When We Couldn’t Pretend Anymore

Not every well-built life is a whole one.Elisa Valença learned how to keep everything under control - until the day Ethan Mercer reappears.The return of the man she was never able to forget shakes the flawless structure of the life she spent years building. What seemed buried in the past comes back with enough force to reveal an impossible truth to ignore: some stories do not end. They simply learn how to hide beneath routine, success, and self-control.Faced with Ethan, Elisa will be forced to confront not only a love interrupted, but also the woman she had to become in order to survive everything that was left unresolved.Between memories that never truly faded, desires that survived the passage of time, and truths neither of them managed to erase, their reunion threatens everything Elisa believed she had left behind.When We Stopped Pretending is an intense, sophisticated romance about desire, memory, absence, second chances, and the brutal courage it takes to face what time was never able to erase.Because there comes a point when simply functioning is no longer enough.There comes a point when pretending is no longer possible.