All I wanted was to protect my job. A rumor spread that our new boss only promoted people with families, and I had none. Feeling desperate, I called Ryan \u2014 a single dad I\u2019d met at the park \u2014 and asked him to pretend to be my husband, with his daughter acting as our child. We spent a week getting to know each other so the act would seem real, and somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like pretending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the new boss arrived, I tried to play it cool, placing a photo of \u201cmy family\u201d on my desk. But just as I was preparing to meet him, Ryan called \u2014 his daughter was sick and he needed help. I left work to drive them to the hospital, risking everything for the little family I had grown attached to. Sitting there with them, I realized how much they already meant to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While waiting for news about Lily, Ryan confessed a truth of his own: he was actually the new boss. My stomach dropped. I thought I had ruined my career and made a fool of myself. But instead of being angry, he told me he respected me and that the rumors about him only promoting people with families weren\u2019t true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I apologized for my idea and he just smiled, saying he had gotten to know the real me. Before I could say another word, he leaned in and kissed me. For the first time in a long time, I didn\u2019t feel alone \u2014 and I realized I hadn\u2019t staged a family. I had stumbled into the beginning of a real one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
All I wanted was to protect my job. A rumor spread that our new boss only promoted people with families, and I had none. Feeling desperate, I… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":267,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16104,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16102\/revisions\/16104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}