Story: Character Development - Villain?

It had been nearly a year since he'd seen the light. He was sure she'd never really be aware of the impact she'd had on his life. He'd certainly never be where he was now if not for her. Phyllis had never been terribly attractive to him until that afternoon; they'd worked together for two and a half years, managing business accounts for a Denver firm, but rarely socialized, and even then in large groups.

He remembered it so well. It was the moment that defined him now, the eureka spark to bring his passions to flame. A group from the office had arranged a hiking excursion in the surrounding Rockies one Saturday morning the previous spring; it was Phyllis, Jim, Stan, Louise, and Derek who'd made the trip. After a pleasant morning winding along the lower trails, they began the steeper ascent to the ridge where they would get a long view of the valley in which they'd begun the day. The trail was far from gentle, at times switching back on itself so hard and so steeply that the person at the back of the group would be fifteen or twenty feet directly below the leader. It was on one of these turns that it happened. As the hike had grown more strenuous, all of them had begun to bead with sweat, glistening in the still-low sun. The way light caught things always seemed important now; the light that was there, and the light that wasn't, just the same, they reflected and refracted in ways that he found utterly captivating. That rocky part of the trail had been full of light and shadow. It flashed from their eyes as they turned up toward the mid-morning sunlight. It flickered on the sweat on their foreheads. It broke and scattered off the trickle of run-off dribbling down the rock-face beside him. It had been like a magical choreography when her foot struck the moss-slicked stones above, upending her in a near-graceful backdive, her flailing arms causing it all to shift and blink as Phyllis' shadow blocked the light momentarily. The impact was wet, solid, final - he'd for some reason expected her to bounce. He had gasped and stared, disbelieving, while the others rushed to see to Phyllis. He couldn't even be quite sure which form of disbelief hit him first: that the fall had happened at all, that he'd aesthetically enjoyed the experience, or that, in the moments that followed, he felt a warm and substantive lightness of being unlike anything he could remember. In the hours it took to rush back down to the valley, he felt utterly alive, refreshed, and light of step. He carried Phyllis' body all by himself, despite her weight being more than most would believe his slight frame could readily lift. He felt empowered, almost giddy; he wondered if maybe it was the result of shock, except that it didn't fade nor overwhelm him. He wallowed in his strange sense of indomitable inertia the whole way back to the ranger station near the trailhead.

The glistening, the glowing, the rupture, the rapture, the cry and the twitch before the inflow of ecstasy -- they were always fleeting, simultaneously heinous and glorious, a dichotomy that somehow made it all the more beautiful, all the more addictive.