unconditionally in the process.

Cassie had been home before I even knew what the word meant. Losing her should have been my wake-up call. Instead, it took me ten years to realize the truth: Nothing I built without her mattered.

Now that she's back, I’ll do anything to prove I’m not the boy who let the one real thing in his life slip away. I just need to get her to stop running and hear me out.

Can we find our way back together without pretending?