Chapter 61 The Cold Shoulder

Chapter 61 The Cold Shoulder
The car keys felt like ice against my blistered palms, even through the thick cotton gauze.
I didn't wait for Knox to step away from the door. I grabbed my canvas backpack off the mattress with my elbow, hauled the strap over my shoulder, and marched straight past him into the freezing night air. The winter wind hit my face like wet glass, ripping through my hair as I sprinted across the snow-covered gravel toward his old car.
"Lila, wait!" Knox shouted from the porch, his heavy boots pounding against the wooden steps behind me.
I didn't look back. I jammed the key into the rusted lock, threw the door open, and scrambled behind the steering wheel. My bandaged fingers slipped twice against the plastic ignition before the starter gave a loud metallic scream and the engine roared to life. I slammed the car into drive just as Knox’s hand hit the glass of the driver's side window.
"Lila, open the door!" he yelled through the glass, his face tight and pale in the dark.
I hit the gas. The rear tires spun wildly against the slushy curb before catching the asphalt with a loud screech, launching the car down the dark service road toward campus.
The drive back to the university dorms was completely blind. Tears blurred my eyes, turning the yellow highway lights into long, wet streaks against the windshield. The green digital clock on the dashboard kept ticking, but I didn't care about the time anymore. The numbers $15,000.00 kept flashing behind my retinas like a permanent burn. He had paid me off. The house, the cellar fire, the registry office, the kiss on the mattress—it was all just a transaction to secure his brother's spot on the ice.
By the time I pulled into the gravel lot behind the engineering building, the campus was dead silent. The police cruisers were gone from the administration building, leaving only a row of orange construction cones blocking the entrance steps.
I didn't go back to room 302. I couldn't face the empty hangers or the open desk drawers. Instead, I walked straight into the 24-hour computer lab in the basement of the library, the heavy smell of ozone and burnt coffee surrounding me as I dropped my bag onto a plastic chair in the corner.
I sat down at the terminal, my throbbing fingers making it impossible to type, so I just stared at the blank monitor.
"You look like hell," a quiet voice said from the row behind me.
I snapped my head around. Mason was sitting in front of a dual-screen monitor, his grey hoodie pulled low over his forehead. He had a half-empty energy drink in his hand, and his bloodshot eyes looked completely drained. He didn't look mad; he just looked empty.
"What are you doing here, Mason?" I asked, my voice a dry, raspy whisper.
"The family lawyers officially froze my housing stipend an hour ago," Mason said, setting the can down on the desk with a small click. "I'm packing my digital portfolio before the IT department deletes my student login. What happened to your hands? The bandages are bleeding again."
I looked down at my left wrist. The dark red spot on my thumb had spread, soaking through the clean white layers Knox had wrapped just an hour ago.
"It's nothing," I said, tucking my arms against my ribs. "Knox paid out the contract termination fee. He sent the money to my dad's account right before the press conference."
Mason stopped scrolling his mouse. He slowly turned his head to look at me, his eyebrows pulling together into a sharp, straight line.
"He did what?" Mason asked.
"He wired the fifteen thousand," I said, a bitter laugh escaping my throat. "He told the media the contract was in the trash, but he kept his legal safety net anyway. He wanted to make sure I was paid off so I couldn't claim blackmail if the university legal team audited the files."
Mason let out a long, heavy breath through his nose. He pushed his chair back, stood up from the desk, and walked over to my terminal.
"Lila, you're an idiot," Mason said flatly.
I blinked, my chest tightening with a fresh wave of anger. "Excuse me?"
"Knox didn't wire that money to protect his brother's clearance," Mason said, leaning his palms against the edge of my desk. "My father's corporate lawyers were going to sue you personally for the digital theft of the master files. The only way to stop the injunction was to prove the data was purchased through a legal, pre-existing commercial agreement before the police executed the search warrant."
My blood turned back to ice. "What are you talking about?"
"Knox didn't use his family fund," Mason whispered, his voice dropping into a tense register that made the entire basement feel freezing cold. "He didn't have fifteen thousand dollars left after paying his brother's legal fees last year. He signed his own senior year league signing bonus over to your dad's estate to make the contract legally binding before the Dean went down. If he fails the scout game on Friday, he owes the league double that amount out of his own pocket."