Becoming Calder (A Sign of Love Novel)(27)

"Hey."
"Hey, I see you'd be pretty useful in an attack," I ribbed him.
He snorted. "Lost in my thoughts. You're right. You're all pretty much sitting ducks with me out here."
I eyed him sideways. "What's on your mind?"
He sighed and stopped walking. "Do you really want to know?"
I stopped, too, and frowned.
Xander looked down. "I have a lot of time to think out here walking around." He paused. "Probably too much time."
"Hey, spit it out, Xander." I glanced around to make sure no one was nearby. I wasn't even exactly sure why.
He paused again. "This thing with Eden—"
I furrowed my brow. "Don't try to talk me out of it, Xander. I know everything you're going to say and I—"
"You're wrong," he interrupted, "you don't know what I'm going to say. This does have to do with Eden in a roundabout way, but not how you're thinking." He ran a hand through his straight, black hair. "I've been considering this for a while, and I never said anything because, well, I've been trying to get past my own sinful thoughts . . . I guess. My head is all jumbled most of the time." He glanced around. "But I," he looked around quickly and then back at me, "question things, Calder. I question Hector." He looked pained.
My body was tensed and I let it relax slowly as I considered Xander.
"I go around and around it in my mind out here," Xander said. "I work it like a puzzle, and it doesn't add up. So many things . . ."
I looked away, in the direction of our spring, Eden's and mine, and said softly, "No, I question things, too."
Xander let out a breath that sounded as if he had been storing up air for hours, years, perhaps a lifetime.
"The irony is, I walk the outside perimeter of Acadia a hundred times a day, and I feel like a damn caged animal."
"Why haven't you said anything to me before now? We talk about everything."
He looked off, over my shoulder. "Yeah, I know. I was trying to make sense of it . . . or get over it . . . or something. I swear to you, Calder, I don't even know."
I remained quiet while he ran both hands through his hair, leaving it looking like he'd just traveled through a windstorm.
"I guess when I saw you with Eden, when I realized the risk you'd be willing to take to be friends with her, I thought maybe you might have some questions, or doubts, too."
I paused. "Have you talked to Sasha about this?"
Sasha was several years older than us, and already married to another worker. But along with us, she was among those who had either been born here or had come to Acadia as a baby. We hadn't chosen this life. It had chosen us.
Xander shook his head. "No, Sash is happy. She likes her life. I think she truly loves Aaron. She's never seemed restless."
I nodded. "Listen, Xander, the best we can do is achieve a place on the council. We can go out into the big community that way. We're not stupid. We can learn things. We'll have more choices there . . . more opportunities to find answers."
"But we still won't have anything that's our own." Xander grimaced and looked off into the distance, muttering, "Even saying that feels wrong."
I worried my brow. We'd always been taught that wanting anything for yourself, rather than the group as a whole, was sinful and selfish. It wasn't an idea easy for me to shake either. And maybe that was a good thing. It was all so damned confusing.
"We don't have a lot of time, Xander. We need to get a place on that council—even just one of us—before the floods come."
Xander looked down at his feet and finally said quietly, "What if Hector's wrong about that, too?"
Something that felt like a mixture of dread and hope surged through my blood. What if.
Xander's eyes met mine, and were filled with what looked to be the same thing I was feeling. "Kristi at the ranger's station told me lots of so-called prophets have foretold the end of the world, and not one of them has come true . . . obviously."
"Hector would say Kristi's a blasphemous liar who's doing work for the devil," I said.
Xander huffed out a breath. "Yeah. I know."
"I didn't realize you and Kristi talked that much."
He nodded. "Yeah . . . she's . . ." he paused, looking as if he was trying to come up with just the right word for this mysterious Kristi, "kind."
"How old is Kristi?" I asked, just out of curiosity.
"A little older than us. She's completed two years at the community college. She's transferring to a university soon."