Page 23 of Bachelor

“It’s a threat, Professor.” She grinned, her eyes creasing with pleasure. She closed her binder with a snap and stood up, reaching for her coat. She fumbled with a sleeve that was turned inside out.

I rose from my chair and took it from her. “Let me help.”

“I know how to put a coat.”

I stared down at her, shaking my head as I adjusted the sleeve and helped her into it. “Where are you going next?”

“The library. I don’t have a study group this semester, but Tyler and Jessica are there right now. I figured I’d go work on my thesis.”

“Have you decided on a topic?”

“The role of art in historical learning and societal research processes,” she said without skipping a beat.

I arched my brows as I followed her out of the room and turned the lights off behind us. “That sounds like quite the undertaking. Are you sure?”

“I’m almost done with it already, Rhys. Who do you think I am?” she laughed, her smile lighting the dim hallway as we walked toward the entrance of the building. “I think whoever grades it and judges my dissertation has more work cut out for them than I do.”

“You are the most confident woman I’ve ever met in my life.”

“I don’t like to lose.” She turned to me at the door, her hand on the bar to push it open. “I know exactly what I want and how to say it.”

“And what do you want, Ms. Dahl?” It was a loaded question I regretted immediately when her expression shifted from amused to something pinched with hurt. “I—I didn’t mean anything by that.”

“I know,” she said, then pushed the door open. We were met by a chill so severe I felt it in my bones before I had a foot out the door. She noticed how I flinched when the cold hair brushed over my face and asked, “Why don’t you go buy an actual winter coat? That leather jacket can’t be very warm.”

“It’s not,” I admitted, thankful for the shift in conversation away from my stupid question a few moments ago. “It was my grandfather’s jacket. He wore it during World War Two. Apparently, it was given to him by some townsfolk during the Battle of the Bulge.”

“Are you serious?” She inspected the coat closely, grabbing my elbows to pull me to a stop. Her bare fingers slid over the worn leather. “You’re saying this is an eighty-year-old jacket?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“It’s ten degrees, Rhys!”

“Well, if it was good enough for him after spending six weeks in a snowy ditch somewhere in war-torn France, it’s good enough for me to walk across campus in, isn’t it?”

“You’re impossible.”

I grinned at her. “I say the same thing about you all the time.”

She huffed a breath, her fingers sliding from the leather, and we began walking again side by side.

For the first time since I met her, I felt suddenly at ease being in her presence in public. She wasn’t my student anymore, which meant something like this was wholly appropriate. If anything, we were basically colleagues now, even if I did still have seniority over her.

We walked in amiable silence for a few minutes. She stumbled over her own feet, and I reached out to steady her, but she stepped out of the way. Over the top of her head, I saw why.

Nicole, once her friend and “little sister” in her sorority, was standing with a group of women clad in puffy, knee-length jackets, their inaudible conversation sending puffs of white mist over their heads as they lingered at the entrance of the Commons.

“She’s not even looking at you,” I said, tilting my head toward the library. “Come on, I’ll walk you over.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“It’s on my way. I’m going to go to the gym for a while.”

She glanced at me before starting to walk again, the two of a little farther apart then we’d started. “Have you talked to her since it happened?”

“No, I haven’t. I don’t really have anything to say. I doubt she does, either.”

“What about your parents?”

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