Page 13 of A Smile Full of Lies (Secrets of Stonewood #1)

Chapter

Nine

ROS

THREE DAYS LATER

The silence in the house felt heavier than it had since Gran died. I had an interview this afternoon at 4:30, and my stomach was already tied in a nervous knot about it.

I sat on the edge of my bed, bare feet pressed to the cold floorboards, the same scuffed wood that Gran used to mop every Sunday like it meant something.

Like keeping the house clean kept the grief of losing my parents — of her losing her only daughter — at bay.

Now? Dust was gathering on the baseboards.

The air felt still, like the house was holding its breath.

My black slacks were too tight at the waist. Not because I’d gained weight, but because they were old, shrunk, washed too many times in lukewarm water to keep the power bill low.

I smoothed them down and reached for the blouse hanging off the closet door — a pale cream button-down that looked just professional enough if you didn’t look too closely at the fraying cuff.

My fingers trembled as I fastened the buttons.

This interview needed to go well. It had to. I was out of time, out of savings, and dangerously close to being out of power — literally. I’d managed to stall the electricity shutoff once, but that grace period was a match burning down to nothing.

Knox’s face flashed through my mind: his jaw, clenched with quiet anger, the way he’d handed me water like it was a lifeline. I shoved the memory aside.

The other day didn’t matter. The things I’d typed into that stupid forum with StrayDog777 didn’t matter. I was getting this job, come hell or high water.

When I arrived for my interview with Stonewood Living Magazine , the receptionist didn’t even look up from her phone before waving me toward the back. The office was cramped, no windows, the air stale with the sour stench of old coffee and someone’s sad microwave lunch.

Sam Myers, the Editor-in-Chief, sat behind a cluttered desk like he owned the goddamn world. He was in his mid-forties, balding, and had a smirk that made my skin crawl. He didn’t stand. Instead, he looked me up and down like he was assessing meat at a deli.

“You’re Rosalind Cooper,” he said. “I didn’t expect you to be so cute.”

I sat stiffly across from him, my pulse hammering in my throat.

“Thanks for taking the time to interview me.”

He skimmed my résumé with barely disguised boredom.

“You’ve got some chops. But all this serious shit? No one here reads that. You wanna make it in this town, you gotta write what sells. Sex sells.”

I blinked.

“You mean fluff?”

“I mean columns about dating. Blowjob breakdowns. Confessions from your latest fuck.” He leaned back, his chair creaking as he all but undressed me with his eyes. “You could be the face of a new section. Local girl gives the people what they want.”

My mouth went dry.

“That’s not my voice.”

Sam shrugged, his gaze firmly locked on my chest.

“Then fake it. And if you really wanna stick around here long-term…” He grinned as he lifted his gaze to meet mine, slow and sleazy. “Maybe toss in a blowjob once in a while to keep the boss happy.”

Rage and humiliation surged through me so fast it made me dizzy.

I stood, my legs shaking.

“I’d rather starve.”

His smirk didn’t waver.

“Your loss, sweetheart.”

No. His.

Because I might be broke, but I wasn’t blowing some power-drunk editor to save my career.

I walked out without looking back, and I was still shaking when I pulled back into my driveway.

The fury hadn’t faded, not even a little bit. It burned hot beneath my skin, a mix of rage and shame and helpless fucking grief. I gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles ached. Gran’s house loomed in front of me like it knew what kind of day I’d had. The porch light was off.

That wasn’t right.

I frowned as I climbed out, gravel crunching beneath my flats. The October air had that damp, coastal chill that stuck to your bones. I jogged up the steps and tried the porch light switch three times.

Nothing.

The bulb might’ve blown. But as soon as I unlocked the house and stepped inside, the suffocating silence and darkness wrapped around me like a shroud. No hum of the fridge. No buzz from the ancient air purifier Gran used to swear by. The house wasn’t just dim — it was dead .

I tried the kitchen light. Nothing. Panic flared in my chest.

“No, no, no,” I whispered, rushing to the fridge. The second I yanked the door open, lukewarm air rushed out. The freezer was defrosted and leaking down onto the tile. Bags of frozen vegetables had gone soft. The tray of chicken breasts I’d been saving for the week glistened with melted ice.

My throat closed.

They’d cut my power while I was out at that dumpster fire of an interview, shut off just like the final notice said they would. No more grace periods. No more mercy.

I stood in the dark kitchen, light from my phone casting long shadows across the cabinets, and for the second time today, I wanted to scream.

I bolted for the living room, my heart pounding as I dropped to my knees beside the coffee table. My laptop was still where I’d left it, charger coiled on the coffee table next to it. I cursed out loud when I remembered that I hadn’t plugged it in before I left for the interview.

My pulse thundered in my ears as I flipped open the screen. The battery was low, of fucking course. I fired up the browser, then slapped myself in the forehead with the heel of my hand.

No connection. Of course not. I shook my head.

“If the power’s off, then your router has no power and can’t connect you to the internet, dumbass,” I grumbled, because talking to myself was better than the oppressive silence filling the house.

I pulled out my phone and opened the Wi-Fi settings, thinking maybe I could set up a personal hotspot via my phone.

I checked to see how many bars of service I had and was greeted with a “No Service” where the bars should have been.

I checked my texts and saw that I had one new text notification from my service provider.

Your account is past due and service has been suspended. Pay $217 today to restore service.

Fuck, they’d cut that too.

Without power, Wi-Fi, or phone service, I couldn’t even load job listings, let alone apply for anything. My freelance dashboard wouldn’t refresh. My inbox wouldn’t open. Every tab I clicked gave me a spinning wheel or a network error.

To make things worse, my useless ass phone was already on six percent battery.

I stared at the screen, chest heaving, a cold sweat breaking out down my back.

The last of my gran’s funeral expenses had drained what little money I had.

The freezer full of cheap bulk food I’d been stretching out was all ruined.

I had no money. No power. No heat or AC.

No internet. No light. Just this house, full of ghosts and silence, pressing in on me.

I wasn’t just broke. I was cut off and completely fucked.

The world was still spinning, people were still living, working, and getting paid.

And I couldn’t even charge my fucking phone, not that the damn thing would do me much good with the service cut off.

I sank to the living room floor, the worn carpet rough and unforgiving beneath me.

My laptop sat useless in front of me, the low-battery warning glowing in the dark like a threat.

My phone was down to four percent, and every breath felt harder to manage than the last — tight, shallow, and fucking useless.

I tried to open my bank app out of sheer habit, but it wouldn’t load with no service. I scrolled through my pictures to the last screenshot I’d taken of what I had in the bank yesterday and immediately wished I hadn’t.

$18.72.

That was it. That was all I had. If I even had that much left now.

I let out a strangled sound — half laugh, half wail — and slapped a hand over my mouth like I could shove it back inside. My shoulders trembled. My throat ached. And then it just… broke.

The sob ripped out of me so hard I doubled over, forehead pressed to my knees. I was crying — no, sobbing — the kind of raw, broken sound I hadn’t made since Gran died. Maybe not even then. This was different. This was shame. This was failure.

I’d done everything right. I’d said no to Nina. I’d walked out on Sam. I’d held the line, kept my dignity, tried to be good.

And it still wasn’t enough.

I clutched my phone like it was a lifeline and curled in tighter, pressing my cheek to my knees, trying to breathe through it, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t think . The tears wouldn’t stop. Neither would the panic.

I was drowning, and nobody even knew I’d gone under.

The sobs eventually burned out, like a storm that ran out of wind. I was still curled up on the living room carpet, cheeks wet, lashes clumped, chest aching from the effort of pulling air into lungs that didn’t want it.

The house was so fucking quiet it was deafening.

No hum from the fridge. No buzz from the overhead light. Just the dark and the tick of the old wall clock in the living room, one Gran had bought at a garage sale when I was ten. The rhythm of it felt louder now, like it was mocking me.

I wiped my face with the hem of my shirt and sat back against the couch, head tipped against the worn cushions. My throat was raw. My eyes burned.

And then, out of nowhere, I heard it. Not aloud. Just… in my head. Clear as day.

“You’re stronger than this, baby.”

Gran’s voice. Soft and steady like always.

I bit down on my bottom lip to keep from crying again.

She used to say that every time something went wrong. First breakup. Flat tire. Finals week. The morning I came home from the ER after that awful frat party shaking and ruined. She’d held me in the kitchen, hands in my hair, and whispered it like a prayer.

“You’re stronger than this, baby.”

My fingers curled tight in my lap. She was wrong. Or maybe I just didn’t believe her anymore.

But I wanted to. God, I wanted to believe her.

So I sat there a little longer in the dark, breathing as steady as I could manage, letting that ghost of her voice wrap around me like a blanket I’d forgotten how to use.

Just until I could stand up again.

I finally pulled myself off the floor, legs stiff, spine aching from how long I’d been curled up. My laptop screen was black now. It had gone dead while I was having that meltdown. I grabbed the power bank I kept in the junk drawer and plugged it in, holding my breath.

The screen flickered to life, dim and sluggish. One bar of battery. Maybe ten minutes of life if I didn’t push it. My phone was already dead, completely useless without service or a charge.

I desperately needed to check the freelance app where I picked up the work that had been keeping me afloat until now, but I knew it was pointless with no power to run my router and connect to the internet.

My heart started racing.

Then I remembered something: Knox’s Wi-Fi. Sometimes it reached from his house to mine.

He’d given me the password a couple years ago, back when my router kept going out and I was trying to meet a deadline. I hadn’t used it since, but I hadn’t forgotten it either.

I clicked into the network settings and found his network, ObsidianNet_5G . There it was. The signal was weak, barely a bar. But it was still there.

I typed in the password from memory — StonewoodManor1989 — and hit connect. It worked.

A small bubble of relief rose in my throat, quickly followed by panic.

Even with the Wi-Fi, there wasn’t much I could do.

My laptop was on its last breath. My phone was a dead brick.

I couldn’t apply for jobs. Couldn’t make calls.

Couldn’t transfer funds. I had eighteen dollars to my name and no more food in the house.

I leaned forward, forehead resting against my arm, breathing shallow. I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do.

The laptop finally gave out with a dull click, plunging the room into deeper silence. I sat frozen in the dark, every muscle aching from tension, every thought circling the same truth: I was completely out of options.

Then came the knock on my front door. Sharp. Furious. Nowhere near polite.

My breath hitched as I stood, legs stiff, feet tingling and half asleep from the position I’d been sitting in. I didn’t need to look through the peephole. I knew in my bones that it was Knox. I opened the door.

He was already on the edge of storming in, shoulders tense, mouth pressed in a hard, disapproving line. The street light behind him cast his face in hard shadows. His jaw was clenched like maybe he was grinding his teeth, blue eyes burning a hole through me.

“What the fuck , Ros?”

I flinched. “Knox?—”

“Your power’s off. You’ve got no AC, no heat, no way to manage the wild swings in the weather at this time of year, no internet, no backup. Your phone says your number has been disconnected, too. You’re living in this house like it’s not falling down around you.”

“I’m handling it,” I whispered, even though we both knew that was a fucking lie.

“No. You’re not.” His voice was low and dangerous. “You didn’t tell me. You let shit get this bad, and you didn’t fucking tell me .”

“I didn’t want to bother you with my problems?—”

“You’re staying with me.”

The words landed like a physical blow. My stomach dropped.

“I… what? Knox, no. I’m not?—”

He took a step forward, crowding me back against the hall wall. His eyes were sharp as a knife, voice razor-edged.

“I wasn’t fucking asking , Rosalind.”

My breath caught and a shiver shot down my spine. “But?—”

“But nothing. Get your shit and move your ass. You’re not staying here with no power, no food, and no way to do your goddamn job.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but nothing came out. How the hell was I supposed to argue with a fucking force of nature?