Detained

“Get out, Pete.”

“What?”

He stood. “Out.”

Peter old man sighed and rolled his eyes. He put his hand on the door. “Darcy, you have my full permission and legal protection to belt him.” He exited, closing the door behind him with a tight tug, and a sharp snip.

The table and a bunch of chairs were between them. “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” he said.

“Slugging you?” She was thinking there was too much furniture separating them.

“I hope not.”

“What then? Seriously Will, we have to...”

He came around the table. “Stop meeting like this.”

She was going to say ‘talk’ but the look on his face was so distracting. A supremely confident, take-no-prisoners, get what I want look. He stood close enough for her to smell his aftershave, dive into his ocean blue eyes.

“Gorgeous, I love meeting you like this. A confined space, private but insecure, the forces of evil outside holding us to ransom, it’s our thing.”

His eyes were all over her, sweeping her body with heat rays. “Don’t even joke about it.” She needed him to explain. She needed to remember he’d manipulated her, and was doing it again by just looking at her. “We’re not going to do anything but talk, and I might still hit you.”

“Do you want to strike first, ask questions later?”

“I want to...” She couldn’t go on. She wanted to forget there was one-way glass behind them and show him how much he’d scared her, hurt her, amazed her.

“Darcy?” He took a step forward.

She put a hand up to hold him off. If he touched her, she’d be liquid love, incapable of expressing herself. “You did all this for me: risked your reputation again, risked public humiliation, damage to your business, hurting Peter. And I don’t care how sure you were there’d be no legal ramification, there was always a risk there too.”

Will’s breath stuttered out of him. He seemed to shrink to a more mortal size, leaving his larger than life shadow to stand in front of her not as the elusive entrepreneur, the ruthless pirate or the troubled brawling kid, but as the man she loved.

“You didn’t need to do that for me.” Her voice waivered.

His was a low rasp, full of emotion. “I needed to do it for me, if I was ever going to have a chance to be with you on your terms. I can’t live happily forever with someone who holds the truth as sacred if I don’t live by that too.”

“Oh, Will.” Darcy felt heat suffuse her face. “You didn’t need to do that. I quit.”

He registered shock, then confusion. “You quit, but...”

“I hate that job.” She looked away from him to collect her thoughts. “I hate who it needs me to be.”

“But there are other journalism jobs.”

“I don’t think they’re for me. I called my old dog Gonzo because he looked like a Gonzo, not because of Hunter S Thompson. I never loved being a journalist like Brian and Andy. They inhale it. I loved it at first because they did, and it’s what I knew. Then I loved it because it defined me, but I don’t like how it’s changing, and I hate what it’s done to me.” She gulped a breath, looked back at him. “It very nearly, so nearly, lost me you.”

“You didn’t come anywhere near losing me, Lois. And not ever again.”

Will’s voice was heat haze and drugging summer humidity. It made the anxiety in her body begin to unknot. “You’ll need a new nickname for me.”

“You read my mind,” he took a step forward, “but I’d like to touch you just to make sure you’re real first.”

She glanced over her shoulder. The mirrored glass deceptively benign from this side. “I love you but I don’t trust you.” She hadn’t lost him. She was still mad at him, and she didn’t trust she wouldn’t forget herself entirely if he touched her.

He laughed suddenly, brightly. ”I’m not going to do anything.” He scrubbed his hair. “Oh fuck, don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”