Chapter Eighteen Life’s Gonna Kill You （If You Let It）
Chapter eighteen
Life’s Gonna Kill You (If You Let It)
Aaron woke late.
Well, later than usual. Normally Chaos would’ve shoved his cold nose under the duvet and whined until he got up.
Walk? Food? Anything. But this morning, the dog was as knocked out as if he had been the one emotionally wrecked and fucked raw.
It was close to ten by the time Aaron dragged himself out of bed.
He showered, with Chaos finally stirring, tail thumping on the floor by the door, then got dressed and rushed downstairs to grab the lead.
There, he stopped dead.
A small pile of post sat on the welcome mat. Not many people had their address. A few did. Jack and Fraser, Mel, Jayden and Rick, and the local Chinese takeaway that always wrote “Happy Holidays” in gold pen. But they’d already sent their cards. And there was one now. Among the bills and junk mail.
Aaron crouched and picked through the pile, stopping at the thicker envelope. He froze. The blood in his veins glacial. The name on the front was written in old-fashioned cursive. Archaic. Spelling out a name that didn’t belong to him.
Cain Howell.
The card slipped from his fingers and hit the floor.
Aaron staggered back, retching, bile burning his throat. It was reactive. Post- traumatic response bollocks. Kenny would have some clinical term for it to file under. All Aaron had was rising nausea at seeing his deadname.
Getting himself together, he crouched. Picked the envelope back up.
Stared at the name.
No mistake.
Cain fucking Howell.
Chaos whined, wagging his tail, stationed by the door. Aaron ruffled the dog’s head, clutching the envelope in one hand, brain on overdrive. He bit his thumbnail, nerves crawling under his skin. Then he fished out his phone from his jeans pocket and dialled Kenny. Straight to voicemail.
Still teaching.
No signal in that college. They didn’t want the kids distracted by TikTok, SnapChat or people actually trying to reach them before they fell apart.
He staggered into the living room. The fire was off. The rug a tangled mess in front of it. Evidence of last night’s two sessions. Aaron sank onto the sofa, eyes fixed on the envelope as if it might bite. Chaos barked beside him, sharp and expectant.
“All right, boy.” Aaron scratched under his chin. “Give me a minute, yeah?”
Chaos licked his nose and sat, patient but watchful.
Aaron opened his phone again. Scrolled. Stopped. Closed his eyes, then hit call. He held the phone to his mouth like a lifeline.
It rang twice.
“Hey.” Jack was understandably surprised. “You okay?”
Aaron went straight to it. “Did you forward a card to me?”
“Uh… Fraser sent one back in November. To both of you.”
“No. I mean me. Me me.”
A beat.
“No.”
“You haven’t…” Aaron swallowed. “You haven’t told her where I am?”
He rarely called her mother. Usually Roisin. But right now, even that felt like giving her too much. The word made his skin crawl.
“No,” Jack said. “I wouldn’t. Not only is that breaking protocol, risking my entire career, but, Aaron, come on, you’re a friend. You know that. Why?”
Aaron looked down at the envelope. He let the word friend slide past without catching on it.
Too heavy. Too much to hold in his head.
The idea that DI Jack Bentley thought of him as one and not just the hanger-on to his ex who he refused to cut out of his life was difficult to comprehend right then.
So it was easier to keep his eyes on the card. On what that meant.
“I’m holding what I assume is a Christmas card addressed to…” His voice faltered. “Cain Howell.”
Silence.
“Shit,” Jack said. “What does Kenny think?”
“He’s not here. He’s teaching the local sixth formers how to blame all their issues on their parents. Y’know, irony.”
“Right.” Another pause. “Have you opened it?”
“No.”
“Is there a stamp? Postmark? If it came from Ashbridge, they’d have run it through sorting.”
Aaron flipped it over. “Nothing. No stamp. No mark at all. It’s handwritten. Looks… old-fashioned.”
“So it was hand-delivered.”
“Fuck.” Aaron shut his eyes.
Chaos whined again and nosed his knee, the hole in his ripped jeans a perfect entry point. Aaron reached down, running his fingers deep into his fur, anchoring himself.
“Kenny said he’s working a case,” Jack said gently. “You know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s it going?”
“He sent the profile in last night.” Aaron chewed on his lip. “Should be done for him. That part, anyway.”
Jack waited. Then asked, “And how was he through it?”
Aaron huffed out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I had ten orgasms yesterday.”
“Jesus.” Jack groaned. “Congratulations.”
“I think I need a medal.”
“And a shower.”
Aaron snorted. “Should I burn it?”
“I’m sure a shower will sort it out and you’ll be ready to break Kenny’s record again when he gets home.”
“I meant the card. And wait…what was Kenny’s record?”
“Perhaps wait to hear what Kenny says. About both.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” Aaron tossed the card on the coffee table as if it still might burn on its own. “Do you…see her?”
“No.”
“Right. Good. That’s…good.”
“Take care, Aaron. Have a good Christmas. Both of you. You deserve to get everything you asked for.”
“Eleven orgasms?”
“If that’s on your list, go chase it. But hydrate, yeah?”
“Say hi to Fraser for me. Tell him his scone recipe sucked.”
“He loves you, too.”
Aaron ended the call, dropping the phone beside the card with a dull thud.
Chaos crept closer, sensing the charge in the air, his body low, ears pricked.
So Aaron clucked his tongue, grabbed the lead, and took him out.
He needed the cold, the wind, something sharp to carve through the crawling dread under his skin.
The beach was brutal. Wind like razors, sea foam churning grey and wild, the sky bruised with the threat of snow again. Aaron ran until his lungs ached, until the bite of the air numbed everything but the pounding in his chest.
Back home, he towel-dried Chaos, who shook off and curled in his basket with a grunt. Aaron lingered a moment by the door, heart still hammering. Then he returned to the sofa. Sat. Picked up the envelope with trembling fingers.
He tore it open.
Inside was a Christmas card. One of those overly pious ones, pale blue and embossed with a nativity scene. Gilded lettering. Silent Night played in his head like static. He flipped it open. And there was that same scrawling, familiar hand:
Have you been a good boy for mother?
Aaron flung it onto the coffee table as if it stung.
He shot to his feet. Shuddered violently, then bounced on his toes to shake it off.
His skin crawled. The words burrowed. So in a move born of fear and instinct, he stomped around the table.
Grabbed logs. Threw them into the fireplace.
Lit the fire. Watched it catch. Flickers to flames to heat on his cheeks.
Then, without thinking, he snatched the card back up and tossed it in.
It landed face down. And for a moment, before the flames claimed it, he saw the back. Stamped lettering. A charity logo.
“Shit.”
He lunged forward, bare fingers catching the edge before the fire licked higher. Pain flared. He hissed and recoiled. Stupid. Then grabbed the poker, trying to lever it out, desperate.
Too late.
The card curled, blackened, crumbled into ash.
Fuck. Kenny was going to kill him. He’d destroyed evidence.
But…he’d managed to see enough of that logo.
He spun. Whistled.
Chaos padded in, sluggish and groggy.
“Another walk, boy?” Aaron reached for the lead.
* * * *
Kenny knew danger didn’t always raise its voice.
Sometimes, it smiled.
And Margaret Harrow smiled right then.
But his hackles didn’t rise. Not fully. She wasn’t triggering alarm bells. He trusted his instincts. His read. Earlier, he hadn’t tagged her as a direct threat. She didn’t quite fit the profile. But the margin for error always existed. And profiles weren’t prophecies. They were patterns.
And sometimes… people slipped through.
“If you have questions, Ms Harrow,” he let his training pilot the words, “perhaps you’d prefer to take them to the police?”
She tilted her head, inspecting him the way a disappointed parent might study a child who’d strayed enough to embarrass them in public. Calm. Assessing. Familiar.
“They can’t give me the answers I’m looking for, I’m afraid.”
Kenny tightened his grip on the underside of the desk. “And which questions are those?”
She toyed with the silver cross at her throat. “Whose fault this all is.”
“Whose fault do you believe it is?”
Margaret didn’t answer that question. She simply asked another of her own. “You understand people like her? Killers. Like Roisin?”
“I understand their compulsions. Their distortions. The frameworks they build to rationalise the violence.” Kenny kept calm, despite his pulse ticking up. “I understand the mechanisms that drive them… but understanding is not the same as condoning.”
“Of course not.” Margaret nodded, like a teacher satisfied with a student’s response. “Because they’re still human, aren’t they? Not monsters. They’re… damaged. Misdirected.”
Kenny lifted a brow, measured. “They’re physically human, yes.”
“And if they’re human…” she tilted her head, voice laced with something that might’ve passed for compassion, “then surely, they’re still redeemable. Still… forgivable?”
“That depends on many factors.”
“Such as?”
“Accountability. Willingness. Insight.”
“But not on the justice system.” She tutted. “No, not the judges who pass sentences like they’re divining truth. They get it wrong all the time.” She paused. “The real judgment, after all, belongs to Him. Doesn’t it?”
Kenny didn’t respond. Her phrasing was too deliberate. The shift in cadence too clean, as if memorised and rehearsed until it became belief.
“And Roisin…” Margaret lowered her pitch as if invoking something sacred. “She was a mother, wasn’t she?”