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When we got back to the flat, a moving truck was parked in front of the building. 

"Who's moving in?" my mom asked.  The she reached out for my arm, trying to avoid slipping on the snowy ground.

"I don't know" I answered, "I never got word of anything."  I remembered the "For Rent" sign I'd seen on the apartment door down the hall from mine.  I supposed the mystery mover was going to be living there.

My dad slipped on the snowy sidewalk and almost fell.  "Ah hellfire" he said as he grabbed on to a convenient railing.  "I wouldn't be surprised if that person movin' in doesn't end up in the hospital tomorrow.  You're liable to break your ass out here."

I wasn't slipping, of course, because I had learned, since my unfortunate bout with stilettos, what shoes were appropriate to wear when trying to cope with Scottish weather.  I took a step forward in my warm, sturdy boots.  Then I looked over at him.

"Or, was it just that you've had too much whiskey?" I asked, smiling slightly.

He chuckled, fully aware that a little bit of the peaty Oban or Dalwhinnie went a long way.

After a few more near mishaps, we all managed to get inside the complex without surrendering the wholeness of our limbs.  I climbed the stairs to the second floor, my dad on my heels, eager to plant himself in front of the television so that he could learn about the soccer-like British football that Rachel had been so fervently watching earlier.  I opened the door to the hallway and with keys in hand, prepared to open the door to my apartment. 

Forget not that I was still at this point coincidence's unlikely beneficiary.  I stuck my key into the lock, and just as I twisted my wrist to hear the click, and just as I twisted my neck to flip my wavy hair out of my face, I fell into a twist of fate that was indeed quite twisted.  In my periphery I caught a glimpse of a highland warrior, looming tall and broad, dark-haired and green-eyed.  At first I expected it was nothing but my vivid imagination playing tricks on me.  But then, when I gazed full-on at this dark musing, I realized, as I always realized when I did my double-take of Kane MacAllister, I was not dreaming.  He was very much real, much to my eternal pleasure and distress, as he always appealed to me in every way but that which told me I could never possess him.  Right now, he was not only very much real, but also very much walking towards me, and also very much implying that I should ignore the bounds and possess him anyway.

"Dr. MacAllister" I projected in a half-laugh, half-gasp of surprise.  The door that had once held the sign that read "For Rent" was standing open, and he had just emerged from the room.  I connected the dots.  This couldn't possibly be happening.  My professor, who I just happened to be slightly carried away with, just happened to be moving onto my floor.  It was too easy, wasn't it?  Possibly, though, it would be the very opposite of that.

"Ellen" he said with brows drawn together in amusement.  A rare white smile spread widely across his face, and his hands spread out a ways as if to imply fancy seeing you here.  I'd never seen him so informally dressed, in his black sweatpants and hoodie, and it surprisingly appealed to me, as it made him seen even more tall and broad-shouldered.  The familiar smell of him whirled before me, and tipped my mind into a nonstandard realm.  There was no other man so effortlessly attractive to me.  This was who he was.  He did not seek to charm or to impress, merely to be himself, and this very notion was more affective a charm on me than anything.  He stepped forward until he stood directly before me, and then he alternated glancing at me and my parents with an amused half-smile.  

I tilted my head a bit in response, giving my own half-smile, his concealed wit rather infectious on my intellect and emotion.  "Like to tell me what's going on?" I asked him, left eyebrow taking a leap.

"I just moved in" he said, nonchalantly leaning one arm against the wall and keeping the other within the pocket at the front of his sweatshirt.  

"You've got to be kidding me" I said in response, floored.  It was set in stone.  He was now going to be living practically next door.  

"No, I swear it.  I'm right there, just down the hall."  Then his brow furrowed further and he continued, "doona tell me you live here too."

"Yes!" I exclaimed, using my hands for emphasis.  Then I started laughing.

He looked nonplussed for a moment, then he engaged me in a bout of aloof flirtation.  It was exactly the kind of flirtation that a male teacher could appropriately give his female student.  "Ah, so ye werena coming here to wish me a happy homecoming, after all.  For a wee second there I thought I was going to get cupcakes and house-warming gifts.  Come to find out ye live here.  Well, I suppose I'm a little gutted."

He was playing off his pleasure with a nonchalant joke.  His eyes were not distant, however, and in that fact I was assured that he was denying our connection for my own benefit.  He was doing what he had to do, while showing me it wasn't what he wanted to do.  I smiled back at him and shook my head.  Then I remembered something Iain had told me a few months before.  "I thought you lived in a stone mansion with your father."

He looked surprised that I knew, but as I had already admitted to him that Iain had, without appropriate right, filled me in on the details of his life, he did not long question my knowledge.  "Ah, I still do, but I needed an easier way to get to the university.  It's a horrid winter this year, and the roads are so narrow and dangerous anyway, that I can hardly get to the university by noon on most days.  Luckily I teach your class later than tha'.  I need to be within better distance, so I moved here for the time being."

"Oh I see" I said, nodding my head pensively.

"Yeh, odd, we're on the same floor and everything" he agreed, nodding with the same pensive expression.

"Well, I'll have easy access to research help I guess" I said, grin cracking my meditative expression.

His wide grin returned, and my heart willingly abandoned the cavity of my chest to land in the palm of his tattered hand, tattered from years of heartbreak.  I could feel it leave.  It was an arresting feeling, like it had propelled from an invisible string within my stomach and emerged from my body like a butterfly emerges from a cocoon.  He felt it too.  And it mended his scars when he caught it.  But it wasn't enough to keep him lost in my eyes.  He was there, deeply, seeing my soul, but only for a moment.  Then he flinched, and his eyes left mine to land upon my parents.  

"You must be...?" he started with a question to his tone.

"Oh" I said, jumping back into the real world, leaving my dreamland, where hearts fly and souls are actually tactile, "sorry, these are my parents.  Mom, Dad, this is my professor.  Professor Kane."

Kane readily extended his hand.  His grasp was steady and solid, but not audacious as was Iain's.  His eyes did not extend lassoes that were expressly meant to capture his audience, and his expression did not lower the bated hook in front of their face either.  There was no counterfeit notion about this man when he bared his heart.  When he was guarded, he was guarded.  But when he was not, he was as honest and sincere a man as they came.  My mother's eyes did not dilate in response to meeting him, and she did not jump into interrogation with him over his personal life as she had done with Iain.  She regarded him with a slight respectful wonder, as one would strive to treat a superior.  He was older than Iain by six years, and perhaps this had much to do with his palpable maturity, even if the inside of him might have been torn and shattered from past losses.  But then again, his silent strength also gave him a quality that made him stand alone.

My father shook hands with him for a longer-than-normal period.  Since I had always considered my father and I so similar, in that we could read each other's thoughts, I was moved tremendously by this action.  The two men extended arms with equal sincerity and solidity, nodded their heads slightly, and regarded each other with equally soulful eyes.  Both Kane and my father had that strange ability to command with just one expression.  When they shook hands with each other, one's eyes were telling the other a story, confessing, asking, confirming.  As I watched them, I was reminded again that my heart was gone from my chest.  It was now between the hands of my two men, connected to my body only by invisible strings.  I wondered, then, just how much one could stretch the elasticity of invisible heart strings before they were snapped in two. 

"Verra nice to meet you" Kane smield, "did ye know Ellen is one of my best research writers?  She has original penmenship, something ye doona come by verra often.  I'm even thinking about nominating her for scholarship for next year." My eyes widened suddenly.

"You what?" I asked, flummoxed.  "Scholarship?"

"Yeh, I wasna going to tell you.  I was just going to submit something of yours of my own free will because I knew ye wouldna do it on your own" he said, winking.

"Humble minx, ain't she?" My dad spoke up, regarding me with affection.  Who knows why he had suddenly grown fond of adopting the word "minx".  

"Aye, but saucy most of the time" Kane refuted, quicker than he normally did.  The air became tense, as if every one of us had realized his quick response was more personal than it should have been.  He knew me too well.  He cleared his throat, and then dodged the situation. 

"Ach, well, I'd better get the rest of my things from the moving truck, then.  It was a pleasure to me you" he said to my parents, and then he turned to me, "and as for you, having guests doesna exempt you from turning in your abstract on Monday."

I laughed at his smooth recovery.  Then he backed away smiling and turned to walk down the stairs.

My parents were silent when we got inside my apartment.  With my back to them, I closed the door with precision, and as slowly as possible, trying to bide time before I had to officially come out with what was already obvious.  I heard the click of the lock.  But I didn't turn around. 

"You know how I said there were two men?" I asked them, waiting for someone to say something.  A cricket could have sung an aria with perfect clarity.  So I capitulated and turned to deliver them the remainder of the truth.  

"He's the other man.  Professor Kane is the other man.  He's really the only man.  He...he's the one I want but it's just...he's the one I can't have because well...he's my teacher.  Oh god.  I know it's not exactly the most opportune situation but...oh just say something!" I blabbered anxiously.   

"Ellen, he's your professor honey" my mom said, in that condescending voice of pity, as if she was really saying, you poor little idiot, grow up. 

"Mother, I can't help it.  You can't choose who you are attracted to and who you aren't" I told her, a bit scathingly.

"You can fight it if you want to fight it bad enough" she told me with her normal air of practicality, and her normal sense of power.

"That's the thing, Mom, I can't bring myself to want to at all.  I don't want to fight it.  You have to want to."

"You were attracted to Iain too" she came back at me, "how come you don't want him?  He's someone you can actually legitimately have."

"I'm attracted to Iain in body!  I don't trust him otherwise, he's too...I don't know he's just not right" I finished, frustrated.  

"I agree with her" came my dad's timely interjection.

"What?" my mom asked, appalled.  "Jack, she can't date her professor!  She'll get kicked out of the university.  All her money would go to waste...all she's worked for...it will ruin her entire life!  I can't believe you are agreeing with her.  I just can't believe it."

"I dated a professor once" he said with a small smile of recollection.  

"What!" my mom asked with eyes as large as sliced cucumbers.

My dad chuckled.  "I did.  She was a pretty little thing.  Still remember her, actually."

"Jack!" she exclaimed, speechless.  I, however, stared at him with inquisitiveness.

"Were you discovered?  Did you get made fun of?" I asked him.

"Sure did" he answered with a grin and shook his head, "never lived it down."

"But was it worth it?" I kept questioning, refusing to find any negatives in what he said. 

"I suppose so" he answered, "but it's different for a man.  There is a certain appeal to a man in claiming the older, wiser woman.  It's like a conquest to them.  The same situation does not apply to you and Dr. MacAllister, though.  First, you are a female.  Second, though he is older than you, you are on the same level of maturity, from what I can tell.  What is it they say about females being five years ahead of males in maturity?  Well, if that is true, then that makes the two of you equal.  And by the way he looked at you, neither of you are looking for a conquest.  His affection for you was in his eyes.  He has strange eyes, that man.  He doesn't need a mouth to speak."

"I mean, I can't deny there was a mutual attraction betwee the two of you, but there was also one between you and Iain.  I just don't see how you can't just...like him instead" my mom futilely restated her argument.  

I sighed.

"He's the ideal man.  He's bold, fearless, even.  And very warm and charming" she continued.  

"I thought you told me to avoid men like that, mom" I countered.  

She exhaled in exasperation, seeing my point.  "Jack" she said weakly, "can't you help me out here?  I know you liked Iain.  She only listens to you, so you tell her how you felt about him and maybe she'll change her mind."

"He showed promise" my dad started.  Then he stopped to look at me pensively before he continued.  "But he is young.  Mentally young."

I responded with an eager expression, wanting to know more.

"I did like the guy.  But he's not ready to settle.  He's still looking for a diversion.  He's Ellen's age, old enough to be considered a fully developed man, but he's not fully developed.  Not emotionally.  His eyes were soulless.  I don't mean that he's evil, it's just, well, he was too direct to trust.  It was like he knew exactly what he wanted but he had no idea why he wanted it.  I fear that he sees Ellen as nothing more than a toy."

"You speak too abstractly" my mom accused when my dad had stopped speaking.

But I understood him.  In fact, it made perfect sense to me.  "I agree.  He only seems soulless because he has never lost anything he loves.  He doesn't understand real love.  He messes with me and his intentions are so vague, even in his boldness.  I don't know if he could give his heart to me."

"You have never lost anything you love" my mom countered with a condescending tone.

"How would you know?" I responded quickly, "What about when Jake and Tess died?  Do you think love for an animal isn't pure love?"

"Oh, Please, Ellen.  I'm talking about people.  How are you any different than him?" she asked, confident that she had a good counter-argument that would put me "in my place".  That's exactly where she wanted me, "in my place", back in that cage.

"Iain is still flying" I said.  "He has never been jaded.  I have never left the branch.  I am surrounded only by those who have once flown and who have never flown.  Don't you get it?  The branch I'm on is a haven only to the ignorant and the jaded, not to the ones that fly.  Dr. MacAllister has once flown, and I have never flown.  We're on the branch.  Iain is in a world all his own" I finished.  She looked at me and rolled her eyes. 

"You should have been a philosopher.  I don't know where you and your father come up with these...theories of yours" she said frustratingly.  "And what do you mean, Dr. MacAllister has once flown?  Does he not a specific reason not to fly or something?"

"A broken wing.  Or, a broken heart, really.  His mother died when he was five, he sister when he was 18, and his girlfriend when he was 21.  He has loved and lost so much.  And still, sometimes I feel he is willing to give his heart to me, even though he fears he might lose it again."

My mother was wordless, and stood there with an empty expression on her face.  She empathized with Kane, though she did not intend to. 

"He is a man, then" my father said, with raised brows, "and he has lived.  He has been robbed by the brigand-end of fate, and has managed to come back glistering."  Then he looked at me and smiled musingly, "And you are the object for which he glisters."

I smiled, a lowered my head.  I wondered about Iain, and whether he'd ever change, or become the man that Kane was.  "Do you think Iain will ever grow into himself?" I asked him.

"One day, maybe" he answered.  "He is a phenomenal character now, just not quite there yet.  He has the charismatic look and engaging personality, and he conquers the heart of everyone he crosses, but it remains to be seen whether or not he is sincere in his actions."

"Well he has not conquered my heart" I told him, definitely.

"Hasn't he?" He asked, smile playing upon his lips.  "Ah, maybe not.  But he'll not ever leave your mind, that's for sure."  

"How can you be so sure about that?  The only man that crosses my mind repeatedly is Dr. MacAllister."

"You and MacAllister are the same person.  You seem to have similar personalities.  Therefore it is easy for you to relate.  But you and Iain...complete opposites.  There is a fire between you two that cannot be hidden.  You deny it, and I think that's good right now.  You are clearly not ready for it."

"What are you saying, Dad?" I asked him, confused.  He had already implied his liking for Kane over Iain.  Was he changing his mind?   

"I'm saying there is power in attraction between opposites, power that is ultimately nearly impossible to resist.  But that power has to be mutually understood before it is accepted.  You don't understand it, and Iain is too young to be trusted, but there is still something between you that keeps you lingering.  Have you ever wondered if it will ever stop?" 

I sat down on the couch, upset that absolution in regards to what man was ultimately right for me still not reached.  

"So, who do like the best?" I asked him, searching for something more definite than what he'd just said.

"It is not my place to pick who you should love" he responded.  "That is your choice to make."  

"But they are so different" I countered.  "One is like a soulmate and the other a soul's counterpoint.  What is better?  What can determine who I will be with?"

"Timing" was all he said.  "Timing and fate."

I slowly nodded.  So, time would tell, and fate would make evident the currently elusive.  

"Between now and then, though, why don't you try flying?" he ended, challenging me.  "It wasn't until I let go that I began to understand who I was, and who would be best for me." 

***