Page 5 of The Billionaire's Secret Kiss

Heartbroken, I’d sent him a single text.

I can't do this anymore. I think we’d both be happier apart.

I never heard anything back. Three weeks later, Noah was featured on a tech blog, the picture taken at a Silicon Valley release party. Noah wore skinny jeans and a tailored shirt. A blonde model was draped on his arm.

I'll admit it. I cried over that picture. That one, and the one after it, and the one after that. Noah moved on from me without a hitch in his step, replacing me with a series of interchangeable models, actresses, and other semi-famous women happy to be on the arm of Silicon Valley's newest tech billionaire.

For a while, Noah was riding high, and I was just the girl he left behind. Then, out of nowhere, an old friend came out of the woodwork to topple Noah from his throne. Phillip Martin, a guy we both knew from our undergrad classes, hit the media with the claim that Noah had stolen the code he’d used for Endicott Tech’s flagship software.

A lawsuit followed a few days later. Noah was on the covers of all the same magazines again, this time as the villain. Speculation ran rampant, everyone picking sides, fingers pointing at Noah as a thief and a liar. There were no more pictures of Noah escorting models and actresses. Now it was Noah, drunk at a club with a porn star. Noah fighting with a reporter. Noah walking out of a meeting, scowling at everyone.

I called him one night, right after I saw a picture of him online, his eye blackened from a fight at a bar. He’d looked so alone. So lost.

He’d answered right away, even sounded grateful for my call. For a few weeks, we’d talked. Not every day, and never for long. I’d started to hope we might get back together. My hope didn’t last long. One night, I called, and a woman’s voice sounded in the background.

“Do you have company?” I’d asked, trying not to jump to conclusions.

My heart sank at the guilt in his voice when he said, “Uh, kind of. She—”

“You have a date?” My voice had wobbled, my total lack of cool humiliating. We weren’t together. Noah had a right to date. I’d just thought . . . I’d thought a lot of things. Things that were only true for me.

“Can I call you back later?” Noah had asked. At least he’d had the grace to sound sheepish. Had he known what I was thinking? That I’d been hoping we were finding our way back to each other?

He did call me back. More than once. I didn’t answer.

I needed a clean break. I couldn’t be friends with Noah. The agony at hearing a woman’s voice in his apartment had shown me that. If we weren’t together, I was better off on my own. I tried to ignore the news reports as Noah settled out of court with Phillip Martin.

He’d moved on, and Endicott Technologies continued to pop up in the news cycle, but I ignored it all. Noah was out of my life for good.

If I hadn't had school, I would have fallen into a dark pit of ice cream and chick flicks and weepy nights home alone. I still had my share of those, but I'd gotten into the master’s program at Tech that I'd wanted and had hit the ground running. I was a Computer Science major and Music minor in undergrad, and my master’s program was a combination of the two disciplines, focused on ways to use music and programming together in STEM courses to ignite the imaginations of coders and artists alike.

It was fascinating and exciting, and I loved using our projects with real students, seeing their eyes light up, the way the kids into programming suddenly got the creativity possible in coding and watching the kids into music find new ways to compose using code.

I loved my master’s program almost as much as I'd loved Noah.

Now, I had neither. Though there was the tiniest of chances that I could get my foot back in the door at school if Oliver had managed to swing an exception.

The fates were smiling on me, at least when it came to parking spaces. I found one not too far from the CS building, maneuvered my car against the curb, and jumped out, only a few minutes late.

I raced down the street and up the stairs into the building, bypassing the elevator and taking the stairs to the third floor two at a time. I was gasping for breath when I knocked on Oliver's office door.

"Sorry I'm late," I said when he answered.

"That's all right, Ella, it's only a few minutes,” he said in a gentle tone that would have been reassuring if I hadn't been afraid of what it meant. Oliver wasn't usually gentle. Brusque, impatient, and mostly nice about it, but not particularly gentle with his students. He expected us to work our asses off and be the best.

He gestured to the seat opposite his desk and said, “Take a load off, Ella. It feels like I haven't seen you in months."

That was because he hadn't.

A year before, shortly after second semester had started, I'd received notice from the bursar's office that my tuition had not been paid. I’d been fortunate so far that my parents had covered a lot of my undergrad and master’s tuition, supplemented by a few small grants.

I'd worked through college, waiting tables and tutoring to make up the difference. I knew I'd paid my share of spring tuition, and I'd been able to get a small grant to cover another chunk, but my parents had agreed to foot the bill for the rest. I'd figured it hadn't been a big deal—maybe they just forgot to send in the check.

I went home for the weekend and discovered there was no mistake. A ‘For Sale’ sign sat in the yard of my childhood home. My mother's car was missing, and my father's had been traded in. Inside the house, everything of value was gone.

I don't know how they thought they would keep it a secret, but my father tearfully confessed that he’d lost his job over a year before and instead of telling anyone, had pretended to keep going to work while borrowing more and more money to finance their lifestyle.

He swore he hadn’t meant for it to get so out of control, that he'd been interviewing and had been sure he'd find something else. Until suddenly, it was too late, and everything was gone.