Chapter Thirteen Perfect For Me
Chapter thirteen
Perfect For Me
Kenny turned into the dog shelter’s gravel drive, headlights slicing through the encroaching dark. The car park appeared deserted, coated in silence beneath a low-hanging winter sky. Everything felt still. Watchful.
Only one car sat in a marked bay. A sleek black Range Rover, gleaming with polished chrome and quiet menace, frost starting to crack along the windscreen. Money oozed from every curve. That was a car bought to be seen. Kenny didn’t need to ask who it belonged to.
The new CEO.
The previous one had been different. She’d founded the shelter, encouraged Aaron to take a job, handing him purpose when he needed something to hold on to. She’d driven a battered Ford Transit, took minimum wage, and funnelled every spare penny back into the dogs. Warm. Practical. Unpretentious.
This? This was power dressed in vanity.
Kenny didn’t need a meeting to know it. That car told him everything.
He pulled in facing the main doors, realising now why Aaron had been off lately. Then he noticed Chaos tied to the post outside the office. Alone. His tail tucked low, ears pinned flat, body rigid with tension. Eyes fixed on the building.
So he killed the engine and stepped into the freezing air, breath misting as he buttoned his coat and wound his scarf tight.
Snow was coming. He could feel it in the wind’s sting, the cold damp kiss on his cheeks.
This far end of the island wasn’t the place to get snowed in.
Their cottage by the sea wasn’t exactly winter-proof either.
He should’ve picked up a shovel from Gerald at the Forager’s Table when he was there for supplies earlier, but that thought slipped away as Chaos let out a single, high-pitched bark.
He jogged over and crouched. “Hey, boy.” He ruffled his ears, then unclipped the lead from the post, stood and squinted through the office window, shielding his eyes from the glare of the headlights.
Nothing but darkness inside.
“Where is he, eh?” he asked the dog.
Chaos whined.
Kenny tried the door. Locked. Of course. Locked unless you had a keycard. Which he didn’t. He clucked his tongue. “Come on.”
He jerked his head towards the car and led Chaos across the gravel where he opened the back door. The dog jumped in without protest, but as Kenny closed it behind him, Chaos whined a low, heart-tugging sound and sat up at the window, ears flicking, eyes on the building. Waiting.
A sharp, jarring bang cracked through the air, spinning Kenny around.
Behind the glass doors, half-shrouded in shadow and clawing to get out, Aaron yanked the handle and, although the glass barrier muffled his voice, Kenny heard every word. Cutting clean and precise, a scalpel through stillness.
“Stay the fuck away from me!”
The doors burst open, and Aaron stumbled out as if shoved from a ledge, legs tangled in panic, eyes wild. There was no grace in his movements. Only terror. Raw. Feral. Panic in full command.
Kenny’s heart slammed into his ribs. Chaos barked sharply, tethered and alarmed, but before the doors could shut, a man Kenny would bet was Blackwell slapped a hand to the pane and pushed them open.
“Aaron!” he called, sharp with exasperation, as if this scene, Aaron’s unravelling, was a mere inconvenience. A tantrum to be quelled.
Aaron threw up his middle finger and spat, “Fuck off, cunt!”
But the words weren’t fury. They were grief, dressed in rage.
A howl from a boy cornered too many times, backed into too many walls.
Kenny felt it like a bruise blooming under the skin.
He knew that sound. The same as he knew every scar etched into Aaron’s body.
Those worn on the outside, and the ones buried deeper still.
It wasn’t fear.
It was memory.
Aaron stopped. In front of Kenny. As if his presence had hit him square in the chest. He wavered. Trembling. Too many instincts fighting for dominance. Flight. Fight. Collapse. Kenny held out a hand.
Aaron waited a breath. Then took it.
One step. Two. Then he was in Kenny’s arms, falling into him with no barriers, no bite. Pure, unfiltered need. Kenny wrapped him in tight. Tucked him close. Then stroked his hand up the nape of his neck.
Blackwell’s voice cut through the night again.
“There’s no need for dramatics. Complete misunderstanding.”
Kenny kept his eyes on Blackwell but lowered to whisper in Aaron’s hair, “I’ve got you.”
And Aaron, who would normally shove, snarl, deflect with teeth bared and humour sharp, did none of it. Instead, he folded tighter into Kenny’s coat. As if he could press himself into the lining and disappear. As if the safest place in the world was beneath Kenny’s ribs.
Blackwell had the audacity to roll down his sleeves. Casual. Careless. “He’s flipped out over nothing. Didn’t even say he had a…” He raked his gaze the length of Kenny. “Father figure.”
Kenny didn’t raise his tone. Didn’t need to. The fury was in the precision. The stillness. “He doesn’t owe you an explanation. He doesn’t owe you a goddamn thing.”
“On the contrary. He’s my employee.”
The pause that followed was surgical, long enough to cut, long enough to draw blood.
Kenny held Blackwell’s gaze to deliver the punch. “And because of that, if you so much as breathe in his direction again, I’ll make sure you’re torn apart by HR, the press, and the courts. In that order. And once their finished with you, I’ll take my turn.”
“You’re overreacting.” Blackwell’s smile thinned. “Emotions always tend to run high with his type.”
“His type?”
“We both know.” Blackwell slid his gaze over Aaron before resting on Kenny with quiet malice. “Don’t pretend you didn’t choose him for that very reason, either.”
Kenny reached behind him to open the passenger door, one hand still on Aaron’s neck. “Come anywhere near him again and you’ll see exactly how much I can overreact.”
Kenny didn’t wait for a response. Blackwell knew better than to offer one.
Some men fed on conflict. Stoked it. Needed it.
Kenny didn’t. He fed on control. And he’d already seen more than enough.
So he guided Aaron towards the passenger seat, where Chaos let out a distressed whine and launched over the console, landing squarely in Aaron’s lap, tail thudding like a frantic drum.
Aaron ruffled the dog’s ears and dropped his forehead into his fur. Kenny leaned in, working around them both to buckle the seatbelt. Then he shut the door.
Blackwell was still watching.
Kenny held his gaze, unblinking, giving nothing back.
Then he rounded the bonnet, slid into the driver’s seat, and shut the door.
The engine turned over, steady beneath his hand, but inside the car the silence pressed like a held breath.
Kenny knew it wouldn’t last. Aaron wouldn’t stay silent for long.
Not when the storm had already taken root in his bones.
And when it came, it came fast. Aaron kicked the footwell. Then again. Then a flurry—three, four, five—hard, sharp strikes, as if violence could shake the stench of Blackwell off him. Rage with nowhere to go, bursting out in staccato jabs too quick for words, too jagged for form.
Kenny didn’t stop him. He understood. Flight had collapsed into fight, and Aaron needed the bleed-out. To feel the impact, to hear the thud of his fury landing somewhere safe.
It was Chaos who broke the cycle. His whimper, soft and worried, followed by a wet tongue dragging insistently across Aaron’s cheek. The storm snapped, spent. And Aaron sagged back against the seat, shoulders trembling, the fight gone out of him as quickly as it had flared.
Kenny didn’t ask what happened. He didn’t need to. Whatever had gone down inside that building didn’t require words. He could read it in that explosion. In the shape of Aaron’s now silence. How he stared out the window as if still being watched. The way he chewed on his lip until it nearly bled.
Kenny ached.
Not with rage, though that simmered, dark and low, but with something harder to name.
Grief perhaps. And, fuck, he wanted to turn the car around.
Storm back in. Demand answers and crack the skull of a man who thought Aaron was something to be played with.
Someone who didn’t already belong to someone. Him.
But that would be about him.
It would feed his helplessness. His need to reassert power.
It would make him feel as if he had some sort of control.
But Aaron would be left watching two men square off over his body.
His pain. When what he needed wasn’t posturing.
It was to be seen. To come first. Not be left alone inside the aftermath.
Kenny knew this version of him. The one vanishing behind old walls the second they reappeared. And he knew the cost of pushing too soon. So he didn’t speak. Didn’t touch him. He grounded him.
Letting Aaron come back in his own time.
To aid with that, he clicked the radio on, easing the volume low until a faint hush of music filled the car.
Familiar. Warm. One of Aaron’s playlists he made late at night and never admitted to curating.
Nina Simone, aching and rich, begging not to be misunderstood, rolled out from the speakers and gradually, almost imperceptibly, Kenny watched Aaron sink further into the seat.
He tilted his head. Then rested.
And when he turned, dragging his gaze from the window to Kenny, it nearly broke him. Those eyes. Beautiful. Bruised. Still asking if this was safe. So Kenny took one hand off the wheel and stroked his knuckles along Aaron’s cheek.
Aaron grabbed Kenny’s wrist, held his hand to his face.
Nuzzled in. Kissed his palm.
He wasn’t seeking affection. No. It was worse than that. He was apologising. A quiet, desperate gesture saying, I know I’m a lot. Please stay anyway.
Kenny’s throat tightened.
He stroked his thumb over Aaron’s cheekbone, gentle and sure. “It’s not your fault. None of it. You’re not too much. And I love you. All of it. This and everything else.”