Neon Miles and Midnight Lies

by Cora Brooks

Heat 4 / 5 · 21+Novella · 12 chapters32,574 words2h 22m read~3h 37m listen

Clara has been the punchline of the internet’s favorite scandal for long enough. With tabloids camped outside every exit and her ex’s family dangling one last financial lifeline over her head like a noose, she walks into a Los Angeles After Dark conference room expecting a routine debrief — and finds Knox waiting instead. Knox, the sharp-jawed defense attorney who once shredded her reputation on national television to protect the man who put the ring on her finger. Now he’s sliding a glossy contract across a rain-reflective glass table and asking her to play his fiancée all the way from Los Angeles to New York.

She refuses to sign the final page. He needs her signature to save his partnership. So they strike a devil’s bargain: a staged cross-country engagement, a curated feed of stolen glances and highway-diner milkshakes, and one very unsigned promise riding shotgun in the backseat.

But a cramped car and a thousand miles of rain-slicked highway have a way of stripping away performance. Every staged kiss for the cameras lingers a breath too long. Every late-night clause they rewrite by neon light feels less like negotiation and more like confession. Knox is not the cold closer she catalogued in her worst memories, and she is not the reckless girl his press releases invented.

Enemies To LoversFake DatingOpposites AttractSmall TownGrumpy Sunshine