The Northern Wind Couldn't Keep Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Coat

On the lakeshore Knox admits he is the judge who voted for her pages, and she takes the attic over the writing center as the only roof she has, until Tripp's video of her walkout and the board's integrity hold land.

I did not get in his car.

I stacked the frames on the suitcase and walked toward the lake, because the wind came from there and I wanted something to walk into.

Knox Holloway followed me at a polite distance.

Then he took the suitcase out of my hand without asking.

"I can carry my own things," I said.

"You're carrying a suitcase and four frames in a dress," he said. "I'll take the frames too."

We went down the hill to the lakeshore path, where the streetlights ended and the water slapped the rocks.

I stopped at the railing.

"How long were you in the hall?" I asked.

"From the first line," he said. "I was in the back row."

"And you let her read."

"I couldn't stand up in front of four hundred people and say I knew whose it was."

He set the frames on a bench.

"I would have needed proof. So I went to find you."

I looked at him properly for the first time.

He was thirty, tired in the face, with dark eyes and one sleeve pushed up over his left forearm.

"You know it's mine because you're the judge," I said.

"I'm the only judge. Sixty-two finalists, names stripped, a number on each." He kept his eyes on the water. "Forty-one was the best thing in the pile."

"Forty-one was Mamie."

"That's what the envelope said tonight."

"And my entry?"

"Rejected as a copy of forty-one. I never saw the second file, they don't send me duplicates." His jaw moved. "Somebody uploaded your pages on the first of the month, and yours came in four days later."

I held on to the railing.

"Tripp has my laptop password," I said. "He's had it for two years."

Knox said nothing.

"You run the Reading Desk," I said.

"Yes."

"So you read every chapter I ever dropped in that box."

"Every one."

"Tripp wrote the margin notes on them," I said. "That's what he told me."

The wind pushed hair across my face.

"So he knew they were mine. He sat in the front row and filmed her."

Knox looked at me for a long moment.

"Yes," he said at last. "He knew whose they were."

My eyes burned, and I was furious about it.

"I don't want pity," I said. "Not from a Holloway. Your mother's locks are on my door."

"My stepmother's," he said. "And I'm not offering pity. I'm offering a roof."

"Where?"

"The attic of the Reading Desk. A bed, a radiator that knocks, and a lock that's mine." He paused. "I've never lent it to anyone."

"I can't pay rent."

"You don't. On Monday you sign the college's emergency housing form in your own name, so nobody can call it a favor."

My teeth had started to chatter.

He saw it, and took off his coat.

It was heavy wool, still warm from him, and it smelled like cedar and old paper.

He held it open.

When I didn't move, he stepped closer and settled it over my shoulders himself.

His fingers brushed my collar and straightened it.

It was a small, careless thing, and I felt it all the way down my spine.

I told myself it was the cold.

"Thank you," I said, stiffly.

"It's a coat," he said.

We walked up the hill, and he did not touch me again.

The Reading Desk was a brick house behind the library with a green door.

A wooden box was nailed to its porch, the box I had dropped two years of chapters into.

He unlocked the door, and we climbed three flights to a slanted room.

It held a narrow bed, a green lamp, and a desk under the window.

"Sheets are in the trunk," he said. "I'm downstairs if the radiator kills you."

"Mr. Holloway."

"Knox."

"Why are you doing this?"

He stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets.

"It's the best first chapter I've read in this town," he said. "And I was in the back row."

He left, and I sat on the bed with his coat still around me.

My phone had been buzzing against my hip for ten minutes.

Sixty-one messages.

The top one was a link from a campus gossip account called @halvard.after.dark.

It was a video of me at the lectern, cut so the letter didn't show.

My voice cracked on the word "mine."

The caption read, "Senior has meltdown, accuses best friend of stealing. Poor Mamie. Prayers for the ex."

Under it, the count said 38,412 views.

Below that was an email from the Office of the Board of Trustees.

"Following a complaint of academic dishonesty, your enrollment is under an integrity hold, effective immediately."

"A hearing will be held in twenty-one days."

It was signed Yvonne Holloway, Chair.

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