Completed • First Draft - not edited. || "You gonna sit there all night?" Luka glances at me, smirking. I glare back. "I was enjoying the last few seconds of peace before having to spend an evening pretending to like you." "That's funny," he says, unbuckling his seatbelt. "Why?" I snap. "Because I was thinking the same thing." || The rules? Easy enough. 1. Pretend to be the perfect couple. 2. Keep it professional. 3. And whatever you do, don't. catch. feelings. Simple, right? Sofia Calloway never planned on going viral for throwing a drink in Luka Mikhaylov's face. But one video, one pissed-off hockey star, and one furious university later... she's suddenly stuck in a fake relationship with the guy she can't stand. He needs to clean up his image before the NHL draft. She needs the free tuition that comes with the deal. All they have to do is smile for the cameras, hold hands at the games, and act like they don't want to strangle each other. Then come the late-night arguments that last too long. The stolen glances that feel too dangerous. The moment where "pretend" starts looking way too real. Because when you break the rules, someone's bound to lose. And this time, it might be both of them.

Alexander didn't cheat. He just gave someone else his attention, his laughter, and the smiles that used to belong to his wife. And she watched him drift, not to another woman's bed, but to her presence. Her laugh. The way she made him feel seen in a room full of people. Everything he found in someone else - Zara had been giving him all along. Eight years of marriage. One little boy who loved them both. And Zara standing in the middle of it all - wondering when she became the woman he stopped choosing. She warned him. Three times. The first - he dismissed her. The second - he called her jealous. The third - he called her insecure. So she stopped warning him altogether. And stopped waiting. Love wasn't enough... and now it might be too late.

**PREVIEW ONLY** Dr. Indiana "Indie" Miller never believed in fairy tales. How could she? Everything she ever accomplished was paid for in blood, sweat, and will. Emancipated at sixteen, she put herself through medical school while juggling three jobs, and built a life around one simple truth - that no one was coming to save her. Then her favorite patient introduces Indie to her grandson. And Teddy Williams is everything Indie never dared to dream of. Kind, steadfast, and completely devoted to her. He's the kind of man who notices the little things and looks at her like she's the only woman in the world. There's only one problem. Teddy's overbearing mother hates her. Thankfully, Nana Ellie is there to shield Indie from the worst of it, and despite the tension, Teddy and Indie fall deeper and deeper in love. Two years later, they're on the verge of forever and preparing to move to New Jersey for Indie's dream job at Bluewater Cancer Center. But when Nana Ellie dies, the woman who loved Indie like family is gone. Teddy's mother, Dawn, has spent his entire life making herself the center of it, and she has no intention of letting Indie take her place. Every mispronounced name, every crossed boundary, every cruel little comment is designed to prove one thing - Indie does not belong with him. As the pressure builds and the disrespect becomes impossible to ignore, Teddy finds himself caught between the family he was raised to put first and the woman he loves more than anything. He chooses wrong. And he loses Indie. Without her, Teddy is forced to face the truth of his choices. That his mother's love was never love at all, it was guilt, control, and enmeshment. And if he wants any chance of winning Indie back, he'll have to do more than apologize - he'll have to become the man she deserved all along. Because Indie Miller is done waiting for a fairy tale. This time, she's going to make one for herself.

He left me on a hike in Alaska, three days before a snowstorm. He thought I'd die. I didn't. I thought I knew him. I didn't. I didn't know him at all.