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chapter twenty-five

At Last

One year.

One whole year had passed since Kenny had come home broken, stitched together in more ways than one. Since Aaron had climbed into bed with him that night, vowing he’d never let go. Since the world had cracked wide open and demanded they face the wreckage. Aaron had thought the worst was behind them. That they had survived the storm.

But in reality, that night had only been the eye.

Kenny’s body healed faster than his mind. The stitches came out within a few weeks, the bruises faded, but the exhaustion lingered. Some nights, he still woke in a cold sweat, gasping for air, hands grasping for something solid. And every time, every time, Aaron was there. Lover, protector, rogue. Pressing against him, whispering, “I’m here, I’m here,” until Kenny breathed again.

Aaron hadn’t left his side. Not through the recovery, not through the media frenzy that erupted around Dr Pryce’s arrest. The case unfolding like a twisted horror story. The good doctor exposed as a manipulative, unethical fraud who had covered up, exploited, and, worst of all, enabled violent offenders under the guise of psychiatric rehabilitation. And at the centre of it all? Mable. His sister.

Mable Howell never made it out of that warehouse.

Mel had made sure of it.

And as Mel had sunk her knife into Mable again and again and again—not just to kill her, but to end her , to ensure she never had the chance to twist her way back into Aaron’s life, never hurt anyone again — it had repercussions.

Legally, the justification for self-defence was there. Mel had been protecting Aaron, protecting Kenny, protecting herself. And yet, the brutality of it had sparked an investigation. Multiple stab wounds. Multiple kill shots . There was no doubt that Mel had gone beyond stopping the threat. She had obliterated it.

Not even DI Bentley could prevent Kenny or Aaron from being questioned. Their statements picked apart, their every word scrutinised for cracks. But neither of them wavered. Neither of them gave the prosecution anything they could use.

Because Mel had saved them.

And she would not pay for that.

Not when the real villain—the one who’d let Mable loose on the world—was still pretending to be the hero.

Dr Pryce.

Her trial had been the spectacle Mable’s never was.

Kenny had testified. Jack had. Aaron had. They’d sat through months of revelations, months of uncovering just how deep her corruption had run. How many dangerous, broken people she’d enabled under the guise of rehabilitation.

And then there was Mable.

Her prized patient. Her success story.

The woman who, thanks to Pryce, had walked free. Reunited with her manipulative mother and killed again. Nearly destroying everything Kenny and Aaron had fought to build.

When the guilty verdict came down, it didn’t feel like justice .

Nothing would ever undo what had been done. No justice could rewrite the past or erase the damage. But it mattered. Pryce wouldn’t walk away untouched. She wouldn’t be free to twist another mind, ruin another life.

And if there was one truth Aaron could take from it all, it was this—he finally understood his mother.

Not in the way he used to search for. Not through her stories or apologies or the questions he had begged her to answer. But through the lens of her illness. Her fractured reality. Her psychosis hadn’t been a puzzle to solve, or a secret waiting to be uncovered. It was a storm she lived in. One that swallowed her whole long before he knew how to name it.

And because of that, she was never going to give him what he needed.

And that, finally, was enough.

Mel walked out of court free, too.

There were no apologies, no remorse, no quiet gratitude for getting off on self-defence. Because she knew what she had done. And she didn’t regret it. The only thing she’d said when it was finally over was to Aaron, “You owe me a bottle of wine, sweets.”

Aaron laughed for the first time in months.

There had also been two funerals to attend in that time.

Aaron and Mel had both gone to Taylor’s. They’d taken the train to Preston, where his body had been returned to his family after the investigation and the ceremony held in a small, quiet church. One of those places that smelled of old wood and dust, where grief clung to the walls. Aaron had stayed at the back. He hadn’t been able to do anything else. Taylor’s mother had seen him. Of course she had. She’d only met him the once. That year he’d been with Taylor over Christmas. And her eyes lingered on him, recognition filtering through the haze of sorrow. But Aaron couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe . Guilt wrapped itself around his ribs like barbed wire, constricting tighter with every passing moment. He should’ve said something. Offered something . But what could he possibly say to a grieving mother who’d lost her son to the same chaos that always seemed to follow him? Especially as both Max and George were there, too. Offering their sympathies. Grieving. Sending Aaron glances of contempt.

So Mel did his dirty work for him.

For the both of them.

She stepped forward in his place, voice steady, condolences soft, but they still felt wholly inadequate. Because nothing— nothing —could be enough. Not for this. No matter how much Aaron told himself it wasn’t his fault, no matter how many times Kenny whispered it in his ear at night, Aaron still wasn’t sure he believed it.

There was also Kenny’s mother’s funeral. A quiet affair. Simple. Small. A farewell fading into the background of a life that had already ended long before her body followed. There had been no grand send-off, no dramatic mourning. Just a moment of quiet, a handful of condolences, and the inevitable finality of burial. Where they laid her to rest beside her husband and the daughter who’d been taken from her far too young.

Aaron stood beside Kenny the entire time, their hands clasped between them, fingers tangled like an unspoken vow. No words, no promises—just there. A silent anchor. A steady presence in the grief wrapping around them both like a heavy fog. And when Kenny stepped forward, scattering flowers over the three graves, Aaron felt the tremor in his grip, the way his breath caught as he lingered longer at Jessica’s. Aaron said nothing. Didn’t move. Just watched. Watched as Kenny’s composure, so carefully held, fractured . Watched as his shoulders curled inward, as a silent tear traced its way down his cheek, falling onto the earth below.

And Aaron’s heart—God, his heart—it shattered for him.

And swelled for him.

For the love Kenny had lost. The love he still carried.

Aaron would spend a lifetime making sure he never had to bury someone he loved again.

Then, Aaron graduated.

Kenny had expected him to quit. Everyone had.

People expected him to leave. Defer. Vanish into a new life. A new city. Somewhere the ghosts didn’t whisper his name through the walls. Where his past wasn’t stitched into every glance, every hushed conversation.

Another offer came. A fresh identity. A clean slate. Another chance to be someone else.

But he was done changing himself.

He’d grown too used to being Aaron . Especially when Kenny said his name, rolling it over his tongue like a sip of top-shelf whisky. Slow, reverent, savouring the burn. When he moaned it. Breathless, wrecked, dragging each syllable through gritted teeth while at the edge of ecstasy. It wasn’t just a name anymore.

It was who he was. To Kenny .

No, he wasn’t giving that up. Not now. Not ever.

Plus, he had a penchant for proving people wrong.

So Aaron Jones stayed at Ryston to complete his degree.

He pushed through, refusing to let the scrutiny crush him. He sat through lectures where his presence felt like a silent dare, ignored the stares, the judgment, the curiosity disguised as concern. His grades were picked apart more than anyone else’s, watched , as if waiting for him to trip up. Fail. Prove them all right.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he turned the very thing that had haunted him into his strength. He wrote his dissertation, pulling from real-life horrors, from the true crime he had lived. He dissected the psychology of inherited guilt, of surviving the sins of others, of navigating an identity shaped by blood but rewritten by will.

Kenny had read it. Devoured it. Told him, without a hint of exaggeration, that it was the best damn thing he’d ever seen submitted.

But Kenny wasn’t marking him. Not anymore.

Because Kenny had stepped down. Had walked away from the world Aaron had fought to remain in. He’d walked into his office the day he was given the all clear from the doctor, sat through another tedious faculty meeting, listened to them dance around the scandal of the past year without actually addressing it, then, as soon as the meeting ended, he’d pushed his resignation letter across the table, stood up, and walked out.

And it didn’t matter. It never had .

Because Aaron was smart.

He walked away with a 2:1.

But, more importantly, he walked away on his own terms .

He didn’t get up on the ceremonial stage, though. Despite he was dressed for it in the cap and gown. He only attended to cheer on Mel. And he whooped at her from the back while Kenny packed the last of his office things into boxes. He applauded and whistled as she accepted her certificate and took a bow. Then he met her at the end and hugged her.

“You better stay in touch,” she said, slapping him on the arm with her scroll.

“I will. You better come see me. When you get a break from your Masters at Cambridge, come visit us.”

“I will. I need the extra tuition.”

Aaron snorted, shaking his head. They hugged once more—a little tighter this time—before he turned away, leaving the University of Ryston behind, stripping off the cap and gown as he walked, tossing them into the back seat of Kenny’s car. Together, they loaded up years of Kenny’s research into the boot like an afterthought.

Then, with their fingers laced, Kenny pulled out of the car park, driving away from the place where he’d been part of the furniture for years.

Home was waiting. But first, they had bags to pack.

Because Kenny had sold his house.

Aaron had finally been given access to his trust fund—the blood money he’d spent months trying to ignore, trying to deny any claim to. He couldn’t erase where it came from, but he could decide where it went. And so, without hesitation, he sent a chunk of it—three hundred grand—to Jayden’s charity, along with a note scribbled in the same lazy scrawl he’d always used:

Told you I’d pay you back. With added zeros for interest. Come see me on the island, bruv.

And just like that, the past loosened its grip.

Now came the move.

He and Kenny packed up the car with everything they could carry. The rest—old furniture, old memories—they left behind, selling off what didn’t matter, keeping only what did. Jack and Fraser dropped by, bringing a farewell gift of a bottle of good whisky for Kenny and a full-fat Coke for Aaron to wash his down with.

Aaron watched Kenny and Jack hug it out, saw the quiet exchange. A goodbye spoken through tight grips on shoulders and the slight, reluctant delay before letting go. He couldn’t hear what either said, and he didn’t want to. That moment belonged to them.

When Jack pulled him in for a hug, though, tapping his back, Aaron heard every word. “Go live the quiet life. You both deserve it.”

He planned to.

So they left.

Drove out of Ryston, out of the west Midlands, without looking back, down to the south coast, where they boarded a ferry, and watched the sun set over the Isle of Wight as they arrived.

Their new home was tucked away on the quieter side of the island, nestled near a small coastal village where the sea stretched out in endless shades of blue and the cliffs cradled the horizon, and the world moved at a slower, softer pace. The house was a stone-built cottage, old enough to have character but strong enough to hold them. The walls thick, the windows deep-set, framing views of the endless coastline where the air smelled of salt and clean , not carrying old ghosts.

It had a garden, too. Overgrown, wild, alive. Bit like him. But Aaron had a plan to make it beautiful. He’d try, as best as he could not to kill the plants before he got the hang of it. He made a vow to not let anything die because of him ever again. Not even a house plant. There’d been too much death in his life already.

The back of the house opened onto a quiet stretch of beach, a place they could walk barefoot in the early mornings, when the world was still waking up. Where he could, as Kenny said, “Feel the sand between your toes for the rest of your life.”

Aaron loved him that little bit more for that.

Now, their first night in the house, wrapped in blankets, naked, on the floor, no furniture yet, just each other, a half-empty bottle of wine, the sound of the waves crashing over the shore, Aaron lay beside Kenny, staring up at the exposed wooden beams of the ceiling, flickering candlelight dancing across the stone walls, and drew in a breath.

“Feels weird,” he said.

Kenny turned his head, studying him in the dim glow. “What does?”

“This.”

“How so?”

“Sorta…safe.”

Kenny threaded his fingers through Aaron’s. “Not weird, then. Good .”

Aaron exhaled, closing his eyes for a moment, listening to the rhythmic crash of the waves beyond the window. “Yeah. That’s what I mean.”

Kenny rolled over him. Kissed him. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life teaching you that this safe feeling you have, what you feel right now , this is what normal feels like. This is what you deserve to have felt all your life.”

“You just can’t help teaching me shit, can you?”

“No. And the first lesson I’m giving you here is a lesson in love. And it feels like this.” He kissed him again, slow and steady, which soon moved into Kenny making love to hi m , with the windows open, salty breeze cooling their skin, the sound of waves crashing over the shore in rhythm with their bodies.

Slow, deep, unhurried.

As if they had all the time in the world.

Because they did.

They finally did.

And Aaron loved every cherished moment.