Chapter 123: The Freight Index

NORA’S POV

By Friday evening, the world outside the frosted windows of the SinBin was swallowed in a blanket of early winter dark.

Downstairs, the house was surprisingly quiet. Jake and Milo had gone to the campus cinema with some guys from the lacrosse team, and Bear was at the local hardware store picking up weatherstripping for the drafty porch doors.

Upstairs in Knox’s room, a different kind of quiet took over.

A warm halogen desk lamp cast a golden pool of light across the wide wooden surface. Spread out before me were thirty pages of empirical methodology notes, two notebooks filled with supply chain elasticity formulas, and my laptop screen glowing with statistical regression output tables.

Sitting beside my keyboard was a ceramic mug of steaming peppermint tea, a bottle of cold water, and an empty plate that had held grilled chicken, quinoa, and roasted asparagus twenty minutes ago.

Knox had made sure of it.

He hadn’t hovered or lectured me.

True to his word, he had simply picked me up outside the economics building in his heated truck, brought me back to the quiet house, set a warm plate of food in front of me, and refused to let me touch a single paper until I’d eaten every bite.

Now, my fingers hovered above the trackpad, my brow furrowing behind my reading glasses.

"Still stuck?"

Knox’s voice was a low, soothing rumble behind me.

He walked into the room carrying a fresh kettle of warm water, dressed in a pair of dark gray sweatpants and a black long-sleeve tee that stretched across his broad shoulders. He smelled of clean cedar soap and peppermint tea.

"Model three is throwing an inflated standard error," I muttered, leaning back against the chair and pressing my palms to my eyes. "The explanatory power is stuck at forty-two percent. In seventy-two hours, Hastings is going to tear this regression model to shreds if I can’t prove statistical significance."

A soft rustle of fabric sounded as Knox set the kettle down on the dresser.

Before I could reach for my notebook, two large, warm hands settled over my shoulders.

My breath hitched as his thumbs sank into the tight, knotted muscle between my shoulder blades.

A low, involuntary groan escaped my throat as he applied firm, rhythmic pressure, kneading through days of hunching over desks and pacing across campus.

"Drop your shoulders, Nora," Knox murmured, his breath warm against the shell of my ear. "You’re holding so much tension you feel like a steel cable."

"I have to fix the variable bias..."

"You will," he said softly, his strong fingers working their way up into the base of my neck, easing the dull headache that had been lingering behind my temples. "Your brain works better when your body isn’t screaming at you. Just breathe."

I leaned back into his touch, letting my eyes flutter shut. The warmth of his hands seemed to seep straight through my knit sweater, untangling every knot of exhaustion in my upper back.

After a few minutes of slow, deliberate kneading, Knox stepped back.

He pulled the leather desk ottoman up right beside my chair, sat down, and reached for my sneakers.

I blinked down at him. "Knox, what are you doing?"

"Taking care of my girl," he answered simply, unlacing my shoes and sliding them off.

He peeled off my thick wool socks, tossing them onto the floor. Then, with an effortless gentleness that made my chest tighten, he lifted my bare feet onto his lap.

Knox began to work his thumbs into the tired arches of my feet.

A shiver of pure, melting relief rippled down my spine. Between the miles of walking across the frosty quad and five-hour shifts carrying heavy trays on the diner’s concrete floor, my feet had been aching for weeks.

Knox applied steady, circular pressure along my heels and up through the balls of my feet, his calloused athletic thumbs knowing exactly where the soreness lived.

"Oh," I breathed, my head falling back against the leather headrest of the chair. "That’s... Knox, you really don’t have to do this."

"I want to," he murmured, his gray eyes looking up at me as his fingers smoothed over my instep. "You spent two weeks putting cold compresses on my bruised head while I was concussed. Least I can do is rub some life back into your feet."

His hands were rough from hockey grips, but his touch was impossibly tender.

With the soreness draining from my muscles, my thoughts drifted away from the cold formulas on the screen, wandering back through the chaotic blur of the week.

I found myself remembering yesterday afternoon at the diner, listening to Rusty slam his inventory clipboard onto the stainless counter, cursing out a regional delivery driver because the weekly dairy and produce shipment was two days late and had tacked on an extra winter fuel surcharge.

Then came the memory of my mom’s voice on the phone, mentioning that the flour mill had delayed their bulk delivery because regional trucking routes were backlogged after the first freeze.

Two days late. Fuel surcharges.

My mind snagged on the thought.

The rural small businesses in my dataset hadn’t seen their profit margins collapse because of shifting consumer demand in October. Their supply chains had stalled because the delivery trucks were running late, and the shipping invoices were lagging behind by three weeks.

I sat bolt upright, staring at the glowing regression table with wide eyes.

"The freight index," I whispered.

Knox’s hands paused on my ankles. He tilted his head, watching me. "What?"

"I omitted the regional transportation freight cost index!" I gasped, sitting bolt upright. "When fuel prices spiked in October, regional shipping costs surged. If you don’t control for lagged freight inflation, the price elasticity of small business goods looks completely erratic"

With Knox still holding one of my feet in his lap, I leaned over the keyboard, my fingers flying across the keys.

I input the lagged transportation variable into the regression matrix, re-weighted the regional standard errors, and clicked run.

The econometric software processed the calculation for three seconds.

Then the new table populated.

The explanatory R2 jumped from 0.42 to a staggering 0.84. The p-values across all primary supply chain coefficients dropped below 0.01.

Not only was the model working... it was statistically unimpeachable, yielding the cleanest econometric distribution I had produced all year.

"I did it," I breathed, staring at the screen in disbelief. "It converged. Knox, look! The standard error dropped to zero-point-zero-three!"

Knox chuckled. He released my foot, stood up, and leaned down over the armrest of my chair, wrapping his arms securely around my waist and pulling me back against his solid chest.

"I have no idea what those numbers mean, Bookworm," Knox murmured, pressing a soft, proud kiss to the crown of my head. "But I know that look on your face. You crushed it."

A laugh of pure relief spilled from my lips. I turned in the chair, wrapping my arms around his neck and hugging him so tightly my glasses pressed against his collarbone.

"You helped me," I whispered into his neck, inhaling the sweet, grounded scent of him. "If you hadn’t forced me to relax, my head would have been too cloudy to see it."

"Team effort," Knox said softly, his arms tightening around me as he rested his chin against my shoulder.

He glanced over at the clock on his nightstand: 10:45 PM.

Then he reached out with one long arm, clicked the file menu, and pressed save.

Before I could protest, Knox shut the laptop screen with a decisive snap. "Hey!" I protested mildly, looking up at him. "I still need to format the bibliography..."

"Bibliography happens on Sunday," Knox ordered in that quiet, commanding captain tone that left no room for debate. He scooped me right out of the desk chair, cradling me easily in his arms like I weighed nothing.

"Knox Sheridan, put me down!"

"Not a chance, Bennett," he murmured with an arrogant smirk as he carried me toward the king-sized bed. "Doctor’s orders. Eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. You’ve got a thesis to defend on Monday, and you’re going into that boardroom sharp."

He set me down on the plush mattress, pulling the thick duvet over my shoulders. He climbed in beside me, still in his sweatpants, and pulled me back against his chest until my back was flush with his solid warmth.

His arm draped securely over my waist, his fingers loosely tangling with mine over the blanket.

"Sleep, Bookworm," Knox whispered against my hair. "I’ve got you."

For the first time in weeks, my mind didn’t race. There was no panic, no looming dread, and no cold silence.

Wrapped in the steady heartbeat of the boy who loved me, I closed my eyes and surrendered to one of the deepest, most peaceful sleep of my life.