Page 46 of Kiss Me Honey Hone

“You didn’t leave Friday because you were sick. Nor that bullshit about your mum. It was him, wasn’t it? He called you that night.”

Kenny didn’t answer, and he turned toward the door.

“You’re being played.” Jack’s words were like the lash of a whip.

Kenny spun, fury flaring in his chest to defend his actions. “He was roofied. He has no one else to call. What was I supposed to do? Leave him on the street?”

“Roofied?”

“Yes. At a student party.”

“There’s been no report of that coming in over the weekend.”

“Of course there hasn’t,” Kenny snapped. “Because, believe it or not,Jack, he doesn’t trust the police. I can’t fathomwhy. Can you?”

Jack chewed on his bottom lip. “Or maybe he didn’t report it because he knows we’d do a thorough investigation.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Jack straightened, body language shifting like a chess player locking down the board. “For someone who specialises in human behaviour, you’re blind when it comes to him. Think about it. He called, knowing you’d come running. It’s a tactic. He’s embedding himself in your life to gain leverage. You’re beingplayed.”

Kenny stepped forward. “And that there, what you just said and what you’re thinking right now, that’sexactlywhy he doesn’t trust people like you. You’ve already decided he’s the villain based on his heritage.”

Jack’s voice dropped to a deadly whisper. “Didn’t you? In your original assessment?”

The words hit like a sucker punch, knocking the air from Kenny’s lungs.

“Fuck you, Jack.” Kenny yanked open the door, glass rattling as he stormed out.

He left HQ, getting into his car, rage boiling over, then checked his phone, the text from Aaron still sitting there with the one word,cheat. Aaron was right. Hehadcheated. Having asked his PhD student to deliver his lecture so he could take the visiting lecturers on their tour, he’d avoided confronting him. But now, hewantedto see him. Because he’d yank Aaron up by the shirt Kenny had washed and ironed for him over the weekend, and make him promise he hadn’t either roofied himself or made the whole thing up entirely.

He hated Jack for plantingthatseed.

What he hated more, though, was having seen Aaron with Taylor in the library. Adding that to Jack’s hypothesis, it gnawed on his mind like a maggot burrowing inside his brain, leaving trails of doubt all over his frontal cortex. If Aaron believed Taylor had tried to take advantage of him, had drugged him in order to make him pliable, then why would he be sitting with him for a cosy chat in the library? Knowing Aaron and his penchant for wanting to goad Kenny, he might think he was doing it to get a rise out of him for not having been there in his lecture. But Aaron couldn’t haveknownKenny would be at the library at that precise time. It had been impromptu. A favour to the department to show the visiting lecturers around. Thus, Aaron would have been there with Taylor, whether Kenny stumbled on them or not.

All that just made Jack’s voice louder.

So, drowning it all out, he focused on the other personal tasks he needed to complete.

One was to visit his mum. He hadn’t all weekend in favour of other things, and so he drove to the nursing home expecting to be berated for his no show on Sunday. Instead, his mum barelyregistered him. His hope she would even remember who he was, once again dashed. She was drifting too far into the dark now. But he stayed with her for a while in her room, brushing her hair, and talking to her about the piano, hoping to spark something. In her, that was. Not in him, despite him seeingAaron’sfingers tinkering over his mother’s ivory, making the instrument come alive again. But all his mother said was how Jessica had her grade five coming up and she should practise. So Kenny left her in the past. It was a far better place for her to be, one where her daughter was alive and well with only thoughts of her piano exams. He kissed her cheek before driving home to tackle the next overhanging problem.

When he let himself in, the house immediately smelled of Aaron. So much so he had to check he wasn’t still there. He wasn’t. But he’d left the bed a mess, so Kenny stripped it, shoving the sheets and duvet cover in the utility room washing machine, then couldn’t procrastinate any longer.

Loosening his tie, he switched on the coffee machine. As he waited, he checked the phone message again. That one word.Cheat. He composed a reply. Then stopped. Deleted it. Restarted it. He had a thousand and one things to say. Toask. But putting them into the ether, where it could potentially come back to bite him on the arse, was a stupid move. He needed to tread far more carefully than he currently was.

Kenny knew the stakes were higher than they seemed on the surface. A relationship with a student wasn’t illegal, nor was it grounds for automatic dismissal. Technically, as long as it was declared and managed appropriately, it wasn’t even a clear breach of university policy. Professors and students were adults, after all, and nature often had a way of ignoring boundaries. Plenty of academics had crossed that line before him, and plenty would after. That was the reality of human connections within an institution brimming with thousands of individuals.

But none of that comforted Kenny. Because for all thetechnicalities and loopholes, the situation was rife with complications going beyond the paperwork. The power imbalance alone was damning. No matter how mutual their feelings might be, Kenny would always hold an implicit authority over Aaron. His grades, his references, even the way other faculty perceived him. All could be called into question the moment whispers of their involvement spread. The optics were damning, even if the intentions weren’t.

If word got out, HR would haul him in faster than he could draft an email to explain himself. Because the ethical line wasn’t just blurred. He’d obliterated it. Even the perception of favouritism—whether true or not—could dismantle his credibility among colleagues and students alike. His lectures, once brimming with eager attendees, could become battlegrounds of scepticism and judgment. The career he’d built brick by brick, lecture by lecture, might crumble overnight.

And this wasn’t justanystudent. It was Aaron. A man who, for all his intelligence and wit, carried an enormity of trauma and complexity, making the situation infinitely more dangerous. Aaron wasn’t a quiet fling or a casual romance. He was a storm. A force Kenny couldn’t help being drawn to, even as it threatened to rip his carefully curated life apart.

What Kenny risked wasn’t just his job or reputation. It was the very framework of his identity. The ethical foundation he’d built his career on would be called into question. He’d no longer be Dr Kenneth Lyons, the respected criminal psychologist, the man who dissected the behaviour of others with precision and poise. He’d become a cautionary tale—a professor who let his personal life consume his professional one. Because Aaron wasn’tanystudent. He was the son of the most notorious serial killers of recent times, whose case Kenny had built his entire career on.

But then there wasAaronhimself. And his words, intoxicatedand exposed, burning into Kenny’s soul.“I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you.”

No sooner had the coffee machine gurgled into life, than the doorbell rang. So Kenny had to leave Aaron’s message unanswered to answer the door instead.

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