Fake It Till You Fall

I made a deal with Declan Moss at prom and I told myself it was strategy. He needed a girlfriend. I needed an ex-boyfriend to finally notice I had moved on. Clean terms, mutual exit. I was good at arrangements. I had been making myself useful to people who didn't deserve it for years. What I was not prepared for was him. Not the version he performs... the armor, the silence, the carefully managed distance. The real one. The one who hands you an essay he never meant for anyone to read and watches your face while you do it. The one carrying a sick sister, two jobs, and a scholarship that stands between his family and a number too big to say out loud. The one who has been holding everything together so long he has forgotten that holding everything is not the same as being okay. People are trying to destroy him. Quietly. Patiently. From the inside out. And somewhere between session four and the worst week of his life, I stopped being the girl on his paperwork and became the person he called first. The arrangement had rules. I had an exit strategy. I was supposed to walk away clean. Then he said my name in a parking lot like it meant everything he hadn't found the words for yet. And I understood that I had not been performing for weeks. I had just been... there. Fully. Without the contract. The fake part ended a long time ago. I am the only one who knows that. For now.