Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR4VGDPS3CMTXN8KY1RV52

The familiar scent of stale beer, lemon polish, and old paper greeted Aurora as she slipped behind the bar. It was the smell of safety. She slid her delivery bag under the counter, the logo for Golden Empress facing the wall, and stretched until her spine gave a satisfying series of cracks. “Long day, Carter?” Silas Blackwood asked without looking up from the glass he was polishing. The light from the green neon sign outside bled through the window, catching the silver of his signet ring and the threads of grey in his auburn hair. “The usual.” Rory pulled a stool over. “Mr. Cheung is convinced the fate of his culinary dynasty rests on a single order of crispy duck being delivered to Kensington in under thirty minutes.” A ghost of a smile touched Silas’s lips. “And did it?” “With two minutes to spare.” She ran a hand through her straight black hair, pushing it from her face. “He can sleep soundly tonight.” Silas set the gleaming glass down and moved toward the gin shelf, his limp more pronounced at the end of the day. He moved with the practiced economy of a man who missed nothing, his quiet authority a constant, grounding presence. The Raven’s Nest was her sanctuary, a dimly lit haven of dark wood and cracked leather, its walls covered in old maps of places she’d never been and black-and-white photos of strangers who felt like ancestors. It was the anchor of her new life, a world away from the grey drizzle and suffocating expectations of Cardiff. He placed a heavy tumbler of ice in front of her and poured a generous measure of gin over it, topping it with tonic and a wedge of lime. He knew her order, her moods, the unspoken things that chased her from one city to another. He never asked. It was why she lived in the flat upstairs, why this bar felt more like home than her own childhood bedroom ever had. Rory took a sip, the cold bitterness a welcome shock. The low hum of Tuesday night conversation washed over her—a couple murmuring in a corner booth, two old men arguing about football near the door. It was a comfortable rhythm. Then the door chimed, admitting a slice of Soho’s evening chill and a man who didn’t belong. He wore a suit that was too sharp, too expensive for a place like the Nest. He paused just inside the door, his eyes adjusting to the gloom, sweeping the room with the casual confidence of someone used to being in charge of any space he entered. For a second, he was just another tourist who’d mistaken this place for a cocktail lounge. Then he turned his head, and the faint light caught the line of his jaw. Ice flooded Rory’s veins, colder than the gin in her glass. It couldn’t be. Not here. Not in her place. But the set of his shoulders was the same, the sandy-brown hair still fell across his forehead in the same studied way. He’d filled out, the lanky frame of his university days replaced by a broader, more substantial build. He looked older. Harder. He approached the bar, his attention on Silas, not her. “Pint of whatever’s local,” he said, his voice a low rumble. And that was it. The sound of it, the familiar cadence that once meant laughter and late-night study sessions and secrets shared over cheap cider, now sent a shard of dread through her. Silas nodded, reaching for a tap. Rory kept her head down, her bright blue eyes fixed on the condensation trailing down her glass. She willed herself to be invisible, a shadow among the other shadows in the bar. Maybe he wouldn’t see her. Maybe he’d drink his pint and leave, and this would just be a phantom limb, a painful memory that briefly twinged. “Just in town for a meeting,” the man said, making small talk with Silas. “The office is just around the corner.” Then he glanced down the bar. His eyes slid past her, then snapped back. They narrowed in disbelief, a slow-dawning recognition that made Rory’s stomach clench. “Rory?” he breathed, the name a foreign object in the comfortable air of the bar. “Rory Carter? Bloody hell.” She looked up, trapping her features in a mask of cool neutrality she’d spent years perfecting. “Leo. What are you doing in London?” Leo stared, a slow smile spreading across his face, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I work here now. Moved up two years ago. Jesus, what are the odds?” He shook his head, looking her up and down. “You look… different.” “It’s been five years,” she said, her voice flat. She took another sip of gin, the liquid doing nothing to calm the tremor in her hands. She rested her left wrist on the bar, her thumb instinctively finding the small, pale crescent of a scar there, tracing its familiar shape. “Yeah, but… your hair.” He gestured vaguely. “And you just seem… I don’t know.” He trailed off, pulling up the stool beside her. Silas placed his pint on the bar, his gaze lingering on Rory for a fraction of a second before he moved away, giving them space but remaining within earshot. “So, this is where you ended up. I always wondered.” “This is where I work sometimes,” she corrected him smoothly. “I live upstairs.” “Right.” Leo took a long swallow of his beer. The silence stretched, thick with everything he wasn't saying, everything she refused to. The ghosts of their shared history crowded the space between them: rainy afternoons in the university library, drunken nights out, the dark cloud of Evan that had hung over their entire final year. “We were all so worried,” Leo said finally, turning to her. His tie was loosened, his expression earnest. He was playing a part she no longer recognised. The concerned friend. “You just disappeared. No note, no call. Your parents were beside themselves. Evan was…” “Don’t,” Rory said, her voice dangerously quiet. Leo raised his hands in surrender. “Alright. Sorry. Old habits. It’s just… it was a mess after you left. He was a mess.” The words were a subtle jab, a classic rewriting of history that cast her as the agent of chaos, him as the victim. The old Rory would have flinched, would have felt a pang of guilt. The new Rory felt nothing but a cold, clear anger. “He was a mess long before I left, Leo,” she said, meeting his gaze. “You know that.” He had the grace to look away, staring into his pint. “Yeah. Well. It got worse.” He swirled the amber liquid. “He’s married now, you know. To a girl from Swansea. Got a kid on the way.” The information was meant to be a balm, a sign that everyone had moved on, that the past was neatly tidied up. For Rory, it was just another confirmation of the life she’d escaped, a life where Evan got to be the protagonist of a new story while hers was irrevocably fractured. “Good for him,” she said. The words tasted like ash. “Look, Rory…” He leaned closer, his voice dropping. He smelled of expensive cologne and regret, a combination she found suffocating. “I know I was… I should have said something. Done something. We were kids, we didn't know how to handle it.” “You weren’t a kid, Leo. You were twenty. You saw the bruises. You heard the fights. You just found it more convenient to look the other way.” Each word was a precisely placed stone, building a wall between them he could never breach. She wasn’t the frightened girl from Cardiff anymore, the one who made excuses, who hid the marks on her arms. London and the anonymity it offered had forged her into someone else. Someone colder, maybe, but someone who survived. He recoiled as if she’d slapped him. “That’s not fair.” “Isn’t it?” She finally turned fully to face him, letting him see the stillness in her eyes. “Did you ever once ask me if I was okay? Or did you just keep buying him another pint and telling him I’d come around?” He opened his mouth, then closed it. The accusation hung in the air, undeniable. He picked at the label on his bottle, his corporate confidence stripped away, leaving behind the weak, compliant boy she remembered. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled into his chest. “For what it’s worth.” “It’s worth nothing now,” she said, the words devoid of heat, just a simple statement of fact. She finished her gin, the ice clinking against the glass. The sound was loud, final. She pushed the tumbler away. She could feel Silas’s presence at the end of the bar, a silent guardian. Leo sighed, a heavy, theatrical sound. “Well. It was… it’s good to see you, Rory. To see you’re okay.” “I was always okay,” she lied. “I just needed to be somewhere else.” He nodded slowly, finally accepting defeat. He downed the rest of his pint in two large gulps, then stood, pulling a wallet from his jacket. He dropped a twenty-pound note on the bar. “You take care of yourself.” “I do,” she said. He gave her one last, searching look, as if trying to find a trace of the girl he once knew in the face of the woman before him. He found nothing. With a tight, sad smile, he turned and walked out, the chiming of the bell above the door marking his exit. The bar was quiet again. The low murmur of conversation resumed its comfortable rhythm, but the air around Rory felt charged, violated. Her safe space had been breached. Silas ambled over, his slight limp almost imperceptible. He picked up Leo’s empty glass and the twenty-pound note. He didn’t look at her, just wiped down the already clean spot on the bar where Leo had been sitting. “Everything alright, Carter?” he asked, his voice a low, even rumble. Rory stared at the door, at the empty space where the past had stood moments before. She traced the crescent scar on her wrist one last time, a permanent reminder of a fall, of a wound, of a life she had survived. “Fine, Silas,” she said, her voice steady. “Just fine.”