No Going Back
593 Words
Choosing real felt good.
That was the problem.
The next morning, I woke up with Ethan’s arm loosely around my waist, sunlight filtering through the curtains, and for a brief moment… I forgot everything.
The contract.
The cameras.
The six-month deadline.
It felt normal. Too normal.
Then reality came back.
Slowly, painfully.
I stayed still, listening to his breathing, wondering how something that started as a deal had turned into this. How I had gone from “this is just for money” to “I don’t want to leave this bed.”
“Stop thinking so loudly.”
His voice was sleepy, amused.
I smiled slightly. “You can hear my thoughts now?”
“I can feel them,” he said, tightening his arm just a little. “You always overthink in the morning.”
I turned to face him. “You don’t even know me like that.”
He opened his eyes. “I know more than I’m supposed to.”
That sentence hit different now.
We stayed there for a while, just looking at each other, not rushing anything. No pretending. No performance. Just two people who had crossed a line and were trying to figure out what it meant.
“So… what happens now?” I asked.
He sighed softly. “That’s the scary part.”
“Because we can’t exactly tell the world, ‘Hey, our fake relationship turned real.’”
He laughed. “PR nightmare.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I,” he said. “We keep it private. For now. Publicly, nothing changes.”
I frowned. “So we’re real in private and fake in public?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds messy.”
“It is,” he admitted. “But it’s the only way to protect you.”
There it was again.
Protect you.
I hated how much that phrase made my heart soften.
Later that day, we had another interview. Another event. Another set of questions about “how we met” and “what we love about each other.”
This time, it felt different.
Because I wasn’t acting.
Every time I smiled at him, it was real.
Every time he touched my hand, it meant something.
And that made everything ten times more dangerous.
At one point, a reporter joked, “You two look like you’re hiding a secret.”
Ethan squeezed my hand slightly and said, “Aren’t we all?”
Only I knew how true that was.
That night, after the cameras were gone and the doors were locked, I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor.
“This is going to hurt someone,” I said quietly.
He sat beside me. “Who?”
“Me. You. Both of us.”
He didn’t deny it.
“I’ve built my life around control,” he said. “Schedules. Contracts. Risks I can calculate.”
“And me?”
“You’re the first thing I can’t calculate.”
I looked up at him. “That’s not romantic. That’s terrifying.”
He smiled softly. “It’s both.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder. “We can’t go back, can we?”
He shook his head. “No.”
And the scariest part?
I didn’t want to.
Because even with the risk, even with the inevitable mess, even with the ticking clock in the background…
This felt more real than anything I had ever had.
And deep down, I knew:
Once you choose real,
there’s no such thing as pretending again.
- Writer
