Chapter Eight I Feel It In My Bones #3
Still, Jonathon’s knitwear wasn’t the worst thing in the room.
That honour went to Lionel. Another long-time volunteer whose job seemed to be equal parts sweeping up after the dogs, and after the people, and restocking whatever the cupboards had mysteriously run out of.
Lionel wore shorts. In December. Paired with a thick fisherman’s jumper and battered wellies.
Aaron had decided it must be a coastal thing.
Everyone around here seemed to wear shorts year-round, swapping T-shirts for wool and sandals for rubber boots when the weather turned.
As if covering their legs was pointless when they spent most of their life on sand and shingle.
Aaron gagged theatrically. “That stuff smells like melted bin bags and despair. I’ll pass.”
The only coffee worth tasting was whatever clung to Kenny’s mouth. Funny how something he’d detested his whole life could taste like heaven filtered through a coarse beard and a slow, searching tongue.
“We’ve got peppermint tea,” Lionel offered helpfully.
“I’m not ninety, Lionel!” Aaron snapped back, biting off the unlike you before it slipped out.
Because, honestly, Lionel looked bloody good for his age. And Aaron didn’t want to picture himself at ninety anyway. Not when it meant Kenny would be… what, a hundred and ten? Christ. That was not the thought to have when he’d just agreed on a fucking safeword with the man.
Would he have to shout it into his hearing aid?
He chose not to think about that.
The open-plan office beyond reception was alive with motion.
Phones ringing. Dogs yapping. Printers jamming.
Tinsel twinkling from corkboards and windowsills.
Someone had jammed candy canes into every plant pot, and a half-eaten tin of Celebrations sat beside the copier under a sticky note that read NO BOUNTIES, YOU ANIMALS.
Aaron unclipped Chaos’s lead and hung it by his desk. The retriever circled once, then curled into the basket beneath the desk. He dropped two liver treats into the basket, then woke up his PC. The monitor flickered on with a groan. The shelter’s email client opened with its usual sigh.
Nothing personal. Nothing urgent. Never was.
He wasn’t anyone’s poster boy. Barely even counted as staff some days.
He dealt with the dogs no one else wanted to deal with.
The biters. Bolters. Ones with teeth and trauma.
Yeah, yeah, before anyone says it, all a little like him.
And here, he was their Kenny. But even those who spent more time with teeth than people got inboxes.
Team memos, passive-aggressive training links, a twelve-email thread about how someone stole the good scissors again.
One subject line stood out: Reminder: Submit updated DBS forms.
Shit. Right. That.
If he wanted the better-paying job of doing outreach along with Tessa, taking dogs to schools or community centres without being chaperoned like a delinquent, he needed that clearance.
But his file always got flagged. Not for what was in it, but for what wasn’t.
A blank space set off alarms. It was a digital scar where a life used to be.
He stared at the screen. Undecided. Why did he even want the job?
“Aaron!” Tessa called again from the front. “Don’t forget, Secret Santa draw’s at lunch!”
“Someone better get me a personality, then,” he called back in jest.
Lionel called out, “Or deodorant. More useful.”
Aaron lifted a middle finger over the partition without looking up.
Jonathon laughed, then approached Aaron’s desk. “We got a lurcher in last night. You might wanna come check her. She’s not going near me. No eye contact.”
Aaron nodded, then went back to chewing his thumbnail as he stared at the screen.
That was why he wanted the job. But the moment he submitted those forms, it’d start.
This little charity and these quirky, loud, relentlessly decent people who’d let him in without question when he wandered through the doors a year ago to drop off a donation, would start getting curious.
The same people who joked with him, put up with his prickles and deflection and bouts of sarcasm, who fed him biscuits, and offered him a job, they’d all look at him differently.
Curiosity had a way of turning warm places cold.
A Google search here. A whisper there. Threads on Reddit from years back. Half-truths and dead links and usernames who thought they were clever. A trace of Ryston. A flicker of Frank and Roisin.
The job would vanish then. He knew it would.
Oh, they wouldn’t say it outright. It’d be some quietly worded apology about “organisational fit” or “a shift in funding.” No one ever said: you make people nervous.
And Kenny, with all his faith in policies and protocols, had encouraged him to apply for the higher-paying role.
The one that would get him out into the community.
Fundraising. Therapy work. Giving something back.
Said it might help him shed some of that survivor’s guilt he carried.
But Aaron knew better. He’d lived better. It wouldn’t matter how good he was, how useful, it wouldn’t change anything. He’d been discarded for less. By foster parents. Case workers. People who smiled through their teeth and called him complicated when they meant contaminated.
A job like this, and a life like the one he had right now, was a luxury.
And yeah, he’d thought about changing his name. Had even joked with Kenny once that he should take his surname. Aaron Lyons. They’d laughed about it, kind of. But Kenny had gone quiet after that. Thoughtful in the way he got when something scraped too close to the bone.
Maybe it had felt too much. Too real.
Didn’t matter, anyway. He hadn’t done it.
He was still Aaron Jones. Because Jones was safe. Unremarkable. Common enough to disappear behind. He could always claim he wasn’t that Aaron Jones.
The whispers would say otherwise. Not about his parents. Most of that was buried, scrubbed, silenced. No, the whispers would paint him as something else. The student who made Dr Kenneth Lyons lose his professorship.
Aaron scratched behind Chaos’s ears, trying to quiet the throb rising in his chest. That low, humming ache that came whenever he let himself want something too much. He liked it here. Liked the dogs. The purpose.
But like everything else in his life, it felt borrowed.
And eventually, someone always came to collect.
Maybe that’s why he still kept himself a little guarded.
Even with Kenny. Especially with Kenny. Because deep down, some part of him still believed that one day, even that would be over too.
And maybe that’s why Kenny kept him on the edge, breathless and begging, always wanting but never quite having.
Maybe that was the point of this whole thing.
He was training him in denial. Preparing him for the eventual silence.
That some fractured part of him thought Aaron would need the practice.
That he needed to know how to live without him. Slowly. Incrementally. In aching doses.
So yeah…never using that safeword.
Fuck, he loved him.
So fucking much it hurt.
Right. Focus.
Work.
He left the envelope of forms on his desk to go check the dogs.
Water, dry food, meds, walks, and re-bedding, but the newest arrival changed the rhythm.
A lurcher. All ribs and raw nerves. Tucked into the back corner as if she’d crawled inside herself and bolted the door.
Her coat was patchy, her eyes the colour of old snow, and her growl vibrated straight through his sternum.
Aaron crouched by the kennel door, arms slack, posture loose. No sudden movements. No voice. No eye contact.
Breathing. Presence.
He stayed like that for minutes. Long, quiet, grounded in stillness. Proving to her he wouldn’t demand anything she didn’t want to give.
Eventually, he spoke. “Hey, girl. You’re safe now.”
She didn’t move, but her growl eased.
“You don’t owe anyone calm.”
The words landed heavily in his throat.
Maybe he was speaking to himself. Maybe it was Kenny’s voice behind them, too. Always there in the corners of him now. Reminding him it was okay to feel too much. Want too much. Be too much. That he didn’t have to be fixed to be worthy. Didn’t have to be finished to be wanted.
Didn’t have to come to be loved.
The lurcher didn’t move, but the growl sank into a quieter vibration.
Aaron made himself relax, let the tension bleed out of his shoulders—
Then a hand touched his neck.
Aaron recoiled as if he’d been tasered. He slammed back into the kennel wall. The lurcher flinched at the noise, giving a startled yelp, then bolted to the far corner, ribs quivering as if she’d been hit.
Aaron spun, already halfway into a swing. “What the fu—”
The curse died in his throat.
Hugo Blackwell.
The new CEO of Pawsitive Futures. Six weeks on the job, all charm and polish. His handshake rehearsed, his résumé so squeaky clean it probably had its own publicist. Confidence like his didn’t come from competence. It came from never hearing the word no.
Aaron had met men like Blackwell before.
Mostly in Inferno. Predators in suits, hunting for a twink they could ruin with or without consent.
And he reminded Aaron of him. That foster carer.
The one who figured out who Aaron really was and made him pay for it.
Left him bruised. Broken. Fucking violated.
Made him understand, in blood and violence, what it meant to be Roisin Howell’s son.
And one of her victims.
Blackwell raised his hands, all faux innocence. “Apologies. I called your name.”
That voice.
Syrup and scalpel. Smooth and slicing. It didn’t fill a room. It coiled around it. Aaron’s stomach turned cold.
“Mr Blackwell.” He forced the name out like gravel. Politeness, polished into muscle memory. He didn’t owe this man anything, but he also couldn’t afford to lose the only place that made sense. The dogs. The routine. The leash he could hold.
“Call me Hugo.”
Yeah, not happening.
He always stood too close. Smiled too easily. Late fifties, well-cut coat, leather gloves folded in one hand like theatre props. His smile was mild, curated.
“You were very focused.” Blackwell gestured towards the cowering dog. “Quite impressive the way you manage the difficult ones.”
Aaron didn’t answer.
Instead, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets, forcing them still.
Better that than let them shake. Or worse, drive straight into the smug bastard who signed his payslips.
He’d always known employment would be tricky, what with the oppositional defiance authority complex whatever diagnosis Kenny liked to pin on him.
But Blackwell was different. This wasn’t just authority grinding under his skin. It was something colder.
Hungrier.
So Aaron made his voice flat, hard enough to cut. “I don’t like being touched.”
He could’ve added except by my boyfriend, but the glare said enough. The edge in his voice, the way he didn’t move an inch closer. Blackwell should get the message. If he had half a brain, he’d already be backing off.
“Of course.” Blackwell held up a hand. “My mistake.”
The new CEO had arrived suddenly at the charity, brought in by the board after the previous top-dog, excuse the pun, retired.
His background was all polished service: former corporate fixer for floundering charities, degrees in finance and accounting, a reputation for quiet efficiency.
Aaron had looked him up once, out of instinct more than interest, and found pages scrubbed clean.
A digital footprint that had been managed. Like his own.
He’d chalked it up to ego. Now, he wasn’t so sure.
“I was hoping to catch you,” Blackwell said, that smile of his smooth as polished glass.
“I’ve been invited to the St Joseph’s Homeless Centre.
Bit of a dual-purpose visit. Meet with their counselling staff, talk potential funding.
They’ve asked if we might bring one of our dogs along.
Something calm, well-socialised. A demonstration piece, really. Makes for good PR. And good outreach.”
Aaron stayed quiet.
Blackwell let the silence stretch, then added, “You need to come.”
Those words lodged under Aaron’s skin, because wasn’t that what he’d been telling Kenny for days.
It was too smooth right then. Too intimate coming from someone else and his stomach twisted.
Because they weren’t just words, they were an echo.
Of Kenny. Only Kenny. And all he could think of was Kenny’s hands pinning him, Kenny’s voice dragging him to the edge, deciding when he broke, when he came.
And now this bastard was using the same phrasing.
Too precise to be casual. Deliberate. Designed to slip past his guard and force a reaction.
Aaron’s jaw locked. His body screamed to recoil, but he didn’t move.
But Blackwell, of course, stepped closer anyway.
“You’ve got a way about you.” Blackwell tilted his head. “Something I think the kids might respond to.”
“I don’t handle outreach.”
“But you’ve applied for it, no? And I’ve been watching. You have a way with trust. And, if I can be frank…” His smile sharpened. “You’ll photograph far better than Tessa for the glossy PR shots. Let’s call this a trial run.”
Aaron’s skin prickled. He wasn’t sure what landed worse. The compliment or the suggestion beneath it.
“I’ll think about it.”
Blackwell nodded once, as if that were a victory. “Let me know by end of play today so I can confirm. And not to worry, I can drive us both there. With whichever dog you choose.” He glanced back to the lurcher shaking in the corner. “Perhaps not that one.”
Then he turned and walked away, and Aaron watched until he was out of sight.
The lurcher was watching him from the corner, tail tucked. Still wary. Still wounded.
“Same, girl,” Aaron said, kneeling again. “Same.”