Every Rule We Broke

Four rules. One summer. And a wall thinner than either of them knew. Wren Bennett is twenty-four, chronically disorganized, and still at the same Chicago office where she did her training six years ago. When her boss gets too close again, a sentence slips out that she never planned: I'm seeing someone. It works instantly - better than three years of polite refusals ever did. A man who doesn't exist protects her better than her own voice. Two weeks later the date is set for her perfect older sister's wedding. Her ex is booked as the caterer. So she asks her neighbor Callum - a monosyllabic translator on the other side of a prewar wall you can hear a kettle through - whether he'll play her fiancé. He says no. Two days later he knocks and says yes. Four rules go on a notepad: An end date after the wedding. No real feelings. Kissing only when necessary. Nobody learns the truth. Across a summer of family dinners, a misread ring and evenings with no audience, every single one of them breaks. What Wren doesn't know is that Callum has been hearing her through that wall for a year and a half. He knows her Mondays, her arguments with herself, her laugh at three in the morning. And he's turned it into a book - under a name that isn't his. When the box of author copies is delivered to her door by mistake, she doesn't confront him. From that point on she's lying too. And every touch acquires a second layer: is this him - or is this research? A warm, self-deprecating fake-dating romance about listening and being overheard, about families that don't know themselves, and about the question that carries the whole ending: Was any of it real - or was I material? Fake dating - fake engagement - boy next door - slow burn - first-person heroine - open door - guaranteed HEA