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It might sound childish, but it’s the only way I can describe being held by Xander.
It’s like everything you love and have been loved by is magnified and is giving you the best hug, right when you need it. Only times like a million.
I sigh, annoyed I can’t put my finger on what it is about the man that’s so… so Xander.
His house is an old colonial cottage, restored by the looks.
Spotless, but filled with ancient looking books and rows of heavy wooden bookcases and charts strewn on equally heavy tables.
The only pictures on the walls are of space, the kind of stuff NASA puts out every now and then. Only these look like they were taken—
“Here we are,” he says softly, wincing for me as he lifts my foot a little before lowering it again, but it doesn’t hurt anymore.
Nothing Xander does hurts. I doubt he’s even capable of it despite his enormous size.
In the warm lighting of his home, he looks less ethereal than he did in the woods.
He’s quite tanned, with a day of unshaved stubble on his rugged jaw that’s begging to be scratched.
He has a thick shock of jet black hair, unkempt from our adventure and matching the tuft of the same peeking from his shirtfront.
He cocks his head a little, blinking as he studies my face in the light.
Looking me up and down again, I get that from people all the time. Usually, before they smile in apology or comment about how much weight I’ve lost/gained since they saw me last.
Strangers usually just make a face if they’re kind, comment if they’re not.
But Xander’s not looking at my size, shape, or my height. He’s looking at me. It feels like he’s looking right inside me, which is unnerving at first until he adjusts his eyes and is the same man again.
“I thought professors were old,” I hear myself croak, surprised at how frail I sound.
He looks thoughtfully at one of the pictures on the wall. “Maybe I just age well. I’m quite old, I can assure you, Gillian,” he says, finally smiling before he confesses in a quieter tone that he’s forty-two.
“How’d you know my name?” I rasp, trying not to sound suspicious but dying to know, but he casually ignores my question for now.
“Or two hundred ninety-four in dog years,” he adds, widening his eyes, pretending to look astonished but only reminding me about Orion.
About the house sitting, the owners, about having to go home… My entire future.
I groan aloud, but Xander thinks it’s because of his dog year joke.
“If we were on Mars, I’d be twenty-two!” he exclaims, winking with a youthful grin.
I want to worry about my own life, to have all my ‘problems’ racing through my mind but there’s something mesmerizing in how Professor Xander Sexton just manages to shift my mood with a look, or in this case, a series of bizarre planetary time comparisons.
“On Mercury, I’d be over a hundred seventy-eight years old… and on—” But he stops suddenly, looking serious.
“How old are you?” he asks in his deepest tone. “In Earth years, I mean,” he adds, creasing his mouth, but not in a smile.
“I’ll be twenty next month,” I tell him, forgetting all my so-called problems and waiting excitedly for him to give me a list of my age if we were together on other planets.
“So you’re nineteen,” he says tone gravely, taking a deep breath in through his nose.
He folds his huge arms, almost hugging himself, and turns his back on me to study the window looking out on the night sky. The city is like a sheet of colored stars in the distance.
“Is it bad to be nineteen?” I ask, feeling he might not like me now. Like I’ve just told him I have the plague or something.
“Not for you,” he chirps, the smile returning to his face as he spins on his heel, kneeling in front of me with both hands on his hams.
“But for a college research professor…” he trails off.
“I don’t follow,” I add before he can continue. “Not many nineteen year old professors, I’d imagine.”
He chuckles to himself and sighs. Looking at me again with those eyes, filled with longing now. Bringing back some of that excitement we both felt when he first touched me.
“You said it was just you?” he asks, maintaining his habit of effortlessly changing the subject or ignoring my questions without it being rude at all.
In fact, I could swear under oath that I could lie here and listen to him all night and all day tomorrow, no matter what he said.
“Just me,” I remind him. “I lived with my dad, back home, but college came and now...” My own voice trails off and he leans in, urging me to go on with a movement of his chin.
