Chapter Two Bad Romance
Chapter two
Bad Romance
Dr Kenneth Lyons was an idiot.
An idiot with a PhD.
An idiot with a PhD on his way to making professor.
Yet he’d made an undeniable error in judgment that could cost him his entire tenure.
Leaving his semi-detached home in the leafy suburbs of Ryston, a university market town sidled within the West Midlands, on Monday morning, Kenny hoped his pounding along the mud track would wipe away the sordid memories clinging to him like the stench of stale smoke on fabric. Having spent Sunday mostly nursing a hangover, he hadn’t rid himself of the flashing images of nightclub strobe lights, writhing bodies, and a stranger’s face obscured by intoxication.
Nor of pink hair.
A tattooed Mars symbol on a tasty neck.
He shook his head, clasping his hair up into a knot, attempting to dislodge the recollections of having been utterly out of his mind. Psychologists also had moments of insanity. He was just able to pinpoint all the whys and wherefores about it. It had been the date . Fresh in his mind, hoisting the ghosts of his past on his shoulders, whispering for him to do something. Being far from home on a weekend and immersed in a big city had provided him with the opportunity to disappear for a while. To drown the ghosts out by indulging in something hedonistic. Something visceral. Something for him .
And not for her.
But the figure promising oblivion only delivered regret.
The September morning chill nipped his arms and legs. He was fairly certain there was a suit left at his office, or his new students might have to suffer their lectures with him in shorts and tee. It wouldn’t be the first time. Nor the last. He’d become known as Dr Legs over the years.
Dodging the dog walkers and early risers along the river, Kenny raced his way to the University of Ryston. The campus where he worked and spent most of his time was an amalgamation of the old and new. Some buildings making up the Riverside grounds maintained an old-style English appeal of refurbished old public schools and listed buildings, but scattered among them were the modern glass-fronted additions spreading over the hundred and thirty acres making up the gated community. Accessible to the public by a walkway through a riverside woodland, it was quaint. Rural. The parents on open days often remarked how safe it felt within the confines.
Kenny didn’t tell them nowhere was safe.
Weaving onto campus, he made his way to the Psychology block. His office was in one of the antiquated buildings, an old manor house where the floorboards creaked and the walls held secrets of aristocratic scandals. It was probably a joke of some kind—let’s put the lot who research criminal behaviour in the creepy building with skeletons in the closets. But with the lift out of action most days, it at least gave him an extra three levels of a leg workout up the stairs where he popped out at the administration office. It was scarce of the usual staff who all offered support services to the academics or ran government-funded projects today, though. Obviously, not everyone was as eager as him to get started and shake off the remnants of a summer of debauchery.
Except for Gail.
Sat behind her computer at the desk by the window overlooking where the sun peeked down on the river, she peered over her specs, hovering her spoon full of cornflakes at her mouth. “Dr Lyons,” she greeted with her usual smile. “Welcome back.”
“You too, Gail.” He wiped his brow with the sleeve of his mesh t-shirt.
“Ha bloody ha.” Gail tutted. “You know us support staff work through the summer. Unlike you ‘part-time’ academics.”
Gail was the faculty senior secretary. Assistant on all things admin for the academics within the School of Social Sciences. She had a bunch of staff under her and had been part of the university since its inception from a lowly polytechnic. In her sixties, she was clinging on until retirement.
“I can assure you it wasn’t all lazing on a beach.” And Kenny wasn’t part time. He was a full-time associate professor.
But Gail was right. He had most of the summer off and had been fortunate enough to land a place at the annual EAPL, European Association of Psychology and Law, conference in Portugal that year, plus the training conference run by the Met in London, so he’d got out and about a fair bit more than she probably had. Albeit for work. But it also meant that when he rifled through his pigeonholes, his name etched underneath, it had already filled up with varying papers and envelopes and other such things admin and postal put in there marked for his attention.
Slipping them under his arm, he headed to his single office along the corridor, buzzing himself inside with a keycard. It was still in the mass of disarray he’d left it back in July, but with the addition of a dry-cleaned suit hung on the back of the door.
“You’re a diamond, Gail!” He called out after slapping the mail on his desk cluttered with books, papers, research documents, and all the other shit he threw there to sort out later.
He should have sorted it out before jetting off to Portugal in July. Chaos and clutter threw him off balance, made it impossible to function. A messy office meant a messy mind. Or, if he were honest with himself, which he never liked to be, his mind was already such a mess that he needed his surroundings to feign the calm.
“You need to get yourself a wife,” Gail called back through the corridor.
Dry cleaning errands weren’t in Gail’s job description, but she’d been here since the area had been home to one of the largest car manufacturers in the UK, before the university took over the town and everyone within now either worked or studied here, aka longer than Kenny, and she’d known him as the eager student, therefore taken it upon herself to become his surrogate mother. No matter if he was now forty.
After unhooking the suit and grabbing his laptop bag stuffed with everything needed for his first lecture, he headed back into the faculty office.
“Rather old-fashioned, there, Gail. Dry cleaning isn’t a wife’s job.”
“True, but if you had a wife, you might dry clean your own suits to impress her.”
He snorted. Often asked why he was still a bachelor, the answer that his work kept him busy didn’t suffice anymore. So he skirted around the periphery of the truth. Why on earth would someone want a man who could psychoanalyse their every behaviour for a husband? While it wasn’t exactly like that—he wasn’t a mind reader, despite his best efforts to hone his talent—he’d had enough relationships end because of his ability to analyse his partners’ deepest thoughts and desperate desires. While that might be great on the surface, to pin down what someone might want in bed, after a while it became a weapon of control.
One he used too freely.
“Tell me you at least had a holiday romance?” Gail breathed out in exasperation. “And didn’t spend all your summer consulting?”
“I’ve given up the consultancy work.” Leaning on the doorframe, the lie rolled off his tongue easier. He had told himself to give it up, but he was still waiting for the right case… “Writing another book instead.”
“Good. Means you got time to find yourself a nice girlfriend.” She waggled a spoon poignantly. “Maybe this lady Dom’s setting you up with will work out?”
“He told you about that?” Kenny rubbed his brow, now regretting agreeing to the blind date set up by Dominic, an hourly paid political science lecturer.
“Least she’s not faculty this time, eh?” Gail peered over her glasses like a school ma’am.
Kenny said nothing. It wasn’t his fault that the affair he’d had last year with a faculty researcher ended badly; her having to leave her job as a result, leaving the occ-psyche unit in a bit of a pickle. He’d been honest with her going in. Committed relationships weren’t in his skill set. Everyone who’d fallen into bed with him all ran more than a mile away after in order to forget.
Some as far as Scotland .
“I’ll shower at the gym.” He checked his watch. “Remind me which room I’m in.”
Gail clicked on her mouse, eyes on her computer screen. “Intro to Criminal Psychology, year one, LT five at nine a.m.”
Kenny winced. “Better get a wriggle on.”
“You’ve got Charlotte with you,” Gail called before he could bound off back down the rickety carpeted stairs. “She’s already there.”
“Keen.”
“Don’t break this one.”
Kenny waved her off and headed toward the gym adjacent to the Halls of Residence where all the newbie freshers were mingling, and he inhaled their nerves and excitement as if it were aftershave. He showered quickly, washing his hair to leave it down, dressed in a suit—navy, white shirt, no tie—then hung his lanyard around his neck, grabbed his bag, and rushed over to the main Lecture Theatre block.
Forensic Psychology had seen an influx in admissions over recent years. The fascination with the criminal mind had become sexy . He blamed Netflix and the onslaught of true crime documentaries, glamorising the criminal mind. But many dropped out after the first semester when they couldn’t take the reality of hearing, researching, and having to understand the minds of seriously deranged and disturbed individuals, as if they were normal. Because they were. The idea of monsters just wasn’t true. Evil came in human form. Anyone had the potential to do evil. It was the steps people took leading them onto a path of depravity, not a possession of the devil. Being born that way was a theory widely disproven. And it took guts to muse over piles of disturbing documentation detailing what some people could do to another human being. Students needed a reason to explore the why and stomach the course.
Like Kenny did.
It meant the two hundred tiered seats in the main Lecture theatre would be full for Intro to Crim-Psych, the students a mixture of those on the Forensic Psychology track, those taking Psychology with Criminology, and those able to take it as an elective simply because they wanted to tell their friends they were being taught by a bloke who helped various police forces catch murderers.
“Apologies for the delay!” Kenny rushed in the side door, bringing him out at the front where Charlotte, this year’s research assistant and Master’s student, was already trying to figure out how to turn the super-duper screen on behind them.
University lecturing had changed a fair bit over the years. Now academics had to have a grafting in IT to even give a lecture on what they were supposed experts in.
“I’m sorry, Dr Lyons,” Charlotte said, face bright red. “I didn’t know how to—”
“It’s okay, it’s an arse to get working.” Kenny turned his back on the rows of students to aid her in switching on the big screen, then pulled out his laptop to plug it in and attach it to the leads that would project his PowerPoint to the class.
His bag fell off the table, sending an array of files and papers to the floor and he shushed the sniggers mimicking the god awful cheers from a pub crowd when staff dropped collected pint glasses. Charlotte rushed to his aid, gathering the manilla file, newspaper cuttings, notes, and detailed case files spread over the floor. Kenny snatched them up, avoiding her look of concern to shove them all in his bag. No one needed to see those. He’d left them in that bag to avoid pining over them during the summer.
He then stood, the screen behind him humming to life and shadowing him from the view of eager minds. Clearing his throat, he stepped away from the screen and scanned over the tiered seats to introduce himself.
“Welcome. I’m Dr Kenneth Lyons, Associate Professor here for the Psychology faculty at the University of Ryston and I’ll be taking you through Intro to Criminal Psychology.”
As he spoke, he found himself inexorably drawn to a figure seated front and centre. A male. With a casual slouch and a scarf wrapped twice around his neck, face tucked into the material. It might be the start of autumn, but the temperature outside was higher than it had been for most of the summer, and in here, it was roasting. But it wasn’t the scarf, nor the hair, a vibrant dusky pink, an anomaly amidst a sea of muted tones, forcing his gaze. It was the eyes, a striking blue, staring back at him in recognition.
Kenny would bet his right arm that if he unwound that scarf, he’d find a tattoo of the Mars symbol with bruising bite marks surrounding it.
Fuck .
The air thickened, the silence a living thing, heavy and pregnant. Kenny’s heart pounded. How was this even remotely possible? It couldn’t be. A matter of behavioural statistics would rule it out. He’d been hundreds of miles away. In the centre of London . A basement gay bar. First-year students had been moving into their new halls at the weekend. And any commuter student would have been at the welcome gathering in the Students’ Union. He couldn’t have been in London . It was why he’d allowed himself a little indulgence on that night in that place. Because the chances of him accidentally hooking up with someone who would become his student were slim to none.
Yet the pull was inexplicable.
The familiarity wrenching.
As all-consuming as it had been that night.
Extracting the reservoir of professionalism that hadn’t yet run dry, Kenny collected himself by pushing back his hair from his face. “Today we…uh…start with the basics.”
His words felt foreign, stumbling off his too-thick tongue as if they were uninvited guests rather than the familiar opening spiel delivered countless times before. His throat dried. The student, Aaron—if that even was his name—sat motionless, posture relaxed yet imbued with an intensity tugging on the edges of his restraint. His stare, sturdy and unyielding, pierced through the veneer of academic formality. He didn’t even take notes. Arms crossed, it was a silent challenge, a wordless communication whispering shared secrets and accusations across the threshold.
Kenny could feel those hidden lips wrapped around his cock. Smell his sultry scent clawing at his senses. Taste the sweat dripping off his neck as if he’d had it for breakfast.
Maybe this wasn’t random at all.
Maybe he’d got himself a stalker. A fanboy.
Wonderful .
“Criminal psychology asks one fundamental question: why? Why do people commit crimes? What drives someone to break not only the law but social norms? These aren’t simple questions, nor are there simple answers.”
He clicked to the next slide: Case Study: Frank and Roisin Howell.
The screen displayed a blurred image of an old crime scene—a bloodied carpet, a piano in the background, its keys dusted with fingerprint powder. A few students murmured, recognising the infamous case. And Kenny was desperate to take in all the other faces on the edges of their seats and not on the one among the many cracking him open. He’d never, not once, in his twenty years of lecturing ever had an attraction to a student. Especially not one who couldn’t be a day over eighteen . But no matter how hard he tried to quash the reaction, a mysterious yearning kept forcing him back to him .
Especially with the way he glared at the screen.
Kenny pressed forward. “Let’s look at the Howell case. What I imagine many of you have chosen this course for. Ten years ago, Frank and Roisin Howell were apprehended for a series of ritualistic murders. Their crimes were methodical, driven by ideology and what many psychologists would categorise as a pathological sense of control. “
Aaron, as if re-enacting what Kenny had done to him that night in the club, watched him while he worked the room, gaze not on the screen but on him .
This was going to be the longest hour of Kenny’s life.
And if this bloke was his student, it would be the most difficult three years— four if he takes placement—he’d ever endured.
“A husband-and-wife team is rare among serial offenders.” Kenny forced his professionalism from the depths that man had wrenched them to. “Their reasons for the chosen victims are still unclear. Unlike other killers, they didn’t focus on a particular age, gender, look. It would seem on the surface that no one was off limits. And as such, the ritualistic symbols left behind were patterns only they understood. To this day, despite many an interview with them, their motives remain…opaque. Because they want them to be.”
The words hung like smoke, heavy and suffocating, and the lecture hall grew eerily silent. The room wasn’t just listening. It held its collective breath. As it always did when he talked about the case that had carved out his soul. He drifted his gaze, almost involuntarily, to the front row. The bloke with the pink hair sat motionless, expression unreadable, but his eyes, a vivid, unrelenting blue, burned right through Kenny’s defences.
He felt the cold grip of recognition, like a noose tightening. Aaron’s gaze wasn’t just intense, it was consuming . And it wasn’t the gaze of a student; it was the gaze of someone who knew. Knew more than he should. More than anyone in this room, and Kenny braced his hands on the podium as if it were the only thing keeping him grounded, the floor beneath his feet unsteady, and the world narrowing to just the space between them. Aaron tilted his head, the faintest curl of a smile ghosting his lips. A smile that wasn’t friendly, but predatory. Knowing .
Kenny straightened, forcing his attention back to the rest of the class. But the weight of those eyes stayed with him, a silent accusation, a challenge he didn’t know how to answer.
“Ritualism can mean different things to different offenders. What’s critical is that we ask the right questions . What drives these behaviours? And how do we stop them before they escalate? That is the role of the psychologist. Asking the why and unpicking the reasons why.”
As he moved to the next slide, he dared another glance at the front row. Aaron sat motionless, pen frozen above his blank notebook. Kenny’s chest tightened. There was something in Aaron’s expression, something dark, raw, and familiar, and it suddenly twisted this lecture he’d given countless times before into a personal reckoning.
For the first time in years, Kenny felt like the subject of his own lecture. Examined, exposed, and one wrong answer away from losing control.
Who is this bloke?