For a long moment, I just stared at the check.
Thirty thousand dollars.
The number sat there on the white slip of paper as if it were perfectly reasonable, as though Garrison Sheridan hadn’t just laid out the humiliating blueprint of my life... my scholarship, my diner shifts, my mother’s struggling bakery, and decided to put a price tag on it.
I reached out slowly, placing my finger on the edge of the check, and slid it back across the tablecloth.
"I’m not for sale, Mr. Sheridan," I said, keeping my voice perfectly steady. "And your son is not a business transaction."
The room went very quiet.
Garrison didn’t react immediately.
He looked at the check, then at me, with the calm, slightly puzzled expression of a man who had just watched someone refuse a perfectly good umbrella in the middle of a rainstorm.
Then, without a word, he picked up his gold-plated pen again.
"Sixty thousand," he said simply, writing a new figure and sliding the check back toward me. "I respect conviction, Miss Bennett. I don’t respect stubbornness dressed up as principle."
I didn’t touch it.
Knox went very still beside me.
Garrison folded his hands on the table, studying me. "You’re a bright girl. I said so already. But I want you to think carefully about what you’re doing here."
His voice was measured, almost paternal. "Sixty thousand dollars is not an insult. It is a life-changing sum for someone in your position. It pays off your mother’s debts. It buys you time to finish your degree without the weight of financial pressure. What I am offering you is freedom."
"What you’re offering me," I said quietly, "is a transaction."
Something shifted in his expression, like he was running out of patience.
"I see." Garrison tilted his head slightly. "Then let me be less generous in my interpretation. You are a young woman who is holding my son’s academic eligibility hostage in exchange for a tutoring contract worth a fraction of what I’ve just offered you."
He paused. "If you are not doing this for the money, Miss Bennett, then I have to ask, what exactly are you doing it for? Pride?"
"Yes," I said simply.
"Pride," Garrison repeated, and the word in his mouth sounded like a minor character flaw, something to be corrected.
"Pride is a luxury, Miss Bennett. It’s a very expensive luxury for a girl whose mother’s shop is two missed payments from closing." He glanced briefly at the check between us. "I’m not insulting you. I am trying to help you. Surely you can see the difference."
I could feel the heat rising in my face. It wasn’t from embarrassment, but something else.
Knox’s jaw tightened in my peripheral vision, but he said nothing.
"You want to help me," I said, making sure my voice stayed even. "Then perhaps you should start by trusting your son to make his own decisions."
Garrison’s expression cooled. "My son’s decisions have included punching Harold Orwell’s heir in the face and turning up to this lunch with a girl he met when? Forgive me if I manage his decision-making rather carefully."
He looked back at the check, then at me, and the final trace of warmth, even though it wasn’t real, vanished from his face entirely.
"I’ll give you until the end of day," he said. "After that, the offer expires. And if you choose to stay in Knox’s orbit out of... pride, then understand that whatever comes next was a result of your decision." He stood, buttoning his suit jacket. "Good day, Miss Bennett."
He walked out.
I sat very still, staring at the check still sitting in the middle of the table.
Sixty thousand dollars.
My mother’s face flashed through my mind... they way she’d looked last week sorting through the mail, silently setting aside the bank notice without saying a word because she didn’t want me to worry.
I blinked hard, fighting the hot, humiliating prickle behind my eyes that I refused to let fall. Then, I pushed back my chair and stood up.
"Nora..." Knox started.
"I need some air," I said, and I walked out.
I rushed through the carpeted hallway, ignoring the dining room full of wealthy seniors who didn’t look up. I pushed through the double doors, down the stone steps, and only then did the cold air finally hit me.
I stopped at the bottom of the steps and pressed the back of my hand to my mouth.
I was not going to cry in front of a country club.
Behind me, the doors groaned open, followed by the sound of footsteps against the stone.
"Bennett."
"Don’t." I turned around, and whatever Knox saw on my face made him stop mid-step. "Don’t you dare do that sympathetic voice right now."
He held up a hand. "I wasn’t..."
"Did you know?" I asked, my voice coming out harder than I intended. "Did you know he was going to do that? Sit there and list off every single thing that’s wrong with my life and then try to buy me out like I was a minor inconvenience?"
Knox’s expression tightened. "No."
"Because from where I’m sitting," I said, taking a step toward him, "it looks a lot like you dragged me to this lunch, let your father humiliate me in that room, and then sat there and said absolutely nothing. And I have to wonder..." my voice cracked on the last word, and I hated it... "if this was the plan all along. Bring the poor scholarship girl to the fancy club, let Daddy scare her off, and when she runs, you’re free. No suspension, no tutor, no problem. Bonus points because I broke your nose yesterday and this is a very elegant way of getting even."
Knox stared at me. "You think I set this up to get back at you for sniping my nose?"
"Did you not?"
"No," he said flatly.
"Then why didn’t you say anything in there?" I shot back. "He sat there and tore me apart piece by piece and you just..."
"Because anything I said in there would have made it worse!" Knox’s fired.
He ran a hand through his hair, exhaling hard. "My father doesn’t respond to pushback in public. He digs in. If I’d said anything, he would have doubled down and you’d have been sitting there for another hour. I was trying to get you out."
I looked at him and he stared back.
The silence stretched long enough to be uncomfortable.
"I didn’t know he was going to offer you money," Knox said in a quieter voice now. "I knew he wouldn’t be happy. I didn’t know he’d go that far." He paused. "And for what it’s worth... what you said in there, about the university’s conduct policy... he didn’t expect that either. Nobody talks back to him like that."
I looked away, pressing my lips together.
"I’m not doing this for sixty thousand dollars," I said finally.
"I know," Knox said.
"I’m doing it because the university cut my academic stipend, and I need this tutoring job to pay my rent."
"I know that too."
"And because I’m not going to let some man in an expensive suit tell me what my life is worth, even though the man in question is your father."
Knox was quiet for a moment. Then: "So you’re staying."
I turned back to face him. "I’m staying, but we’re doing this properly. I want a contract."