Page 75 of Dream a Little Dream

“You all right, mate?”

Was he all right? No. He wasn’t. But how could he tell Taylor the intricacies of what had just happened? He’d never understand. The confliction. The hurt. The goddamnpain. Matched with the relief.

“I’m going back,” Aaron slurred.

Taylor jumped down to the step, his socked feet soaking into the wet pavement. “Don’t go. Stay. I want you to stay.”

Aaron took a swig from the bottle, eyeing him.

“I won’t make a move. I know you’re dealing with shit. You’re drunk. Don’t go.”

“I’m doing you a favour.” Aaron staggered off, clutching the bottle of JD as if it would help keep him balanced. Stable. “Trust me! I’m a creep.”

His feet moved on autopilot, carrying him further from the noise of the house and deeper into the silent void of the night. If Taylor called for him again, he wasn’t aware.

The street was a short walk from the campus, so there was no real danger to be walking home alone at night. Rahul might have thought that, too, though. Maybe his father had, when they’d closed the door to his unbreakable cell. Aaron couldn’t muster the strength to care, and the streets blurred past him, the lamps fading, replaced by the eerie stillness of the riverbank ahead. Shadows clung to the trees, their gnarled branches twisting overhead like skeletal arms.

It was a shortcut. That was all. Through the woodland. Back to campus.

By the time he reached the river, the air had turned damp, cold enough to sink into his bones, and he could see the spot where Rahul had taken his last breath. The faint outline of scattered, wilting flowers visible on the edge of the bank along with tea lights illuminating the area in a faint glow. Aaron’s heart pounded. The river itself was a dark, sluggish ribbon, reflecting pale streaks of moonlight barely cutting through the dense canopy above.

Had it been a night like this when Rahul had met his end?

Had it been as beautiful?

Cold moisture seeped through his jeans as he collapsed onto the wet grass, clutching the bottle of Jack Daniels between his awkwardly sprawled legs. He stared at the river, watching the water ripple and swirl in the moonlight for a while. Then, raising the bottle to his lips, he took a long swig, liquid burning its waydown his throat. Sadly, it did nothing to numb the ache in his chest.

The surrounding woods seemed to press in the longer he sat there, suffocating him, like a beast laying in wait. The silence was deafening, punctuated only by the occasional rustling of leaves or the faint splash of water against the bank. A tear slid down his cheek, unbidden. He rarely cried. Too many years of burying his emotions had left him hollow, numb. But tonight, the alcohol unearthed something he couldn’t push back anymore.

Was it the alcohol? Or was it something disturbingly closer to home?

Whatever it was, he’d let it take him.

Right here. Right now.

He deserved whatever came.

Chapter seventeen

Lose Control

Kenny didn’t want to be here.

That was becoming a recurring problem in his more recent life. He was awarehewas the problem, though. And he wasn’t sure if he would have been like this had he met Heather, say, last year. Or at least before all this mess had started.

This mess being Aaron Jones.

But hewashere. In a cordoned off section in the back of a pub in the centre of town with Heather and her colleagues, where glittering banners wishing whomever a wonderful retirement adorned the walls along with a bunch of presents stacked up on the reserved table. Apparently, it was Janice who was leaving. A sixty-four-year-old teacher of year three, a kind and portly woman who’d dedicated her life to teaching young children at the local Catholic primary school. Well loved. Would be missed. Not just for the regular bakes she brought in for the staff room, but she was also the only teacher among the relatively small cohort who played the piano for those all-important hymns during assembly.

The mention of the piano had Kenny’s pulse elevating.

But he nodded, gripping a bottle of beer in one hand, other hand tucked in his suit trousers, and smiled occasionally as Heather, clutching his arm, laughed through anecdotes with her colleagues that, if Kenny were honest, he had to have been there to fully appreciate. He hadn’t been. And he wasn’t sure he was even really here, either. His mind was certainly elsewhere.

To Heather, he blamed it on the case. The poor young man, in his prime, who’d gone missing and turned up in the river. Word hadn’t got around about the roses. The potential of this not being an accidental death. And he hadn’t confided in Heather about being brought in to aid with the investigation as yet. Because as soon as that got out, foul play would instantly be suspected. Who hires a criminal psychologist for an accidental drowning? But it meant when that subject came up, as it inevitably would, considering this was a small town where news spread, he had to keep up the official line.

Heather squeezed his arm, oblivious to the internal struggle raging inside him, and she pointed a finger at a man in the corner. “That’s Ralph. Who we were talking about.”

Kenny glanced over to a man he’d bet his right arm was the caretaker of the school. He didn’t look like an average primary school teacher and not just because of the statistical anomaly that men were few and far between in those roles. But he looked a salt of the earth type of bloke. And he might have already been told who he was from the anecdote he’d clearly zoned out on. Kenny nodded, though, smiling, and felt the knot in his chest tighten. This wasn’t fair to her. She deserved someone present, someone who could be there for her. Not a man torn between two worlds. The one he wanted versus the one he craved.

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