Page 77 of How to Fall for the Secret Billionaire
He’s not who he said he was. You don’t fall for a lie. You walk away from it.
Even if it feels like something inside me is splintering as I do.
CAL
Ilean against the door the moment it shuts behind her, the echo of her footsteps still ringing in my ears. My heart feels like it’s trying to beat its way out of my chest.
Did I just ruin everything?
I press the back of my head to the wood, eyes closed, breath shallow. Her words replay again and again, asking me to let her in.
And what did I give her? Evasion. Distance. Silence.
I slide down onto the edge of the bed and drop my head into my hands.
Should I just tell her?
Tell her I’m Cal Hale? That the man she’s been getting to know—the man she’s been slowly trusting—isn’t a broke traveler named Cal Reid, but a tech CEO who’s been on the cover ofForbes? It’s a near-miracle she didn’t stumble on that online feature.
No.
No, not yet.
I like her. Really like her.
She’s the reason I’ve been dragging my feet about going back to L.A., the reason my suitcase is still unpacked, the reason I spent this morning looking up property listings in a town I didn’t know existed three weeks ago.
She’s different.
Not just because she’s not interested in the flash and the money—I’ve already seen that—but because she sees people. She saw me. Or at least, the version of me I allowed her to meet. The one I wish was the full truth.
And that’s the problem.
If I tell her now, everything changes.
The weight of my name, the numbers in my bank account—it’ll tilt everything between us. And I need to know if what’s growing here is real. If she’s falling for me.
Not Cal Hale.
Not Cal Reid.
Just me.
She’s already seen so much of who I am beneath the surface. But this one piece… this one part of my life has the power to shatter it all. So I’ll hold it a little longer. Just a little.
I’ll explain later.
She’ll understand.
She has to.
By the next morning, I’m restless.
I barely slept. My thoughts chased themselves in circles all night, chasing her, chasing everything I didn’t say. By dawn, I’m wired and exhausted—too tired to go on my usual morning walk, too agitated to stay in bed.
I head downstairs earlier than usual, drawn by the quiet clatter of the kitchen. When I step in, it’s just Margot and Aunt Edie.
Margot looks up, and for half a second, I think she’ll ignore me—a very understandable reaction. But she doesn’t. Instead, she flashes a friendly, breezy smile.
