Updated Oct 23, 2025 • ~8 min read
LINA’S POV
The letter from the court arrived on a Tuesday morning, two weeks after the hearing.
I opened it while Seb made breakfast—something he’d started doing since the morning sickness had finally subsided. Scrambled eggs and toast. Simple. Perfect.
“What is it?” he asked, noticing my expression.
I read it twice to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.
“The home study is scheduled for next week,” I said slowly. “And they’re requiring us to share a bedroom.”
“What?”
I handed him the letter. He scanned it, his jaw tightening with each line.
“They can’t mandate that,” he said.
“Apparently they can. It says here that married couples are expected to share sleeping arrangements unless there’s a documented medical reason not to.” I laughed, but it sounded hollow. “They’re literally checking to see if we sleep together.”
Seb set down the letter. Ran a hand through his hair—his tell when he was stressed.
“This is because of the separate bedrooms thing,” he said. “Thornton must have raised it as evidence of fraud.”
“So what do we do?”
He looked at me. Really looked at me. And I saw the moment he made his decision.
“We share my room,” he said. “Starting tonight.”
My heart did something complicated. “Seb—”
“It’s the only way, Lina. If they come for a surprise inspection and find us in separate rooms, they’ll use it against us.” He moved closer, his voice gentle. “I’ll sleep on the floor if you want. Or we can put a pillow barrier down the middle of the bed. Whatever makes you comfortable.”
“This is insane.”
“This is our reality.” His hand found mine. “Unless you have a better idea?”
I didn’t. And we both knew it.
SEB’S POV
Moving Lina into my bedroom should have been simple.
It wasn’t.
Every time she brought something in—a pillow, her laptop, the ridiculous number of throw blankets she apparently needed to survive—the space became more hers. Her scent filled the room. Lavender and something sweet I couldn’t name. Her presence made everything feel different.
More intimate. More real.
“I can take the left side,” she said, setting her things on what used to be the empty side of my bed. “You seem like a right-side sleeper anyway.”
“How can you tell?”
“The way your sheets are rumpled. You clearly favor one side.” She smiled. “I notice things.”
“I’ve noticed.”
She disappeared into the bathroom—our bathroom now—and I heard the sound of her unpacking toiletries. Her toothbrush next to mine. Her face wash next to my shaving cream. All the small intimacies of a shared life.
This was supposed to be temporary. A performance for the court.
So why did it feel like coming home?
LINA’S POV
That first night, we lay in bed like two strangers at a sleepover.
Seb had insisted on keeping a respectable distance between us—at least a foot of empty space in the middle of his king-sized bed. I stayed rigidly on my side, hyperaware of every breath he took.
“This is weird,” I said into the darkness.
“Incredibly weird.”
“I can hear you thinking.”
“I’m not thinking,” he lied.
“You’re definitely thinking. Your breathing changes when you think hard.” I turned my head to look at him. The moonlight coming through the window lit up his profile. “What are you thinking about?”
He was quiet for a long moment.
“That this shouldn’t feel as right as it does,” he said finally.
My breath caught. “Seb—”
“I know. We’re not supposed to—this is all for show. For the court.” He turned to face me. “But lying here with you, in the dark, knowing you’re pregnant with someone else’s baby and we barely know each other and this whole situation is completely insane… I keep thinking how much I don’t want this to end.”
“The arrangement?”
“Any of it.” His hand found mine in the darkness between us. “Tell me I’m not crazy.”
“You’re not crazy,” I whispered. “I feel it too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
We lay there, hands linked, neither of us brave enough to close the distance but neither of us letting go either.
“Lina,” Seb said softly, “can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
“When this is over—after the baby comes, after the green card is approved, after we don’t have to pretend anymore—what do you want?”
The question hung there like a challenge. Like a promise.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “A month ago, I would have said I wanted my independence back. My own space. My simple, uncomplicated life.”
“And now?”
“Now I can’t remember what that life felt like.” I squeezed his hand. “What about you? What do you want?”
“I want to wake up next to you every morning,” he said, no hesitation. “I want to see you grow with this baby. I want to be there when they’re born. I want all the messy, complicated, beautiful parts of this.”
“Even though the baby isn’t yours?”
“Especially because of that.” He shifted closer, just an inch. “Because it means I’m choosing this. Choosing you. Not because of biology or obligation, but because I can’t imagine not being here.”
Tears pricked my eyes. “You make it sound so simple.”
“Isn’t it? I love you. You’re having a baby. I want to be part of that.”
“Seb, it’s been three months—”
“I know. I know it’s fast. I know it’s insane.” He brought our joined hands to his lips, kissed my knuckles. “But I also know what I feel. And I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life for you to walk into that coffee shop.”
“That’s very romantic for a fake marriage.”
“Who says it’s fake anymore?”
The space between us felt electric. Charged with all the things we weren’t saying.
“We should sleep,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. Because if I kept talking, I’d say something I couldn’t take back.
“Yeah. Sleep.” But he didn’t let go of my hand.
I fell asleep like that—holding hands with my fake husband in the darkness, feeling like maybe this was the realest thing I’d ever done.
SEB’S POV
I woke up to Lina pressed against my side.
Sometime during the night, we’d gravitated toward each other. Her head was on my chest, her arm across my stomach, one leg tangled with mine. She fit there perfectly, like she’d been designed for that exact space.
I should move. Should put distance between us before she woke up and realized how thoroughly we’d violated our unspoken boundaries.
But I couldn’t. Because this—her warmth, her weight, the soft sound of her breathing—this was everything I’d been pretending I didn’t want.
“You’re awake,” she murmured against my chest.
“How can you tell?”
“Your heartbeat changed.” She didn’t move. “Is this okay?”
“Is what okay?”
“This. Me. All over you like a blanket.”
I tightened my arm around her. “More than okay.”
“We’re terrible at boundaries.”
“The worst.”
She tilted her head up, and suddenly her face was inches from mine. Sleep-rumpled and beautiful and so close I could count her eyelashes.
“Seb,” she whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For all of this. For staying. For fighting for me. For—” Her voice cracked. “For making me feel like maybe I deserve this.”
“You deserve everything.”
She kissed me.
It was soft. Tentative. A question more than a statement. And when I kissed her back, it felt like the only answer that mattered.
This wasn’t for the court. Wasn’t for the home study. Wasn’t for anyone but us.
When we finally pulled apart, she was smiling.
“Good morning, husband,” she said.
“Good morning, wife.”
And for the first time since this whole thing started, those words felt completely, absolutely true.
The week before the home study passed in a blur.
We fell into a routine—waking up tangled together, sharing breakfast, working in comfortable silence, falling asleep holding hands. We didn’t talk about what it meant. Didn’t define what we were becoming.
We just let it happen.
“The investigator will ask about our relationship,” Natalia warned us during a prep call. “How you met. When you knew you were in love. Your daily routine. Be consistent. Be specific. And for God’s sake, act like you actually like each other.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Seb said, looking at me with an expression that made my stomach flip.
“Good. Because they’re looking for cracks. Any inconsistency, any hesitation, and they’ll use it to prove fraud.”
After the call, I found Seb in the kitchen, staring at his phone.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He showed me the screen. A text from Declan:
Mom wants to meet Lina. She’s flying in next week.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh no.”
“Yeah.” He pocketed his phone. “I may have forgotten to mention the marriage to my family.”
“You FORGOT?”
“I’ve been busy! With the green card and the pregnancy and the custody battle—telling my mother I got married kind of fell through the cracks.”
“Seb, the home study is in four days!”
“I know.” He pulled me into his arms. “We’ll figure it out. We always do.”
I wanted to believe him.
But as I stood there in his kitchen—our kitchen—with his mother on the way and a home investigator coming and a baby growing inside me that wasn’t his, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were building a house of cards.
And any moment now, it was all going to come crashing down.
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