Found (Lost and Found #2, New Adult Romance) (Lost & Found) by Nadia Simonenko Page A

starting to slip and I still don’t know what I’m doing after graduation. I can’t risk a bad grade, especially not with my grad program’s admission criteria. If I get a single grade at a C- or below, it’s an instant rejection of my doctoral application. I’ve never dropped below a B, but one bad test score could ruin my streak at the worst possible time.
    The apartment is nearly pitch-black as I tiptoe down the stairs. Craig won’t get up for at least another two hours or maybe even longer if he went out with Tina last night. It amazes me how those two are functional during the day given how late they stay out. I’m a mess if I miss even a few hours of sleep, so I wouldn’t dare pull all-nighters at the bar like Craig sometimes does.
    A freezing gust hits me as I yank open the front door and then lock it behind me. I’m not used to being out this early and it’s colder than I expected. My breath hangs in the air and a thin layer of ice crunches beneath my feet as I head toward the long staircase in silence.
    ‘“ I probably should’ve brought a coat.”
    It doesn’t feel quite as cold to me now that I’ve adjusted to being outside, but the frost on the bushes and the ice under foot tell me that it’s cold as hell out here. I’m not going back, though—at least not yet. I need time to think and maybe the chilly morning air will wake me up.
    The tall, black streetlight at the top of the hill flickers off just as I walk beneath it. The sky is a deep, dark blue as if it can’t decide whether it wants to remain night or give way to day, and it feels as if the stars are disappearing one by one above me. The world didn’t expect anyone to be up so early, and I caught it in a state of beautiful limbo, at once both night and day.
    The sound of singing pulls my attention away from the bright, starry sky and back to the path up the hill. What is Tina doing up so early? I’ve never heard her sing before but I recognize her voice anywhere. She’s just barely off-pitch and something about her song sounds almost eerie to me.
    At the top of the hill, Tina is reading a textbook while lying on the bus-stop bench and singing softly to herself. She’s wearing an unbelievably dorky headlamp like a coal miner who lost the rest of his helmet and her hair is tied back in a ponytail with a pink bow.
    It’s five in the morning and she’s sitting out in the cold wearing a headlamp. Nobody gets up this early and willingly heads out into the cold to read by headlamp—not even a lunatic with no sense of shame like Tina. Either she’s gone completely mad or something’s keeping her awake too.
    Gravel crunches beneath my sneakers as I trudge up the path and Tina abruptly stops singing and looks over her shoulder at me. I grimace and shield my eyes from the blinding glare of her headlamp, and she quickly kills the light. We stare silently at each other for what feels like an eternity before I finally join her on the bench.
    The entire world freezes in place as we stare silently at each other. Even our breath seems to linger in the air, unmoving, as if waiting for one of us to say something. Tina looks at me expectantly. She clearly has no intention of breaking the ice for me, and it’s only fair since I’m the jerk who interrupted her singing time. All my words have vanished on me, though, and I don’t know what to say. So many terrible, worrying thoughts are flying in circles around my mind—Maria, my collapsed family, my dismal prospects after graduation—that I can’t stop the carousel for long enough to pick one to talk about.
    “Good morning, Tina,” I mumble. It’s all I have right now.
    “Okay, spill it,” she tells me, skipping straight past all pretense of social nicety, and she leans back on the bench with her arms behind her head. “What’s got you up so early?”
    “Hey, it’s not like you’re the queen of mornings yourself,” I answer defensively. “I’ll tell you my reason for being up if