Requiem for an Assassin

though simultaneously ashamed at the admission and bewildered that she couldn’t understand the point.
    He looked away again. “Look at me,” he said, his voice rising. “I can’t stop. The most I can do is take breaks from the life, like an addict falling on and off the wagon. But it always finds me again. And you know why? Because it is me. It’s what I am.”
    He drained the rest of his whiskey and slammed the empty glass down on the coffee table, then stood and started pacing, his head swiveling, his hands clenching. He was so wound up it looked like his body was fighting itself, the muscles bunched and writhing under the clothes.
    She got up and intercepted him. He stopped in front of her and stood there, breathing hard, his hands balled into fists. No wonder he was working out the way he was. If he didn’t burn some of this off, it was going to consume him.
    “Hey,” she said, trying to get him to meet her eyes. “Hey. I know you. As well as I’ve ever known anyone, maybe better. Don’t tell me you’re only that one thing.”
    He laughed harshly. “What else matters?”
    She took his face in her hands and steered it so that he was looking into her eyes. “You,” she said. “What you decide. That’s what matters.”
    “I’m talking about what I am.”
    She shook her head. “What you choose is what matters. Not the things you’ve done, or your abilities, or the training you’ve had, or even your inclinations. You can atone for all the rest, but your choices are what make you who you are.”
    “You don’t understand….”
    “I do. You’re not Gil. Don’t reduce yourself to that one thing. Find a way to be more than that. You have been, I’ve watched it happening in Paris.”
    “I was fooling myself in Paris. And I guess you, too.”
    “No, you’re fooling yourself now, or trying to. You’re in a bad situation and you’re terribly worried about your friend. Don’t let that…”
    “I can’t!” he shouted. “I can’t be both. I have to be a certain way, or…or…”
    “To save Dox, yes, you have to be that way, I understand,” she said, staying with him. “And you will. But that’s situational. It doesn’t define what you are. Don’t let it.”
    He squeezed his eyes shut and drew his lips back from his teeth as though the agony he felt were physical. “I don’t know how,” he whispered.
    “By the choices you make.”
    He shook his head violently. “I don’t have a choice.”
    “I know, and for the moment, you’re doing what you have to do. But the moment is going to pass. It’s a situation, it isn’t you.”
    He looked up at the ceiling, his breath coming in short, sharp bursts, the muscles in his neck tight cords. He was fighting something, tears, terror, she didn’t know what.
    “I…” he said, and then the word was choked off. He shook his head and took hold of her wrists as though preparing to cast her aside, and she sensed that whatever battle was raging inside him, he was losing it.
    “Stay with me, John,” she said, trying to get him to look at her again. “Stay with me, please….”
    And then he had her face in his hands and he was kissing her, ferociously, desperately, ravening her as though she was the only connection keeping him from being sucked away into some nameless horror. She kissed him back, hard, her mouth open, her hands in his hair, letting him feel her, take whatever he needed from her, making him know with her mouth and her hands and her body that she was there and she wasn’t going to let him go.
    He backed her into the bedroom, his hands still on her face, his mouth not leaving hers for an instant. The feel of her jeans rubbing against her as she moved was suddenly maddening, electric, and she realized with a start that she was close to coming from nothing more than the way he was kissing her and the friction of a tight pair of jeans. For a moment, she forgot where they were, she wanted him to just keep kissing her like that, keep moving her like that, yes, just that way…
    The back of her thighs bumped against the side of the bed. She was barely thinking now, she just wanted him naked, his skin against her, his weight on her, all of him inside her. He broke the kiss to lift her sweater over her head and was back before he had even tossed it aside, his tongue, his teeth, the taste of whiskey and his own taste, too. She managed to get his belt open, then his pants. She reached inside, and when she felt how hard he was, it