When I step out of the building, I check my phone to see I have five missed calls. Two from Robbie, and three from Braden. What the heck?

I debate who to call back first and determine I probably have some obligation to my boyfriend, even though I’ve been aching to patch things up with Robbie.

It rings exactly once before he picks up. “Hel—”

Braden cuts me off. “Thatcher Bell just emailed. They want us to call them right now to talk numbers,” he says.

“What?”

“Sara, they’re making an offer.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Roberto

“Hoooly crap!” Sara says as soon as she walks in the door. “Are we about to become millionaires?”

Braden smirks. “I mean technically since I was born—”

She swats his arm. He smiles mischievously and puts his arm around her waist. It feels like an invisible hand is squeezing my chest. One with claws too.

“But yes, I think we just might be,” he says.

I don’t want to assume anything before we hear it from the horse’s mouth. We have no idea how much or how little it could be.

Sara leans her head on Braden’s shoulder, and my stomach turns. The time before she got here was weird enough when it was just me and Braden sitting in his professionally decorated room.

But it turns out this is worse. I should have kept my mouth shut about my opinions about him, about the company. What good did it do? Now I’ve lost Sara as a best friend, and there she is, literally in his arms.

I shake my head. I need to keep my eyes on the prize. The potentially giant dollar sign that would be a lottery ticket for my family, and my ticket out of this godforsaken company.

They can have all my shares. Hell, they could have them for five hundred dollars, just to make up for the time I spent coding. But a few million doesn’t sound bad.

“What are we waiting for?” I say. “We’re all here. We should call.”

“All right, let’s do it,” Braden says.

Sara is grinning like a madwoman.

We huddle around Braden’s phone as it rings over speaker. It feels like there is no other sound in the world but that drawn-out beeping, and then pausing and then beeping. Every syllable buzzing with anticipation.

“Hello.” Bell’s voice interrupts the ringtone. A wave of excitement washes over me. I feel like I might jump out of my own skin, I’m so amped. By contrast, Bell’s voice sounds so normal, so casual.

“Hi, it’s Braden from Perfect10.”

“Oh, hey man, sorry, it’s hard to hear you, I’m on the golf course and the cell service is shit.”

“Oh, well we can call you back later if...”