Updated Nov 5, 2025 • ~11 min read
They ended up on the roof.
Neither of them suggested it—Camille just started walking after their conversation in her bedroom, and Nicholas followed. Through the hallways, up the narrow servants’ stairs she’d discovered weeks ago, out onto the flat section of roof that overlooked the estate grounds.
It was nearly midnight, the October air sharp enough to sting. Camille wrapped her arms around herself, staring out at the manicured gardens that looked like shadows in the moonlight. Everything Eleanor controlled, everything she’d built, spread out below them like a kingdom.
“She used to come up here,” Nicholas said quietly, settling beside Camille on the roof ledge. “When my father was sick. She’d sit up here for hours, smoking cigarettes she thought we didn’t know about, planning how to keep the family together after he died.”
“Did it work?”
“She kept the business afloat. Raised two sons alone. Built an empire.” Nicholas pulled out his phone, then stopped, seeming to remember their agreement about transparency. “And she broke herself doing it. Forgot how to be anything except the person in control.”
Camille thought about Eleanor’s manipulations, her tests, her desperate need to secure the family legacy before she died. “She’s scared.”
“She’s terrified.” Nicholas’s voice was raw. “She’s dying and the only thing that matters to her is making sure everything she built survives. That’s why the heir requirement is so important—it’s not about grandchildren, really. It’s about knowing the Ashton name will continue.”
“And Juliette?” Camille asked carefully. “Did she understand that pressure?”
Nicholas was quiet for so long Camille thought he wouldn’t answer. Then: “Juliette was everything my mother wanted. Old family, perfect breeding, comfortable in high society. She fit into this world effortlessly in ways I never did.”
“You loved her.”
“I loved who I was with her. Or who I thought I could be.” Nicholas stared out at the darkness. “We met at Yale. She was studying art history, I was in business school. She made me laugh, made me think about things beyond profit margins and stock prices. For three years, I thought I’d found a way to be both—the son my mother wanted and the person I actually was.”
“What happened?”
“Aneurysm. March fifteenth, two years ago. She went to sleep and never woke up.” His voice broke slightly. “We were supposed to get married that summer. Had the venue booked, invitations ordered, everything planned. And then she was just… gone.”
Camille remembered reading the obituary, seeing Juliette’s photo, realizing Nicholas had married her on the anniversary of that death. “Your mother was devastated.”
“My mother was obsessed.” Nicholas turned to look at Camille. “She didn’t just lose her future daughter-in-law. She lost the grandchildren she’d been planning for, the continuation of the family line she’d orchestrated. For the first six months after Juliette died, all my mother could talk about was the heir that would never exist.”
“That’s why she’s so desperate now.”
“That’s why she orchestrated this entire arrangement. She knew I’d never date again—not seriously, not with the intention of marriage and children. I was too broken, too scared of losing someone again.” Nicholas laughed bitterly. “So she helped me create a solution that gave me what I wanted—financial independence—while giving her what she needed—a path to grandchildren.”
Camille felt something shift in her understanding. “The fake marriage wasn’t just your idea. She helped you plan it.”
“She didn’t help. She designed it.” Nicholas pulled out his phone again, this time following through. He opened his messages and handed the phone to Camille. “Read.”
The messages were between Nicholas and Eleanor, dated four months ago:
Nicholas: I can’t keep doing this. The grief counseling, the pitying looks, your constant pressure to date. I need out.
Eleanor: Then marry. Secure your inheritance and your independence.
Nicholas: I’m not ready for a real relationship. May never be.
Eleanor: Who said anything about real? Marry for business. People have done it for centuries.
Nicholas: A fake marriage? That’s your solution?
Eleanor: A practical marriage. One year, clear terms, mutual benefit. I’ll have Martin find suitable candidates. Women who need money, who won’t ask questions, who’ll play the part convincingly.
Nicholas: This is insane.
Eleanor: This is survival. You get your inheritance early. I get the possibility of grandchildren before I die. And some desperate woman gets financial security. Everyone wins.
Nicholas: And after the year?
Eleanor: We’ll see if it’s still fake by then.
Camille handed the phone back with shaking hands. “She planned everything from the beginning. The arrangement, the candidates, even the possibility that it might become real.”
“She’s been playing both of us the entire time. Making me think I was in control while she orchestrated every detail. Making you think you were making choices while she ensured you’d be desperate enough to agree.” Nicholas pocketed his phone. “We never had a chance, Camille. She made sure of that.”
“So what was real? Anything?”
Nicholas was quiet. Then: “The dance at the gala. That felt real. You telling Henry about our future—that felt real. The kiss for the photos, the way you improvise details about our life together, the mornings when I forget we’re pretending—” He stopped. “Maybe real isn’t about how something starts. Maybe it’s about what you build despite the circumstances.”
Camille thought about her own manipulated choices. About her mother’s debts that Eleanor had been secretly paying. About every decision that had felt like autonomy but was actually just responding to carefully applied pressure.
“I’m so tired,” she said quietly. “Of performing, of calculating, of wondering what’s real and what’s manipulation. I’m exhausted, Nicholas.”
“Me too.” He moved closer, and Camille leaned against him without thinking. His arm came around her shoulders—natural now, not performed. “But maybe we can be exhausted together. Maybe we can stop performing for each other, at least. Keep it up for everyone else, but when it’s just us, we’re honest.”
“Honest about what?”
“About how scared we are. About how broken we both feel. About the fact that we’re developing feelings for each other and neither of us knows if that’s real or just proximity and pressure.” Nicholas’s voice was rough. “I’m terrified, Camille. Terrified of losing someone again, terrified of letting you close enough to hurt me, terrified that what I feel is just my mother’s manipulation working exactly as she planned.”
“What do you feel?”
Nicholas pulled back to look at her. In the moonlight, his face was all sharp angles and shadows. Vulnerable in ways he never allowed himself to be downstairs, in Eleanor’s domain.
“I feel like I’m waking up after two years of sleepwalking through life. Like you’re this bright, sharp thing that cuts through the numbness.” His hand came up to cup her face. “I feel angry at myself for dragging you into this. Grateful that you’re here anyway. Desperate to protect you from my mother while knowing I can’t. And—” He paused. “And I feel like I want to kiss you without an audience or a photographer or any other reason except that I want to.”
Camille’s breath caught. “That’s a lot of feelings.”
“Too many?”
“Maybe just enough.” She turned fully to face him. “I feel like I’m losing myself in this performance. Like every day I’m a little less Camille Stratton from Connecticut and a little more Mrs. Nicholas Ashton, whoever she’s supposed to be. And I don’t know if that’s growth or destruction.”
“Maybe both.”
“And I feel—” Camille stopped, scared to say it out loud. “I feel like I’m falling for you. Not for the idea of you or for what you represent, but for the actual person. The one who holds my hair back when your mother poisons me with toxic tea. The one who sits with me in the dark coordinating our stories. The one who’s just as scared and broken as I am.”
Nicholas’s thumb traced her cheekbone. “That’s terrifying.”
“Completely.”
“We could stop. Right now. Maintain distance, keep everything professional until the year is up.” But even as he said it, Nicholas was pulling her closer.
“We could.” Camille’s hands fisted in his shirt. “But we’re not going to, are we?”
“No.” Nicholas’s forehead touched hers. “Because I’m tired of being safe. Tired of protecting myself from feeling anything. And you make me feel everything.”
When he kissed her, it was different from the performance for cameras or the choreographed intimacy for Eleanor’s benefit. This was desperate and raw and real—two people who’d stopped pretending, at least for this moment.
Camille kissed him back with the full weight of her confusion and fear and the dangerous thing growing in her chest that might be love or might be elaborate self-deception. She didn’t care. For this moment, on this roof, away from Eleanor’s watchful eyes, she let herself feel without calculating the consequences.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, Nicholas rested his forehead against hers.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he admitted. “How to be with someone without armor. How to trust that you won’t disappear like Juliette did.”
“I don’t know how to be with someone who chose me because I was desperate enough to agree to be purchased.” Camille’s voice cracked. “How to separate real feelings from Stockholm syndrome or financial need.”
“Maybe we don’t have to know. Maybe we just try and see what happens.”
“That’s a terrible plan.”
“You have a better one?”
Camille thought about Eleanor’s manipulations, about the will terms that trapped them both, about the heir requirement hanging over their heads. About every reason this was doomed to fail.
“No,” she admitted. “I really don’t.”
Nicholas pulled her closer, and they sat on the roof in silence, watching the grounds below. Somewhere in the house, Eleanor was probably asleep—or possibly monitoring them somehow, because that’s what Eleanor did. They’d learn later that she’d installed cameras in the common areas, that she’d read Camille’s evidence log before it was encrypted, that she’d planned for every possible outcome.
But for now, in this moment, they pretended they had privacy. Pretended their choices were their own. Pretended that what they felt was real and not just another layer of Eleanor’s elaborate game.
“Tell me about her,” Camille said quietly. “About Juliette. Really tell me.”
Nicholas tensed, then relaxed against her. “She was kind. That’s what I remember most. Not her beauty or her family connections or any of the things my mother valued. Just her essential kindness.”
“You miss her.”
“Every day. But lately—” He paused. “Lately I’ve been missing the version of myself I was with her more than I miss her. The man who could love without fear, who believed in futures and promises and permanence. She didn’t just die that night. That version of me died too.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have to stay dead.”
“Maybe.” Nicholas’s arm tightened around her. “Or maybe I become someone different. Someone who’s been broken and rebuilt. Someone who loves differently because he knows how quickly it can end.”
They stayed on the roof until the cold drove them inside. Walking back through the hallways, they maintained careful distance—still performing for any staff who might see, still protecting themselves from Eleanor’s surveillance. But when they reached their suite, Nicholas followed Camille into her bedroom instead of retreating to his own.
Not for anything physical. Just to be in the same space, to fall asleep on top of the covers fully clothed, to not be alone.
In the morning, Elena would find them like that and report to Eleanor. Eleanor would smile that knowing smile and make another note in whatever master plan she was executing. The machinery of manipulation would continue grinding forward.
But for this one night, Camille and Nicholas chose each other. Not because they had to, not because Eleanor demanded it, not even because of the inheritance or the arrangement or any of the practical reasons.
Just because they wanted to.
It was the first real choice they’d made since this whole disaster began.
And it terrified them both.
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