Page 122 of Killing Me Softly

After Jack and Fraser left, Jack having given him the rundown on the case, Aaron bolted upright, eyes darting to the used cups, the half-empty biscuit tin, the scatter of things left behind. He gathered them, ready to disappear into the kitchen, into something todo.Something to fix.

“Hey, leave it.” Kenny tapped the sofa next to him.

“Won’t take me a sec. I’ll go put these away.” He lifted the cups, fingers curled around the porcelain, his movements brisk, almost frantic.

“Leavethem.” Kenny reached for his hand, wrapping firm fingers around his wrist, tugging him down. It took effort. As if Aaron was resisting gravity itself. Plus, he wasn’t up to full recovery yet. He had weeks of physio to get him there. “Sit down.”

Aaron hesitated, but eventually sank beside him, brows pinched, dumping the cups back on the table. “You okay?”

Kenny watched the tension in Aaron’s jaw, the twitch in his fingers, the way he bounced his knee, a tell of his unease.

“I need you to stop this guilt thing you have.”

Aaron’s expression faltered. Surprise. Deflection.

“None of what happened is your fault. Stop acting like you have to make up for it. You don’t.”

Aaron’s lips parted, but no words came out. His gaze darted to the coffee table, to his hands, to anywhere but Kenny’s face. Silence swelled between them, heavy with the things Aaron couldn’t say, with the things Kenny had spent months piecing together. Guilt was Aaron’s shadow, a relentless spectre thatwhispered lies into his ear—you’re from a family of murderers; you’re tainted; you don’t get to be innocent.He carried it in his spine, in the tension coiled inside him, in the way he tried toearnhis place in the world, in people’s lives. Even now, Kenny could see him weighing the words, trying to argue, to rationalise why heshouldfeel responsible.

But Kenny wasn’t letting him.

He cupped Aaron’s chin. “You don’t have to fix anything. You don’t have to earn the right to be here. Not with me.”

Something fractured in Aaron’s expression. A breath caught, a muscle in his jaw ticked, and for a moment, just a moment, he looked like he wanted to believe it.

Kenny pulled him closer. “Sit with me. Justbewith me.”

After a long beat, Aaron exhaled, the tension releasing in uneven waves. His shoulders sagged, not in surrender, but close enough and he leaned into Kenny, his body solid and real, head finding its place on Kenny’s shoulder as if it had always belonged there. And Kenny let Aaron seep into him, grounding him. He dipped his cheek, brushing his lips against the crown of Aaron’s head, pressing a kiss there. A silent reassurance, a promise wrapped in tenderness. Aaron’s fingers found his, tentatively at first, then firmer, lacing them together.

They stayed like that, wrapped in the stillness, letting the storm of everything that had happened settle around them.

But it couldn’t go back to how it was.

Too many things between them had blown wide open. A lifetime of trauma, of ghosts lurking in the corners of their minds. Wounds that hadn’t healed, and maybe never would. But together, Kenny was sure—absolutelysure—they could weather the wreckage. That whatever came next, neither of them had to face it alone.

After a long moment, Aaron stirred. He lifted Kenny’s hand in his own, tracing the lines of his veins, playing with his fingers absently, as if memorising him in a language of touch.

Then, so quietly it almost got lost between them, he asked, “Do you think your sister would have liked me?”

Kenny inhaled a deep, aching breath. “She would have loved you. And Mum would have loved you playing the piano with her.”

Aaron smiled. Then, just as fragile, “We should leave Ryston.”

Kenny’s heart stuttered.

For the first time, they were on the same page.

“Yeah,” he said. “We should.”

Aaron nodded, still drawing patterns along Kenny’s hand. “Barcelona was good for us.”

“Yeah.”

“So… we could go somewhere hot? With a beach? You know that was my first time on one, right?”

Kenny lifted his head, turning just enough to look at him. “I didn’t know that. But…I was thinking we should leave Rystonpermanently.”

Aaron lifted his head then, too, their eyes locking. “So was I.”

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