Tell Me Something Untrue

Nate Walsh can make anyone tell him what they believe-after one look. It has never made him powerful in the ways that matter. It has made friendship careful, family love overexplained, and trust almost impossible. Willa Grant hears a doubled note beneath every deliberate live lie. But she cannot hear the hidden truth-and around Nate, she is the only person whose voice remains entirely free. Their attraction begins with an impossible freedom: she can lie to him. Their relationship grows through ordinary dates, explicit boundaries, and the slow work of choosing words no power can verify. Then a funder threatens Willa's participant-controlled oral-history project. Nate uses the fastest answer after she explicitly tells him not to. The truth exposes wrongdoing. It also reveals a participant's private story, destroys Willa's trust, and ends the relationship he meant to protect. To build any future with her, Nate must learn the difference between truth and trust-and prove through conduct that love is not the right to know.