The Blackwood University Dining Hall was a sea of marble and vaulted ceilings. At the center sat the "High Table"—the unofficial territory of the Blackwoods and the Montgomerys.
Elena walked in, the $5,000 in her account feeling like a heavy, burning weight. She had gone to the campus bank and withdrawn it all in cash. She wanted him to see it. She wanted him to feel it.
The whispers started the moment she stepped onto the red carpet.
"Look, it's the stalker."
"Does she really think she can sit near them?"
Elena ignored them. She walked straight to the center table where Julian was sitting with Cissy and several members of the rowing team. Julian was mid-sentence, laughing at something a friend said, but his eyes went dead the moment he saw Elena approaching.
"Vance," he said, his voice a warning. "I thought I made myself clear in class."
"Crystal clear, Julian," Elena said. She reached into her bag and pulled out the thick, white envelope. "But you dropped something in the lecture hall. I'm just returning lost property."
Cissy leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. "What is that? A love letter? I told you, sweetie, he doesn't read junk mail."
"It's not a letter," Elena said, her voice ringing out across the silent hall.
She gripped the envelope and slammed it down onto the table, right on top of Julian's expensive steak. The seal burst, and stacks of hundred-dollar bills spilled out, scattering across the mahogany and dipping into the red wine.
The gasps from the surrounding tables sounded like a collective intake of breath.
"I don't know how you people do things," Elena hissed, leaning over the table so only Julian could hear her. "But you can't buy my dignity for five thousand dollars. You can't buy my silence, and you definitely can't buy my forgiveness."
Julian's face went from pale to a dangerous shade of white. His jaw was set so tight a vein was throbbing in his temple.
"Elena, take the money and walk away," he said, his voice a low, vibrating growl.
"Why? Is it embarrassing to be caught trying to pay off the girl you 'hated' last night?" Elena countered. She looked at Cissy, who was staring at the money with a mixture of shock and dawning realization. "Ask your fiancé why he thinks I need five thousand dollars, Cissy. Ask him what he's trying to hide."
Cissy turned to Julian, her voice trembling with rage. "Julian? What is she talking about?"
Julian didn't answer her. He stood up, his height looming over Elena, his shadow swallowing her. He grabbed her wrist—not painfully, but with a desperate, frantic strength—and pulled her away from the table.
"We're leaving," he snapped at his friends.
"The money, Julian!" Cissy screamed behind them. "You're just going to leave it?"
"Keep it!" Julian shouted back over his shoulder. "Consider it a donation to the Montgomery wedding fund!"
He dragged Elena out of the dining hall, through the heavy oak doors, and into the deserted hallway of the History wing. He didn't stop until he pushed her into a corner, his hands on either side of her head, caging her in.
"Are you insane?" he whispered, his eyes wild. "I was trying to get you out! That money was for a ticket, a new apartment, a way to get your mother away from my father's reach!"
"I don't want to run, Julian!" Elena shouted back, shoving his chest. "I spent five years running! I want the truth. I want you to stop acting like a monster to 'protect' me and start acting like a man!"
Julian looked at her, his breathing ragged. The distance between them was thin, charged with a mixture of old love and new, bitter resentment.
"You want a man?" he whispered, his voice cracking. "A man would have taken you and left this city years ago. But I'm a Blackwood. I'm a coward in a tailored suit. And if you stay here, Elena... I will eventually become the monster you think I am."
He looked down at her lips, then back to her eyes, the conflict tearing him apart.
"Then be a monster," Elena challenged, her voice dropping to a whisper. "But be my monster. Not his."
The silence in the hallway was broken only by the distant sound of the rain starting again.