She flicked her eyes around the four bare walls of her kitchen before zeroing back on the screen like a laser. “Probably. The new super can keep whatever’s left at this point.”
Her belongings didn’t matter right now, not when the grant that would keep BUILD running was slipping through her fingers. She’d submitted every required document almost a month ago, just after that horrible dinner with her parents and that even worse run-in with Leo that had been so painful she’d absolutely refused to let herself dwell on it. She thought she’d done all the required work well in advance of today’s noon deadline, but an autogenerated email had landed in her inbox that morning warning her of unreadable PDFs in her application.
Unfortunately she’d been busy hauling her belongings out of her former home and hadn’t seen it until twenty minutes ago. Cue panic, shrieking, tears, and what might be a minor heart attack as she raced to her laptop to figure out what files needed to be resaved and uploaded again. Thank God her friends had been willing to keep juggling boxes while she hyperventilated at the kitchen countertop.
“Why are you so sloooooow?” She moaned, flexing the fingers of both hands, then clenching them into fists. Her old-ass laptop was trying to turn her prematurely gray as it whirred and thought and froze and whirred some more. All that drama to process the second-to-last document she needed to resubmit.
“Success!” She lifted a fist in triumph when theReceivedmessage flashed on her screen. One more to go. She’d get this off, then pack up the computer stuff and start dealing with her parents to—
The lights in her empty apartment snapped off.
“What?” Her eyes jumped to her screen where theI’m thinkingpinwheel had been replaced by the dreadedNo internet connectiondinosaur.“What?”
Thea came charging into the room. “Are you okay?”
“No!” She shrieked and buried her hands in her already disheveled hair. “This grant application’s due ineight minutes, and I don’t have any internet.”
Make that seven minutes. The time on the laptop read 11:53 a.m.
“Looks like you don’t have any power either.” Aiden had followed Thea back into the house and flicked the nearest light switch several times. “Did you set your electricity to be disconnected today?”
“Yeah, I told them anytime after noon…” She looked frantically around, as if the answer lay somewhere within these bare walls.
Thea’s mouth dropped open. “It’s not noon yet! You have—”
“Seven minutes. I know.” She swallowed back a sob. “But I doubt I can get it turned back on in time.”
She’d been so close.So close.
“I’ll start knocking on neighbors’ doors to see if they’ll share their Wi-Fi password,” Thea announced.
“Thank you.” Faith yanked the elastic out of her hair and rebundled it on top of her head, as if a tighter bun might cause the internet to magically restore itself.
Aiden pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’ve got a hotspot I use for job sites. That might be faster.”
“Thank you.” She sniffled, clicking on the Wi-Fi icon to see if any neighbors had a non-password-protected network. Her one chance to keep the doors open, and now she had roughly 250 seconds to steal someone else’s internet to make it happen.
“It’s up,” Aiden said. “You should see it as an option.”
She refreshed the list of options. “AdonisAir?” Even as her entire future crumbled around her, she could appreciate how much he must hate that.
But he just gave a soft smile. “Thea named it.”
“Gag,” she said flatly as she chose the network. “It’s asking for your login.”
He came around the kitchen island to join her. “Is it? That’s weird.”
Her fingers gripped the edge of the counter so tightly that her knuckles turned white. “Yeah, super weird. Just… just enter it please?”
He shook his head. “Sorry. I’ll have to look it up. I never remember passwords.” He fished his phone back out and started tapping again as Thea bustled through the door.
“Nobody’s answering their door. Either they’re all at work or this is the unfriendliest neighborhood I’ve ever been in.”
“Both.” Faith spoke past the fear clogging her throat. It was 11:57 now. “How are we doing, Aiden?”
“I’m looking,” he said. “Ah, here we go. Ready?”
He gestured to her keyboard, and she all but shouted, “Yes!”
