I Faked a Marriage for a Promotion, But Now I Want to Keep My Husband

“The schematics are flawless, Elara. Truly.” Mr. Sterling leaned back in his leather chair, the expensive material groaning under his weight. He steepled his fingers, looking at her over the top of them with an expression she had learned to interpret as condescendingly paternal. “Your work on the Harrison Tower project has been nothing short of brilliant.”

Elara’s heart gave a hopeful thump against her ribs. This was it. The senior partner position she had been working toward for six grueling years. She had sacrificed weekends, holidays, and any semblance of a personal life, pouring everything into the clean lines and structural integrity of her designs. She kept her posture straight, her hands clasped calmly in her lap. “Thank you, sir. I’m confident I can bring that same level of commitment to a leadership role.”

“I have no doubt,” he said, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. “But leadership, Elara, isn’t just about blueprints and load-bearing walls. It’s about presence. It’s about projecting an image the clients trust.” He paused, letting the words hang in the air-conditioned stillness of his office. “It’s an image of stability. Of being… settled.”

The air went out of her lungs. Settled. The word landed like a stone in her stomach. He wasn’t looking at her portfolio; he was looking at the bare ring finger on her left hand. The implication was as clear as if he’d chiseled it into concrete: single women were not stable. Single women were not partner material.

“I see,” she managed, her voice a carefully neutral thing, betraying none of the hot fury coiling in her gut.

“Just something to think about,” he finished, turning his attention back to the papers on his desk in a clear dismissal.

Days later, the injustice of it was still a bitter taste in her mouth. She swirled the cheap red wine in her plastic cup, the thumping bass of the house party vibrating through the soles of her feet.

“He basically told me to get a husband if I want the promotion,” she said, her voice tight with a frustration she could no longer contain. She was shouting to be heard over the music, leaning close to her friend Maya. “As if my marital status has anything to do with my ability to design a skyscraper. It’s archaic. It’s insulting.”

“It’s bullshit, is what it is,” Maya shouted back, her expression one of pure outrage on Elara’s behalf. “You should report him.”

“And say what? That my boss used a coded, plausibly deniable word to imply I’m not grounded enough for a promotion because I’m single?” Elara took a large swallow of wine. “I’d be laughed out of the building.”

A few feet away, leaning against a wall and trying to look like he belonged, Julian Thorne tuned out the cacophony. He stared into his beer, the condensation cold against his hand. In two weeks, he had to face the gauntlet: his grandmother’s eightieth birthday party. It wasn’t the party he dreaded, but the family. The aunts, the cousins, his own mother, all with the same look of pitying concern and the same rotation of questions. Still no one special, sweetie? A handsome chef like you, all alone? Your cousin Mark just got engaged, you know. The pressure was suffocating, a heavy, familial expectation he had no idea how to meet. He was so lost in his own spiral of anxiety that he didn’t notice the server with a tray of miniature quiches weaving precariously through the crowd, heading directly into Elara’s path.

The impact came from behind her, a solid shove between her shoulder blades that sent her stumbling forward. Her plastic cup flew from her hand, arcing a spray of dark red wine across the front of her cream-colored silk blouse. An instant later, something warm and savory splattered against the side of her head. She staggered, catching herself on the wall Julian was leaning against, his own shirt now decorated with a matching splash of Merlot.

“Oh my god, I am so sorry!” a panicked voice squeaked. The server, a kid who couldn't have been more than nineteen, stood frozen, his now-empty silver tray held out like a shield.

Elara stared down at the ruin of her shirt, a tiny, mushroom-filled quiche slowly sliding down the lapel. She felt another piece tangled in her hair just above her ear. A hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat. Of course. This was the perfect, humiliating end to a perfectly humiliating week.

“It’s fine,” she said, though it clearly wasn’t.

“Here,” a low voice said beside her. Julian was already pulling a cocktail napkin from a dispenser, dabbing uselessly at the stain on his own shirt before offering her a clean one. His eyes, a surprising shade of warm brown, were filled with a kind of shared misery. “That’s a… bad stain.”

“It’s a disaster,” she corrected, taking the napkin. She tried to blot the wine, only succeeding in smearing it into a larger, paler pink splotch. “My boss thinks I’m unstable, and now I have pastry in my hair. It really proves his point.”

Julian paused, his hand hovering over his own wine stain. “Your boss thinks you’re unstable?”

The frustration of the entire week boiled over. What did it matter if she told this complete stranger? “He thinks I’m not ‘settled’ enough for a promotion,” she said, her voice sharp. “Which is code for ‘unmarried.’ He wants me to project stability. Apparently, this,” she gestured to her wine-soaked, quiche-adorned self, “is not it.”

He stared at her, and instead of the pity she expected, a look of profound understanding crossed his face. He let out a short, humorless laugh. “You think that’s bad? I have to go to my grandmother’s eightieth birthday party in two weeks, where my entire family will line up to ask me why a man of my age and profession is still single. My cousin just got engaged to his dental hygienist. I am the family failure.”

They stood there for a second, two strangers united in wine stains and societal pressure. The party raged around them, but they were in their own little bubble of mutual despair.

Julian looked from her ruined shirt to his, then back to her face. A slow, reckless idea dawned in his eyes. “You know,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching into a wry smile. “We could solve both our problems right now.”

Elara raised an eyebrow. “How?”

“We should just pretend to be married,” he said, the words coming out as a half-serious joke. “You get your promotion. I get my family off my back. Win-win.”

He expected her to laugh, to call him crazy, to walk away. But Elara didn’t. She stopped dabbing at her blouse. Her gaze sharpened, the frantic energy draining away to be replaced by a focused, analytical stillness. She looked at him, truly seeing him for the first time—the easy set of his shoulders, the genuine exhaustion in his eyes, the absurdity of the proposal hanging between them. The architect in her brain, the part that saw structure and potential in chaos, began to turn the idea over, examining it from all angles.

“Tell me more,” she said, her voice completely serious.

An hour later, they were huddled in a corner booth of a 24-hour diner that smelled of stale coffee and cleaning fluid. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting a sterile, unflattering glow on the chipped Formica tabletop. A plate of half-eaten fries sat between them, growing cold. The absurdity of the situation had settled into a kind of sober, desperate reality.

“Okay,” Elara said, pulling a sleek black pen from her purse. The decisive click as she extended the tip seemed to echo in the quiet diner. “If we’re going to do this, we need an agreement. Terms. Boundaries.”

Julian pushed the napkin dispenser toward her. “Be my guest.”

She flattened a flimsy square of paper against the table. At the top, she wrote in neat, architectural script: Marital Agreement.

“First,” she began, her voice low and serious, “duration. This arrangement begins immediately and terminates upon the successful completion of two objectives: my promotion to senior partner and your survival of the Thorne family reunion.”

He nodded, watching her write. “Agreed. A clean break. The Termination Clause.”

“Exactly.” She drew a firm line under the first point. “Second: living arrangements. For this to be believable, we have to cohabitate. At least cosmetically.” She looked up at him, her expression unreadable. “I’ll move some things into your apartment. But I’ll sleep on the couch. No… shared spaces after dark. The bedroom is yours.”

A flicker of something—relief, maybe disappointment—passed through his eyes so quickly she thought she might have imagined it. “My couch is surprisingly comfortable,” he offered. “Clause two is acceptable.”

“Third: public displays of affection.” The words felt clinical, strange on her tongue. “Permitted only when necessary for the performance. Limited to hand-holding and, if absolutely required, brief, closed-mouth kisses. Nothing more.”

“No spontaneous romance,” he confirmed, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips. “Got it.”

She ignored his tone, her focus entirely on the napkin. “Fourth: backstory. We need to have our story straight. Where we met—not at a party where I got covered in wine and quiche. How you proposed. We’ll need to work on that.”

“I’ll cook you dinner. We’ll workshop our fake life,” he said.

She finished writing, the napkin now covered in their strange, contractual pact. It looked ridiculous and legally binding all at once. She slid it to the center of the table, a flimsy white flag of mutual desperation. For a long moment, they both just stared at it. The plan, laid out in blue ink, seemed both insane and perfectly logical.

“So,” Julian said, breaking the silence. “Do we have a deal?” He extended his hand across the table. His palm was warm and slightly calloused, a chef’s hand.

Elara looked from his hand to his face. His expression was serious now, the earlier humor gone, replaced by the same thread of nervous resolve she felt twisting in her own stomach. This was it. The point of no return.

She placed her hand in his. His fingers closed around hers, a firm, formal grip. The contact was brief, professional, and yet it sent a strange jolt through her. It was the handshake of a business deal, but it felt like jumping off a cliff while holding hands with a complete stranger.

They pulled back at the same time. The deal was sealed. They sat in the humming silence of the diner, the napkin-contract between them, and for the first time, a shared, silent thought passed between them: We have just made the biggest mistake of our lives.