Page 109 of Kiss Me Honey Hone

Que Sera Sera

Six months later…

Here he was again.

The visitor centre was heavier this time, though. As if the weight of all the despair, guilt, and twisted hope contained within its walls had grown since his last visit. Or maybe that was him? The air reeked faintly of bleach, sweat, and something metallic. Aaron’s stomach churned at the surrounding voices carrying fragments of lives torn apart. Apologies. Accusations. Pleas.

Too fucking late for that now.

He flicked his gaze to the scuffed linoleum floor, and the bolted steel tables, where other visitors shuffled in as close as the guards allowed to the inmates they came to see. Parents clutched children. Lovers exchanged tight smiles. Faces lined with the weight of trying to love someone capable of atrocities. Were they here for answers, too? Or had they already made peace with their loved ones’ darkness?

He didn’t know what was worse. To accept or tohate.

Having promised Kenny he wouldn’t come back, he was hereanyway while Kenny was busy with department faculty stuff wrapping up an end to the academic year. Because he was a slave to the answers onlysheheld. Kenny had told him he wouldn’t get any truth from her. That she would only say what he wanted to hear. To find the truth, he had to ask his questions in therapy. Or to him. But Kenny didn’tknow. He theorised. Hypothesised.

So he washere. No matter how many times he told himself to move on, no matter how much Kenny tried to help him, there was always another loose end. Another question clawing at his mind. Another truth he couldn’t understand. But after this, he might be free.

The clanging of metal doors snapped him from the thoughts of how he planned to spend the summer confined to Kenny’s bed. Apart from the conference in Barcelona Kenny had to attend, he’d said he’d be all his. But if there was anyone who could change his mood so rapidly, it was hismother.

Roisin Howell entered with the other inmates, flanked by guards like some twisted queen escorted to her court. Her posture was straight, head held high, and her lips curled in a smile that had nothing to do with warmth. Unlike the others, she didn’t rush into the arms of a waiting loved one. Not that Aaron had stood and held his out for her arrival. But whatever, Roisin Howell didn’t belong to anyone but herself.

Aaron gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles whitening. He didn’t smile. He just watched as her eyes swept the room before landing on him, her practiced smile widening, perfected over decades of deceit. She was stunning. Electric. A magnetic force. All the things people had said about him.Kennysaid about him.

Suddenly, they weren’t compliments anymore.

“Darling!” Roisin greeted him, voice bright as she slid into the seat opposite and raked her gaze over his appearance, amusementglinting as she took in his ripped jeans, flimsy T-shirt, and platinum blond hair swept up and over.

Aaron held her gaze, refusing to flinch under her scrutiny. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing how much it cost him to sit here across from her.

“It’s been a whole year.” She tilted her head, tone light as if commenting on the weather. “Whatever has kept you too busy to visit your mother?”

“University.”

“Ah, you’re still doing that.”

It wasn’t a question, so Aaron didn’t answer it. But he found his mouth opening to offer something, but she cut him off with a wave of her hand.

“I’m pleased you got rid of that awful pink hair.” She wrinkled her nose. “The blond suits you so much better.”

Kenny thought so too. But he hadn’t done it for him. Or for her. He’d done it to get back to being something natural.

“It wasmydecision,” he said, to counter any thoughts that she had anything to do with it.

“Of course it was.” She leaned back, gesturing to him with a sweep of her cuffed hands. “You’re your own man. Look at you! So handsome. You could rule the world with that face.”

“Is that what you wanted for me?”

“Are we back here again?” She sighed. “You thinking I had some grand plan for you? My only plan was for you to be you. And you are.”

“Most parents want their children to be happy.”

Roisin shrugged. “What’s happy these days? No one is happy. Everyone’s got some trauma, somemental healthproblem. Even the rich cry about how hard life is.” She cocked her head. “Areyou happy?”

“I’m…”

Kenny’s face flashed in his mind. The way Kenny looked athim on the mornings when he woke up in his bed. And the way he gazed at him across a lecture hall when he thought no one else was watching. And how he sometimes caught him staring at him when Aaron was studying on his living room floor while Kenny was supposedly marking papers or doing whatever else it was he did. Like he was someone worth saving. Worthloving. And he thought of how Kenny’s warmth had replaced the cupboard where his mother once hid him, offering something real, somewheresafe.

“Getting there,” he said.

---