I could not stop hearing it. My eight-year-old daughter had stood in a hallway at the war-hour in her pyjamas and casually dismantled, in one sentence, the entire load-bearing lie of my adult life — the lie that said want and fear were opposites, that being frightened of a thing was proof you shouldn't have it, that the flinch was a verdict instead of a symptom. Pip didn't believe any of that, because no one had taught it to her yet. To her, wanting something and being scared of wanting it...

Paper Vows is a serialized fake-marriage billionaire romance audiobook, written by Mia. New episodes daily.