Just Pretend

### by Basak Yilmaz

She'd rather fail than ask him for help — but desperation has a way of rewriting the rules.

When rival architects Maya and Declan are forced to compete for the same career-defining commission, the last thing either of them expects is an ultimatum from the client: deliver a united creative vision, or lose the contract to someone else. The solution is humiliating, impossible, and somehow worse than losing — they have to *pretend* to be a couple.

The agreement is simple. Smile at company dinners. Share a hotel room at the design retreat. Convince everyone they're madly in love. Walk away with the contract and never speak again.

Except nothing about Declan is simple. Not the way he actually listens when she talks, not the way his eyes find hers across every crowded room, and definitely not the way the line between performance and reality begins to blur somewhere around day three.

Maya knows how to pretend. She's been pretending his sharp wit doesn't make her laugh, pretending his hands on her waist during their choreographed moments don't linger a beat too long, pretending she isn't terrified that the feelings forming underneath all this fiction are the most honest thing she's ever felt.

The contract has an end date. Their arrangement does too.

But hearts, it turns out, are terrible at reading the fine print.