When I arrive at the Commons’ house, I’m expecting Maddie to answer the door. I figure she’s been waiting since we got off the phone. Usually, one of the girls greets guests with a mega-watt smile and the standard holiday welcome: “Merry Christmas! Come on in. What can I get you to drink?”

But the door swings open to Harris standing in the foyer. He doesn’t greet me at all, just gestures for me to enter the room located off the foyer.

I follow Harris into his den, a huge, octagon-shaped room, with walls lined with mahogany bookshelves. An ornate, crystal chandelier drops from the twelve-foot ceiling, while lanterns light up the breaks between bookshelves.

Harris shuts the door behind us, then wastes no time getting straight to the meat of the matter. “You’re living together? I thought this was a fake arrangement?” he roars. The level of his voice tells me I’m most likely the first guest to arrive. As Maddie says, it’s not the Commons way to air their dirty laundry out for all to see or hear.

“Look—” I begin when I’m interrupted by the doorbell.

Harris takes a deep breath, then lets it out slowly. He holds one finger up as if to say he’ll be right back.

While he’s gone, I shoot Maddie a quick text. I have no problem handling Harris myself, but I sure would appreciate a united front.

When Harris enters again, Maddie is right on his heels. As soon as she gets in the door, she hurries to my side.

“Someone better tell me what the hell is going on,” he demands, shutting the door behind him.

“My apartment complex is being demolished,” I begin. “Maddie was kind enough to offer to let me stay with her for a few months.”

“You didn’t have any other friends to stay with?” Harris snaps. He and I have always had a great relationship, so I’ve never seen him angry. With multiple veins straining his neck, it looks like he’s about to show me a side I never wanted to see.

“I did, but—”

Maddie interrupts me before I can finish, “But since the Commons family is the reason he had to leave his home, I figured the least I could do is offer mine.”

“What?” Harris and I ask at the same time. I pivot my body toward Maddie.

“Erik’s apartment complex currently stands on the site of a future outdoor mall—the mall that Commons Department store will anchor. It’s our fault he’s been displaced.”

Holy shit. I didn’t realize the mall Maddie mentioned in her office a few weeks back was the project that’s going up on the land. It doesn’t matter, it’s not like they did it on purpose, but still.

“Did you offer the other residents a place to live as well, Madeline?” Harris asks sarcastically.

“No, Daddy. I might have, but I’m not in love with any of them,” she retorts, grabbing my hand and lacing her fingers through mine. “Just Erik.”

Bomb dropped.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispers, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. When he focuses again, his hard gaze sears through me.

Harris’s gaze doesn’t scare me with Maddie’s hand in mine. This is exactly what I wanted after her father ushered me into his office. A united front sharing the truth. No more secrets and lies.

Despite knowing the action will only provoke Harris further, I lean over and kiss her quickly. She smiles shyly as her face flushes pink. It’s beautiful. It gives me life. Knowing she’s been crushing on me as long as I’ve been crushing on her emphasizes how much I love her and how pure that love is. It reinforces how much I want this to work out, even if it started as a crazy plan to keep me in the country.

“Look, I understand that you might think this is love. A fake relationship can feel real—”

“It’s real, Daddy.”

“Did Erik made it clear to you that dating, living together—even getting married—will not keep an undocumented person in the country? It doesn’t work the same as someone who came here legally on a green card.”

“Yes, we discussed it,” Maddie says. “It may not be enough to keep him in the country, but going on with life as usual, falling in love, and marrying an American can’t hurt either.”

The conviction and excitement in which Maddie explains our motivations is infectious and endearing. You can’t help but root for her because you know her heart is in the right place. If I didn’t know how smart she was, I’d think she was off her rocker. But that energetic spirit is what draws people to her. No matter how outlandish her idea sounds, you find yourself fighting for her—with her.

She lights up the universe. She lights up Harris’s life. I’ve seen that for years. She truly is a daddy’s girl. Always by his side. His right-hand “man” in business. He doesn’t want to be angry with her. That’s her advantage over him. Maddie is the perfect daughter. The one Cookie and Harris pride themselves in getting right.

Which is why it makes complete sense he’d be appalled that she’s fallen in love with me.

“I hear you both throwing around the word ‘love.’ Why would someone who loves you allow you to put yourself in a position where you could go to jail for helping him? Doesn’t that seem selfish to you, Madeline?”

“With all due respect, sir,” I speak up before Maddie has a chance to say anything. “I never wanted Madeline to get in trouble. I had my own motivations for a fake relationship.”

“Do tell.”

“I wanted to be in a fake relationship so she had a reason to break up with Trent Anderson. He almost killed her once. I couldn’t let that happen again.”

“Trent didn’t—” Harris starts.

It’s crazy how he’s trying to rewrite a memory of an incident where he wasn’t present. This is how history books get written, by people who weren’t there and have an agenda for how the story gets told.

It’s gaslighting when you use it with people that love and trust you. If you tell them how something happened a certain way over and over again, their memory of it changes. They start to believe the lie, even if they know the truth. Memories are easy to manipulate.

“Daddy, stop!” Maddie interrupts this time. Which surprises Harris, but not me. I know how strong she is. I know she won’t be pushed around anymore. She can love and respect her parents, but also create her own narrative from this point forward.

“Erik saved my life. I wanted to repay him. He wanted to help me. That’s how it all started.”

“And then we fell in love,” I add boldly, confidently.

“And then we fell in love,” Maddie confirms, taking my hand and squeezing it. “It was inevitable,” Maddie continues. “It was set in motion years ago, the moment Erik set foot on our property.”

Most people, when looking back on a moment like this, will paint it as happy, maybe even triumphant, but I can feel the tension draping the room like a thick London fog.

Suddenly, the door bursts open and Cookie slides in. “What in the world is going on in here? The guests are arriving and I’m still plating the appetizers. I need some help out there.”

“Erik and Madeline are in love, Cookie. They’re even living together,” Harris says.

It may seem as though he finally understands, but with every second that passes, I practically hear the gears turning in his head. I feel his cold glare. I see his jaw tighten.

He seems cool and collected, but there’s no way he’s going to let his daughter—the heir to his business empire—stay with me. I’ve known it from the beginning, but I stuck with it because I wanted to experience Maddie’s love, and I wanted her to experience mine. Even for a short time before real life took away our fairy tale.

She deserves to know what real love is, before she gets swept back into the world where relationships are business transactions. Where families match and marry their kids to create a business powerhouse.

“What?” she exclaims, then checks her tone and continues, whispering loudly, “I can’t believe you two.” She shifts her narrowed gaze from Maddie to me. “I tolerated the ‘fake relationship’ when you asked me to because you insisted you were helping a friend. But nothing about this is cute. Or funny,” she says in a biting tone. “What you’re doing is absolutely unacceptable. How are you so calm about this, Harris?”

“They’re in love, Cookie,” Harris says. “You remember what it felt like at the beginning, don’t you?”

I bite back a sarcastic laugh, because I can’t imagine that Harris and Cookie married for love. She seems far too conniving for that.

A smile spreads across Maddie’s face and she squeezes my hand. She still trusts her father. She still sees good in him.

She thinks love won. She thinks we won.

But I know better. I know this is the beginning of the end.