The Rejected True Heiress (Liora and Callum) novel Chapter 354

Dinner was mostly uneventful after that. In fact, it was actually pretty nice. We talked and ate and drank wine, and things didn’t feel weird or uncomfortable, but rather natural. By the time we paid the bill, I had nearly forgotten that this was a date at all, and not just a nice meal shared with someone I cared about.

Callum insisted on paying, of course. Once the check was settled, we headed outside. The cold air bit at my skin, and I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering.

“Here.” He shrugged off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders. “Better?”

I opened my mouth to tell him to take it back, but found that I couldn’t. The fabric was warm from his body, and it smelled like him.

I nodded quietly.

“Wanna walk a little?” he asked, gesturing down the street.

I hesitated, but let him guide me away from the bistro. For a few moments, we walked in silence, the only sound that of our shoes clicking against the pavement.

“Liora, I…” He ran a hand through his hair and looked at me. “I feel like I should apologize for the other night. I made a total fool of himself.”

“You seemed like you were going through a lot,” I said.

“Something like that.” He sighed. “My parents disowned me. After this semester, I honestly have no clue what I’m going to do or where I’m going to go.”

I looked up at him. “You’re homeless?”

“Technically, yeah.”

My chest ached a little for him. Despite everything, I didn’t feel like he deserved that. Parents were supposed to care for their children, not cast them out and leave them high and dry on a whim.

For a moment, I almost considered telling him the truth about my identity. It felt like it could be so easy to do it now—to tell him the truth about who I really was.

For the first time, neither of us called that a mistake.

After a few seconds, Callum slowly stepped back and bent down, picking up his jacket.

“Callum—” I started, but he held up his hand to stop me.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” he said quietly. “I just want to end the date on a good note. Just in case there isn’t another.”

The urge I had felt to tell him about my identity suddenly faded away. I still wanted to, but my nerves were too bunched up to say it out loud, because a part of me feared that he would be angry that I hadn’t told him sooner, and that I had made his parents disown him because of my lies, and that I had ruined everything.

I couldn’t bear to end the night on a note like that. Not right now. Not with the taste of him still on my lips.

So I nodded and let him guide me back to his car. And the whole way back to campus, I kept brushing my finger across my mouth, and I even let him put his hand on my thigh while he drove.