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In the half hour before Will’s appointment, I decide that there is no more use delaying the inevitable. I have to consider the possibility that I’d made grave miscalculations. I’d known that he was intelligent, yes, but I didn’t think he’d figure out quite so quickly. Perhaps the two years of undetected kills had lowered my guard.
“Good evening, Will. Please come in.”
I have to know what Will Graham knows. And then decide on further action.
I scrutinise him as he sits down heavily on the couch, eyes on the floor. He is, if such a thing were possible, more tense than usual. He doesn’t start a conversation, doesn’t begin his usual pacing.
“Will?” I prompt.
He scrubs his face with his hands, mumbles a “Sorry.” A vein in my temple twitches. This could be as I suspected.
Will stands, walks over to the bookshelves. I notice he’s been too distracted to remove his jacket.
I step closer, watching him watch nothing. I ask a perfectly innocuous question, “What’s the matter, Will?”
He blinks, directs his gaze in a dozen directions, anywhere but meeting mine. I can tell he’s lying when he says, “Nothing.”
I wait a beat before replying, “That’s not quite true, Will. I can tell something’s bothering you.”
His jaw works but no words are forthcoming. I see the signs of fatigue around his eyes. Anxiety. Doubt. Perhaps even internal conflict.
“Ever since the incident in the ambulance, your behavior towards me has been atypical. You’ve shied away from my gaze two-thirds more of the time, you haven’t contacted me until our session this week - even though you’re clearly under more stress than normal - and you haven’t said anything substantial to me in the past few minutes. So help me understand, Will.”
If he knows, knows about the contents of my freezer, knows the full extent of my double entendres, knows I am the one he’s been hunting, I’ll have to disarm him. I can’t tell for sure, but I think his gun is hidden under the jacket.
His silence is telling. I make towards the wine cabinet, putting distance between us.
The mongoose strikes then. He turns me around with surprising strength. His left forearm pins my shoulders against the cabinet.
The surprise is not because he’s doing this but that I hadn’t anticipated the exact moment of his strike. I’d counted on more deliberation, more stalling. I close my eyes momentarily to regroup. I expect the cold touch of his handgun. I’m sure, now, it’s been under his jacket.
Will the gun nuzzle my temple, rational, a warning - followed by restraints, before his back up arrives? Or will it be against my gut, visceral, a personal touch - and, will he, because I played him so long he’ll take it personally, but not long enough to earn his utter empathy, will he end me? Like I might have ended him.
Nothing changes in that second of contemplation. I open my eyes, readying a counter-attack. His eyes give me pause. I’ve never seen such intensity of emotion in Will Graham’s eyes. His pupils are blown wide. Dark eclipsing light. This must be how he looks just before he kills. Just before he emptied a gun into Garett Jacob Hobbs. Sweet, good Will, wearing an expression I put on his face. It’ll have to be consolation enough for me, that he has become that which he hunts.
But he shifts, and the tableau changes. Another kind of eclipse. He shifts forward, eyes still fixed on mine. He shifts and his mouth eclipses mine.
I would jerk back in surprise, but the cabinet doesn’t give. Well. Will doesn’t know what I am. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t. He doesn’t. I’m safe. He’s safe.
My reading of Will was completely off. Lack of eye contact, avoidance, tension didn’t imply realisation and withdrawal - they implied attraction. Attraction that was sparked off by the incident in the ambulance. I saved a life - it called to Will’s deep sense of morality.
He’s saying my name, my first name, over and over, his hands mussing my hair.
The relief coursing through me, overwhelming in its intensity, feeds into the kiss. I laugh into his mouth and he takes that as an invitation to draw his body against mine. I’m glad. I’m glad that I don’t have to take care of Will Graham.
For now, we dance on, my clever little mongoose and I.