Page 31 of Killing Me Softly

Everything.

Aaron exhaled at the revelation. To shove it away, he went back to the machine, pressing buttons, opening cupboards, slamming them again. His frustration mounted, and he punched the counter with more force, then slapped the machine. “Fuck off, you fucking piece of fucking—”

Warm arms slipped around his waist, pulling him back onto a solid chest. Lips, rough with stubble but impossibly soft, ghosted his bare shoulder. “Please don’t break it. That’s my emotional support coffee machine.”

“Fuck your feelings.Ihave feelings.” Aaron slapped it. “And no fucking tin can will outsmart me.”

Kenny kissed Aaron’s shoulder and Aaron closed his eyes, sinking into Kenny before realising he wasn’t supposed to be the one doing that, so he twisted in his arms.

“You weren’t supposed to wake up yet.”

Kenny brushed his forehead to Aaron’s, sliding his arms around to his arse. “Because all that noise you were making was supposed to lull me to sleep?”

“If that thing wasn’t such a prissy bitch, I’d be bringing you coffee in bed.”

“Thank you, but move over and I’ll do it.”

Aaron sighed and stepped to his side, watching how, with ease, Kenny, in just a pair of pyjama bottoms, brought the machine to life.

“I wanted to do something for you.” Aaron folded his arms in a sulk.

“You don’t have to do anything.”

“But I want to.” Aaron got into his line of sight. “I have no fucking clue what else to do, least I can do is make you coffee.”

“Except you can’t.”

“Fuck you.”

Kenny chuckled, and the machine gurgled out the perfect black liquid into a cup. “You don’t need to do anything,” he said with more conviction that time, but he was avoiding eye contact and Aaron sensed something other than coffee brewing beneath the surface. As Kenny took the cup, he hovered it to his lips and finally looked at Aaron.

Aaron titled his neck. “Are you…okay?”

“No.” At least he was honest with him about that, but he still took a sip of coffee to stop himself from uttering anything else. Until, “But I will be.”

“How did she die?”

Kenny moved away to the other side of the kitchen. “Can we…not.”

Aaron watched him for a moment, hackles raised. But he waited.

“I’m sorry.” Kenny rubbed his forehead as if wiping away a dull ache. “I’m just not going to be very…conversational for a while.”

“Cool with me.” Aaron crossed one ankle over the other. “I’m fucking shit at talking. Bet Dr Riley told you that in her diagnosis notes.”

“I already know that from my own notes.”

“Do I get to read these notes?”

“Absolutely not.”

Aaron snorted.

Kenny sank into a chair at the dining table, clutching the espresso cup in both hands, and gazed out of the full-length windows to the garden, where a pair of sparrows flitted around the bird table, pecking at the scraps left behind

“Do you want me to go?” Aaron asked him with careful tact.

Kenny hung his head, staring into the dark abyss of espresso coffee and Aaron’s gut clenched, ready to take the rejection. Ready to accept it.Dealwith it. Understand that if Kenny didn’t want him here, it had nothing at all to do with him and all to do with everything else he was dealing with.

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