Chapter 48 The Spark

Chapter 48 The Spark

Knox moved first.
He didn’t yell. He lunged forward, covering the five feet of concrete in a split second. The tire iron whistled through the damp air as he swung it toward Richard’s arm.
Richard’s thumb flicked the wheel. He dropped the Zippo.
The silver lighter hit the soaked floorboards just as Knox’s shoulder slammed into Richard's chest. A blue wall of flame roared up from the hole. The heat hit my face hard. The smell of chemicals and burning paper instantly filled the cellar.
"No!" I screamed.
The force of Knox's tackle threw Richard backward against the metal water heater with a heavy crash. The lantern on top of the washing machine tipped over, rolling across the floor and throwing spinning shadows against the ceiling.
I didn't look at them.
I threw myself flat onto the freezing concrete, my knees scraping the floor as I reached directly into the orange flames. The heat scorched the skin on my forearms before my fingers even touched the wood. The blue cover of the notebook was already turning black at the edges.
I grabbed the spine of the book and yanked it out of the hole.
I dragged it across the concrete, flattening my bare hands against the smoking cover to smother the fire. The thick smoke made me cough until my lungs burned.
"Lila!"
Knox’s hands were on me a second later. He grabbed my shoulders and hauled me backward toward the wooden stairs. He sat me down, his hands immediately checking my wrists.
"Did it catch you? Let me see," he demanded, his voice frantic. His thumbs pressed into my palms, turning my hands over. The skin on my fingers was red and blistered, but the notebook was clamped tightly under my arm.
"I have it," I choked out, tears streaming down my face from the smoke. "Knox, I have it."
He let out a sharp breath, resting his forehead against mine for a second before pulling back.
"Don't move," he said.
He stood up, turning toward the center of the room. The fire in the floorboards was already dying out, but smoke was rising toward the ceiling.
Richard was sitting on the floor by the water heater. His mouth was bleeding and his white shirt was covered in grease. He looked up at us, his eyes completely blank. He wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand. He just looked small.
"It's over, Dad," a quiet voice said from the stairs.
I looked up. Mason was standing on the third step. He still had his torn hockey jacket on, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. His face was completely calm.
Richard stared at his son. "You threw it all away. For her."
"I didn't throw it away," Mason said, stepping past me onto the concrete floor. He didn't look at his father's bleeding lip. "I ended it. The university board just released the audit statement. Your name isn't on the building anymore, Dad. They're removing the sign in the morning."
Richard didn't answer. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the metal tank.
Knox stepped between Mason and Richard, the tire iron held loosely at his side. "The fire is out. We need to get her out of here. Her hands are burned."
Mason looked over at me, his eyes dropping to the faded blue notebook clutched against my chest. He gave a very small, tired nod.
"Take her to the clinic downtown," Mason said softly. "I'll stay here with him until the police arrive."
Knox dropped the iron tool onto the floor with a loud clang. He reached down, lifted me carefully into his arms, and carried me up the dark wooden stairs into the clean winter air.
The freezing wind hit my face as Knox carried me across the snowy yard. The cold felt good against the burning stings on my hands and arms. He didn't say a single word until he slid me onto the passenger seat of his car. He slammed the door, ran around to the driver's side, and got behind the wheel. The engine was still idling from before.
He didn't look at me as he threw the car into drive and hit the gas. The tires spun on the slushy driveway, and then we were tearing down the dark street.
I leaned my head against the window, clutching the burnt notebook to my ribs. My fingers were throbbing now, the pain getting sharper as the initial shock wore off. I looked down at the dark blue cardboard cover. The edges were crinkled and black, but the center was completely intact. My dad’s handwriting was still safe inside.
"Let me see your hands," Knox said. His voice was a tight, low rasp. He didn't take his eyes off the dark road.
"They're fine," I whispered, keeping my arms tight around the book.
"Lila. Put the book down and let me see your hands."
I slowly let go of the notebook, placing it face-up on the console between us. I held my palms up in the faint green glow of the dashboard lights. The skin on my fingertips and the palms of my hands was already blistering, turning an angry, puffy white.
Knox glanced down for a fraction of a second. His jaw clenched so hard the skin around his mouth went pale. He reached out with his right hand, gently wrapping his fingers around my wrists to hold my arms steady. He didn't touch my burned skin, but his grip on my wrists was tight and grounding.
"We're almost there," he said, pushing his foot down harder on the accelerator. The car sped through the quiet streets, passing the dark campus buildings and heading toward the brighter lights of the downtown medical district.
"Is Mason going to be okay?" I asked, looking out at the falling snow. "Leaving him alone in that basement with Richard..."
"Mason is the one who called Foley," Knox said flatly. "He knew exactly what his father would try to do once the registry file cleared. He's not the victim anymore, Lila. He's the one holding the leash."
We pulled into the empty parking lot of the 24-hour clinic. Knox cut the engine, grabbed the burnt notebook from the console, and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. Before I could even unbuckle my seatbelt, he was at the passenger side, pulling my door open. He lifted me out of the seat, keeping his large arms locked beneath me so I didn't have to use my hands for anything.
The automatic glass doors of the clinic slid open with a quiet hum. The lobby was bright, white, and smelled strictly of bleach. A nurse behind the front desk looked up from her computer screen, her eyes immediately falling on my blistered hands.
"What happened?" she asked, already reaching for a medical chart.
"Minor grease fire," Knox said, his voice dropping into that calm, demanding tone he used when he needed people to move fast. "She reached in to pull something out. It's mostly first and second-degree burns on the palms."
The nurse nodded quickly and pushed open a set of double doors leading to the back rooms. "Bring her right back to room four. The doctor is on call."
Knox carried me down the hallway and set me down gently on the edge of the examination table. He didn't leave my side, even when the nurse came in with a tray of sterile water and cold gauze packs. He stood right next to the table, his massive frame blocking the rest of the room from my view, keeping his blue eyes locked on mine.
"This is going to sting," the nurse warned, dipping a piece of gauze into the water.
As soon as the wet cloth touched my palm, a sharp, white-hot flash of pain shot straight up my arm. I flinched, a small gasp breaking out of my throat, and my eyes filled with tears.
Before I could pull away, Knox stepped closer. He didn't touch my hands, but he leaned down, pressing his forehead against the side of my head. His hand came up to rest flat against the back of my neck, his long fingers anchoring me in place.
"Look at me, Lila," he whispered against my ear. "Don't look at the tray. Just look at me."
I focused entirely on his face. The hard, dangerous edge he had carried all night in the basement was completely gone. His eyes were wide, soft, and entirely focused on me. I listened to the steady, heavy sound of his breathing, using it to time my own breaths as the nurse cleaned the soot and ash off my skin.
"The notebook is in my coat," Knox said softly, his voice a low, steady rumble that helped drown out the throbbing pain in my palms. "I checked it while we were walking in. The pages didn't take any water damage from the fire. The text is perfectly clear."
"Thank you," I whispered, my voice shaking.
"Don't thank me," he said, his thumb tracing a slow, light circle against the side of my neck. "You're the one who jumped into the fire for it."
The doctor came in a few minutes later, checking the blisters and wrapping both of my hands in thick layers of white cotton gauze. By the time they were done, my hands looked like two oversized white clubs, completely useless.
"Keep them clean, apply the ointment every four hours, and don't try to open any heavy doors for the next few days," the doctor said, writing a prescription on a small pad. "You'll have some mild scarring, but the tissue will heal completely."
Once the medical staff left the room, the quiet returned. Knox reached into his pocket and carefully pulled out the blue notebook. He placed it gently on my lap, since I couldn't hold it with my bandaged hands.
"Where to now?" Knox asked, leaning his hips against the edge of the examination table.
"Not back to the Shaw house," I said immediately.
Knox reached out, his thick fingers lightly touching the edge of the white gauze wrapping my right wrist.
"My apartment has a lock on the door," Knox said, his voice dropping into a quiet, serious tone. "And the couch isn't comfortable, but nobody knows the address except Mason."
I looked up at him, the weight of the last three months finally lifting off my shoulders. The fake dating rules were supposed to keep us safe, but the way he was looking at me right now didn't feel fake at all.
"Take me there," I said softly.
Knox nodded, helping me slide off the table. He kept his hand firmly on the small of my back as we walked back out through the sliding glass doors into the cold parking lot. The storm was slowing down, leaving a thick layer of quiet white over the city.
He unlocked the passenger side, adjusted the seat so I was comfortable, and carefully buckled the seatbelt across my lap without touching my bandages. When he got into the driver's side, he didn't start the engine right away. He just stared at the steering wheel, his breathing heavy.
"What is it?" I asked, looking at his profile in the dark.
Knox slowly turned his head to look at me, his face totally blank, but his eyes were sharp.
"Richard is down, Lila, but he isn’t out," Knox said, his voice dropping into a low, tense whisper. "Mason took his name off the building, but the Shaw family lawyers still own half the athletic department. Tomorrow morning, when the university finds out Ryder is eligible and Richard is in a cell, they aren't going to look at Richard."
My stomach dropped, the warmth from a second ago completely disappearing. "Who are they going to look at?"
Knox leaned closer, his hand gripping the steering wheel until the leather groaned under his palm.
"They’re going to look at the girl who lived under his roof and the guy who helped her break into his basement," Knox hissed, his face inches from mine. "This isn't the end of the fake dating, Lila. Tomorrow, the whole campus is going to accuse us of blackmailing a board member. If we don't play this perfectly, they won't just kick Ryder off the team, they’re going to expel both of us."