The Campus Bully Hounded Me Out of My Seat, Then I Told Him I Was Pregnant novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Power Out

Thea's POV

The power went out in Barn Hall at four o'clock on Saturday afternoon, in the first real snow of the year.

Eleven days had gone by since the cage, and I had spent most of them watching Halle.

She had walked out of the dean's office that morning with her chin up and a pen still behind her ear.

She had not told me what Ragna said until Aksel did, in the corridor, in four flat sentences.

Halle's placement at the campus clinic was now "under review," and the dean's review had no end date.

I was sitting on my bed with a blanket around my shoulders when the lamp died.

The radiator stopped knocking.

The old barn gave one long creak under the weight of the roof and went silent.

I got up and went to the window.

The river was gone.

The bluff, the boathouse and the far bank had all been rubbed out by white.

The flakes came sideways, thick and heavy, and piled on the sill while I watched.

A knock came at the door.

It was three knocks, evenly spaced.

I opened it.

Aksel stood in the dark corridor with snow on his hair and a camp stove under one arm.

He had a bundle of quilts under the other.

"Halle's in the common room with the whole second floor, playing cards by flashlight," he said.

"She told me where to find you."

"You talked to Halle?"

"She doesn't like me," he said.

"She likes me better than the dean, so we text."

I stepped back.

He came in and set the stove on my desk and laid the quilts on the bed.

They were old ones, in faded squares, and they smelled of cedar.

"They're from the loft," he said.

"My mother made them."

"Then I shouldn't be on them," I said.

"She'd have liked you on them," he said.

I looked at him.

He had been looking at me like that all week, steady and unprotected.

He had not touched me since the cage.

He had not asked to.

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