Knowing and Not

The silence that settled over the room could have been sliced with a knife. Connor sucked in a deep, shuddering breath.

“What was that?” Lena’s words were sharp, icy shards. Connor could feel them in his lungs when he tried to breathe again.

“I –”

Lena had one hand up to guard; her other hand was hovering near her hip right above the grip of her ever-present gun. Her entire body was tense, but her eyes were wide, startled. Almost angry.

There were a quarter of a million words in the English language, and Connor knew every single one of them, but none of them could adequately convey what he needed to say right then.

“Connor, are you in shock?”

He had an answer for that. “No.”

“Then tell me - what was that just then?”

Words skittered through Connor’s brain, battled for some semblance of syntactical logic, but none of it was working. “I -”

Lena nodded for him to continue.

Connor closed his eyes and uttered, for perhaps the first time in his life, “I don’t know.”

There was definite anger in Lena’s eyes now. “You just kissed me, and now you’re saying you don’t know why you did?”

“I don’t!” Connor cried. He dragged a hand through his hair, turned away from her. She caught him by the wrist and yanked him back around to face her.

“Connor, you can’t just go around kissing me. I’m your bodyguard. It’s my job to keep you safe, to teach you to keep yourself safe.”

“I know that,” Connor said.

“Then you know that it means leaving me behind to save yourself, even if it means I must die.”

Connor swallowed hard. “I know that too.” He did know it - intellectually, the same way he knew the sun was warm and the grass was green and a pretty woman could look like roses damasked red and white and love was an ever-fixed mark.

“Then why the hell did you kiss me?”

“Because I’m in love with you!”

The anger drained from Lena’s eyes in an instant, turning her eyes dark and hollow.

“Oh,” she said in a small, timid voice.

Connor hadn’t known she could ever be timid. “Lena -”

“No.” She shook her head, reached for her cellphone.

“What are you doing?” Connor asked.

“Calling my supervisor to let him know you’re safe and I need to be transferred. Immediately.”

Connor’s throat closed. “Lena, don’t -”

“You know I have to.”

Connor shut his eyes, bowed his head. “Yes, yes I do.”

(420 words)