Chapter Twenty Never Tear Us Apart
Chapter twenty
Never Tear Us Apart
Kenny held Aaron tight, cocooned in the duvet, burrito-wrapped and folded into his chest.
He hadn’t moved in hours. With his head buried into Kenny’s chest, breathing shallow, steady but brittle, he wasn’t quite catatonic, but he was close enough to scare the ever living fuck out of Kenny.
Kenny wouldn’t let go.
And he sat there with him in his dressing gown, nothing underneath it, because Aaron had demanded it. Not for any sexual reason. No. Want to be stripped bare, he’d said, because we’re never leaving the house again.
So Kenny wrapped himself around him, locked his arms around his waist, tangled their legs together, and ignored the heat from the fire, the smothering weight of blanket and body, dealing with the sweat running down his spine, to stay right there.
With Aaron.
The television flickered with the glow of some saccharine Christmas romcom, all snow-touched kisses and artificial cheer.
The Hallmark Channel didn’t rest. And for once, Kenny didn’t feel the need to analyse the characters’ deep-seated trauma.
Not when his own real-life trauma was melting gingerbread in his mouth, slowly chewing the Jellytot doorknob off the house they’d meant to decorate properly but instead had attacked to distract themselves between interviews and bruised silences.
The wine on the table might be breathing. But they weren’t.
Kenny hadn’t let go of him since they got home. And as much as Aaron had used the Grinch Grinch, Kenny hadn’t been able to obey it immediately. Because there was all that other stuff they had to get through first.
Notably, Aaron’s injuries. He’d been moments from unconsciousness, maybe worse, by Jonathon’s hands and his lanyard cord closed around his throat, pulled taut enough to kill.
But Aaron hadn’t wanted to go to hospital, so Kenny had done everything himself: wound care, soft food, water with a straw, cold cloths. Aftercare so tender, Aaron had cried.
Chaos had to be checked over, too. The vet at the shelter confirmed it was a sedative.
Enough to drop a dog but not kill him. He’d slept for hours at Aaron’s feet, twitching in dreams, until Aaron finally curled on the rug beside him and breathed into his fur.
He hadn’t left Aaron’s side since. Which was where he was then.
Tucked somewhere beneath the duvet and him.
As was Lucky. The vet had given the lurcher the all-clear too and Aaron had insisted she come home with them.
Kenny doubted Aaron would ever take her back.
Which was fine with him. What was one more rescue among his horde?
The dart had been handmade, the compound traced back to veterinary supplies.
Something Jonathon had access to through his volunteer work.
It explained how he’d subdued both animals and people alike.
The same sedative, crushed and concealed in peppermint sweets, had been his method of control.
Enough to make his victims compliant, disoriented, unable to fight.
Blackwell had got off lightly, all things considered.
He was spending Christmas in a hospital bed. Alone.
But at least he was alive.
They’d given their statements, too. Hours of painful, meticulous unravelling, piecing together who did what, when, and why. The laborious drip-feed of truth to the police, each word weighted, every omission considered.
Margaret Harrow had been arrested before sunset.
As an accomplice.
Though Kenny would’ve called her something else. Enabler fit better. He doubted she’d ever dirtied her hands, but falsifying alibis, withholding evidence, knowingly turning her back while blood was shed? That was enough. Legally, it was punishable. Morally? That was for her God to decide.
And if He did judge her, Margaret would find out what that cost was when she found herself at the gates. Or wherever.
She went quietly, though. Gracefully. As if it were part of some divine choreography.
As if she’d known the ending from the start.
Maybe even wanted it. Invited it. Maybe, and this was the kicker, she’d asked Kenny to teach at her college not in spite of what he was, but because of it.
Because he could be another spoke in the wheel she and Roisin had been turning for decades.
A way of bringing Aaron back into their orbit.
If he were still researching, he might’ve tried to unpick that.
Looked into how connected the Harrows and the Howells were.
Whether there was any contact between them.
Roisin and Margaret particularly. And how their shared upbringing manifested the way it did and why.
Always the why. Why here. Why now. Why them.
But he wasn’t in the lecture hall anymore.
He was here. With Aaron.
And what mattered now wasn’t the pathology. It was honouring his safeword. Because some things were more important than answers. Like staying. Keeping a promise. Choosing to stop digging and start healing.
Jonathon Harrow, however, would take a long time to recover, if he ever truly did.
Physically, he was unscathed. But mentally?
The damage was layered. Calcified. A tangle of grief, delusion, and devotion warped into violence.
Kenny could’ve written a list of diagnoses.
He almost had. And it started when Jonathon wept as they led him from the kennel.
Not for the dead. Not for those he’d stalked and staged like penitent angels.
Not even for the ones he’d nearly destroyed.
He cried for his mother.
For the judgment he believed he hadn’t delivered well enough.
For the voice inside him that still mistook obedience for love.
But it was over.
The ritual complete. The myth undone. And all that remained was a boy who’d never learned how to live without instruction.
Kenny wouldn’t be surprised if Jonathon ended his own life.
As one final offering. A self-imposed reckoning.
Or maybe just because he wasn’t built for prison. Physically. Emotionally. Spiritually.
He was made for cages of a different kind.
Outside, snow dusted the lane in soft, uneven strokes, turning the world to quiet.
Chaos stirred at the foot of the sofa, letting out a deep sigh, chasing something in sleep.
Lucky trembled nearby, her thin frame all ribs and bone, too light to hold warmth, too raw to believe she was safe.
Not even curled between Aaron and Kenny beneath a mound of duvets.
But she would get there. She’d fatten up.
Soften. Learn to trust the hands that fed her.
Aaron would see to that.
And Kenny would watch him knitting that fragile dog back together, piece by careful piece, as if with every bit of progress, Aaron would mend himself, too. And all the while, Kenny would be doing the same to him. Quietly. Patiently. Stitch by stitch.
On the screen, two strangers leaned into a too-perfect kiss beneath a tinsel-strangled tree.
Aaron shifted, pressing closer, tucking his cheek into the curve of Kenny’s chest and Kenny kissed the crown of his head, lingering his lips there.
It was hard not to speak. Not to ask how he was, or what he needed.
Or to ask the question burning on his tongue for a while.
But that was the point of a safeword. It didn’t mean explain.
It meant stop. It meant this. Letting Aaron breathe.
Letting him decide when to stand. When to speak.
When to begin again. Not just the story. But life.
Christmas.
Them.
Then, suddenly, “Why Skye?”
Kenny exhaled. He’d hoped Aaron would ask. Not because it was fair. But because silence dishonoured her. And Kenny had made a career out of finding the why. Even when it hurt. So he drew Aaron closer, sifting his fingers gently through his limp hair.
“She was visible,” he said quietly. “And brave. And herself.”
Aaron remained fixed on the television. On some glossy, low-budget Christmas film piping out forced joy and plastic reconciliation.
A perfect family carving turkey, all grins and paper crowns, pretending the past hadn’t left a mark.
Kenny shifted, careful not to dislodge Aaron from his chest. At their feet, Chaos gave a whine in his sleep, paws scrabbling gently at whatever dreamscape he’d found, and Kenny glanced down before returning his gaze to the screen.
A family pretending Christmas healed things.
He wanted to scoff. Because that was the myth, wasn’t it?
That one day of tinsel and sugar could wipe clean a year of damage.
That pain paused for stuffing and crackers.
That love, even fractured and conditional, could be wrapped in red and forgiven.
But that wasn’t how trauma worked. That wasn’t how families like the Harrows broke.
No—it was because of Christmas they had shattered.
Because the season demanded cheer from people who were bleeding. Because judgment wrapped itself in scripture and sugar cookies. Because families were forced into rooms together, smiling with knives under their tongues.
And Skye…
Skye had stood in the middle of that, visible in a world that punished difference.
And so he continued. For her sake.
“Jonathon’s pathology was built on control.
” He rubbed his lips into Aaron’s hair. “On the idea of righteousness. Order. He’d been raised to believe deviation was sin.
That softness had to be corrected. Skye…
challenged that by existing. She was unapologetic.
She didn’t try to fit. Or hide. And for someone like Jonathon who’d been conditioned to believe identity must be obeyed, Skye’s truth was unbearable. ”
He paused, letting it settle. Letting the weight of it be real.