Chapter 6
Fox
Two weeks later
“Motherfucker!” The door to our dorm banged open so hard it almost swung back and hit Kane as he entered, but he was moving so fast, there wasn’t time. He had me by the scruff of my T-shirt and pinned against the wall before I even had a chance to register what he was doing.
“Oh, this is pretty forward, given we haven’t seen or spoken to each other for two weeks. Are you going to lube me up first, or are you diving straight in dry?” The taunting grin on my face was an added touch designed to drive him out of his mind, and judging by the way he was looking at me like he wanted to tear me limb from limb, I felt safe in assuming I’d achieved my goal.
“Didn’t you get the fucking memo? Xavier told us to fix this shit, or at the very least, call a truce, or whatever, yet the first day Rose is back at school, you pull this crap. Are you out of your living fucking mind?” If I didn’t know better, I would have said there was smoke coming from his nostrils. He was for sure angry enough for that to be the case.
“Is this a rhetorical question, or real deal? Because while on a normal day, I’m pretty confident in responding in the affirmative, my Spidey senses tell me you’re asking with reference to something specific, in which case, I can’t help you, given I don’t have even the slightest clue what that something may be.” This clearly wasn’t the response Kane wanted from me.
“Seriously, now is not the time to push me. Patience hasn’t been my strong point recently, so unless you want one of us to end up shot for real this time…” Jesus. He was morphing into Xavier.
“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly the Dalai-fucking-Lama over here, myself. Still, I can’t tell you what I don’t know, and just in case you didn’t hear or understand me the first time, I don’t know what you’re talking about. At all. Not even an inkling of a clue. So, what’s the next phase of this mildly homoerotic tryst, a duel at dawn?”
“You’re going to stand there and tell me that the fact that Rose returned to classes today for the first time since you tried to kill her—”
“Jesus Christ, Kane, keep your fucking voice down. Keep screaming like that, and you might as well take out a full page ad in the Heathcote Herald, or better still, leak a video of it on The Vine.”
He lowered his voice a little this time. “And this very day is when she gets summoned to the Dean’s office and told she’s been suspended. You must think I sprouted leaves yesterday, and grew up overnight, if you expect me to believe that.”
“Oh, I don’t expect you to believe anything. In fact, I expect exactly this, if I’m honest, but my expectations have nothing to do with this. I honestly still don’t know what the fuck’s going on here.”
“So you didn’t hack into the college system again, and submit an assessment paper on her behalf? A highly plagiarized assessment paper?”
“Negative. Now let go of my neck, before I’m forced to shoot you again.” He stared me down, squeezing a little tighter for good measure, before letting go. “You really don’t know anything about this?” There was a note of hesitation in his voice, but I could tell he was leaning toward believing me. “You’re for real?” He narrowed his eyes, sizing me up.
“One hundred percent. I swear on Jules’s grave.” Kane knew I never said that unless I was deadly serious about something.
“Fuck!” He let go of my shirt, and struck the wall hard, just to the right of my head. “Then we have a fucking problem. Or rather, another problem. A big one.”
“Okay, so are you going to tell me exactly what’s going on?”
“It’s just like I said. Rose is in the clear as far as the concussion is concerned, so returned to classes today. Right after her third lecture she gets hauled to the Dean’s office again, and told that a paper she turned in before we... the incident... has failed the anti-plagiarism process, and she’s been suspended while they investigate. This is pretty serious for anybody, obviously, but for her, it’s even worse. Since she’s already on probation because of all the other shit, although she’s allowed to put forward her side of the story at this stage, if it doesn’t go her way, she’ll be out without recourse to further appeal.” He walked over to the couch, and threw himself onto it.
“Man, I’m asking you one more time if you’re behind this, because I’ll be honest, it totally smells like another one of your schemes with Dillon—especially now that he can access the college IT systems in the blink of an eye, and be in and out without a trace. This is the perfect way for you to make sure she loses that Fellowship.”
“I just swore on my dead twin’s grave, and still you’re asking me this shit? Do you even fucking hear yourself? Man, I should have choked you out when I had the chance. If nothing else, even if you don’t trust me, just think about it logically. She was supposed to be dead right now, and if I’d have gotten my way, she would be. You said this happened on a paper she turned in the day we grabbed her. Why the fuck would I plan something to happen after she was already dispensed with?” I could see him assimilate this information. Even if he didn’t like me, or trust me anymore, I was pretty sure he didn’t think I was crazy or stupid.
“I don’t know, maybe as an insurance policy in case she didn’t die—which it turns out is exactly what transpired—and you still needed to get her out of the picture so that you could get your money?” He stared me down as he spoke.
“I’m just saying, if it is you, then I will right now transfer you enough cash to cover the value of the Fellowship for the remainder of your time at Heathcote.” I couldn’t believe my ears, and all the while, I was apparently the insane one. Kane was certainly hell bent on fighting me for the crazy crown.
“You take this money as a loan, or whatever the fuck you want to call it, and we’ll never speak of it again. You can just pay me back when you’re the CEO of whichever tech corp is lucky enough to have you when the time comes. The only stipulation is that you work with Dillon to fix this mess.”
“Jesus Kane, do you think that’s the answer to everything? You get out your fucking credit card, and throw money at the problem? The whole reason that I don’t want to lose the Fellowship in the first place is that I don’t want to take your money. Scratch that, I don’t want to take more of your family’s money. The O’Neills have been bankrolling me for the past six years, and as grateful as I am for your family’s unwavering and unwarranted generosity, I just want to be able to stand on my own two feet in this one, tiny way. That’s all. So, with or without the full Fellowship money, I won’t be accepting a bailout from you or your parents, and in this case, given I’m not the culprit, it’s all the more reason to say no.”
“So, you’re going to use the compensation money, if you need it?”
“No. We were awarded that money because the camp was found to have been negligent in their handling of a kid who was showing clear signs of suicidal thinking and ideation, plus the fact that he could so easily access that hunting rifle. I want to use the money to start building the camp we should have been at—the one that, if we had attended, Jules would still be alive today.”