AI The glass in Aurora's hand had gone warm, the condensation dripping slow trails down her fingers. She didn't mind. She was watching Silas work the other end of the bar, his movements economical despite the limp, the silver signet ring catching the green neon glow from outside whenever he reached for a bottle. The Raven's Nest was quiet for a Tuesday—midnight had come and gone, and the only other patron was a man asleep in the corner booth, his face turned to the wall.
She was three drinks in, enough to loosen the tight knot behind her ribs but not enough to forget. That's what she'd wanted, anyway. To forget for a few hours. To stop replaying the conversation with Eva from that afternoon, the concern in her friend's voice, the questions Aurora couldn't answer honestly.
*Are you doing okay? Really?*
She took another sip and stared at the door.
It opened at twelve-fifteen, letting in a rush of October air and the distant hum of Soho at night. Aurora didn't look up at first—people came and went, and she wasn't in the mood for strangers. But then she heard it. That laugh. Low, familiar , belonging to someone who still thought the world was somewhat amusing.
She looked up.
Ellis Marsh stood in the doorway, his dark hair longer than she remembered, swept back from his forehead in a way that suggested he'd given up fighting it. He'd filled out, shoulders broader under a charcoal coat, his jaw sharper. But the eyes were the same—that pale grey, almost colorless, watching the room with the same guarded curiosity she'd known seven years ago.
He hadn't seen her yet. He was shaking rain from his jacket, scanning the bar with the casual assessment of a man looking for someone specific or someplace safe. Probably the latter. Ellis had always been good at finding safe places.
Then his gaze swept past her, caught, and came back.
The recognition was immediate. She watched it happen—the slight widening of his eyes, the way his mouth opened just enough to let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding . He stared at her. She stared back.
The glass in her hand felt suddenly very heavy.
"Rory?" His voice was deeper now, rougher at the edges. He took a step toward her, then stopped, uncertain. "Aurora Carter?"
"You still say my full name like it's some kind of formal address." Her own voice came out steadier than she expected. "I thought you'd have dropped that by now."
A smile flickered across his face—tentative, like it might be the wrong response. "Force of habit. You know that."
She did know. She knew a lot of things about Ellis Marsh, things that had lodged themselves in her memory and refused to dislodge. The way he hummed when he was concentrating . The scar on his left palm from a bike accident when he was twelve. The fact that he'd never, not once in all the years she'd known him, called her anything but Aurora Carter, as though she were a formal summons he was compelled to answer.
He crossed the bar slowly , the way you'd approach a wounded animal. Like she might bolt. She might have, once. But that was before.
"Can I—" He gestured at the empty stool beside her. "Is this seat taken?"
"It is now."
He sat. Close enough that she could smell his cologne, something dark and woody, nothing like the cheap drugstore stuff he'd worn in Cardiff. His hands settled on the bar, and she noticed he wasn't wearing the watch she'd given him for his nineteenth birthday. The one with the cracked face he'd never gotten fixed.
"You look—" He stopped, reconsidered . "Different."
"You do too." She traced a finger through the ring of moisture her glass had left on the bar. "The hair. The coat. You look like someone who has opinions about wine."
He laughed, and there it was again—that sound she'd forgotten she missed. "I work in finance now. Unfortunately, that comes with the territory."
"Finance." She let the word sit there. "You. Doing numbers. For money."
"Shockingly, yes." He flagged down Silas, ordered a whiskey neat. When the glass came, he wrapped his fingers around it but didn't drink. "What about you? Cardiff said you moved to London. Eva's friend, the one who—"
"Left." She said it flatly. "Cardiff said I left."
The silence between them was thick with everything they weren't saying . Aurora watched Ellis's jaw tighten, the muscles working beneath the skin. He'd always been easy to read, despite his best efforts. That hadn't changed.
"I heard about Evan," he said quietly. "What happened. I heard—"
"There's a lot you heard, I'm sure." She drained the last of her drink and set the glass down harder than she intended. "People talk. They have opinions. They construct entire narratives from gossip and speculation, and then they feel *so sorry * for the poor girl who couldn't keep her boyfriend from—"
"Aurora." His voice was firm now, the way it used to get when she was spiraling and he needed her to stop. "I'm not here to—I'm not doing that. I'm not here to pity you."
"Then why are you here?"
The question hung between them. Ellis turned his glass slowly , watching the amber liquid catch the light.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I was in the area. I saw the bar, thought I'd grab a drink. And then I saw you, and I—" He exhaled. "Seven years . You disappeared without a word, and now you're sitting in a bar in Soho looking like someone I used to know, and I can't decide if I want to shake you or—"
"Or what?"
He looked at her then, really looked, his grey eyes holding hers. "Or ask you why you never called. Why you never wrote. Why you let me think—for *years * I thought—"
"You thought what?"
"That I'd done something wrong." His voice cracked on the last word, just slightly , and he cleared his throat, looked away. "That I'd offended you somehow. That you'd decided I wasn't worth the effort of a goodbye."
Aurora felt something twist in her chest, an old ache she'd packed away and labeled *do not open *. She'd thought about Ellis, in the dark hours when sleep wouldn't come. She'd thought about the night before she left Cardiff, the party at Megan's flat, the way he'd found her sitting on the fire escape staring at the city lights and sat beside her without a word for almost an hour. She'd thought about how easy it had been with him. How safe.
She'd left because of that. Because it was easy. Because she'd known—if she'd stayed, if she'd let herself lean into that safety—she would have stayed. And staying in Cardiff meant staying near Evan, staying in reach of his hands, staying in a life that was slowly suffocating her.
"I didn't leave because of you," she said. "I need you to know that. Whatever story you told yourself, whatever reason you invented—it wasn't about you."
"Then what was it about?"
The question was so simple. And the answer was so complicated.
"I was disappearing," she said slowly . "I could feel it happening. Every day I stayed, I became less of myself and more of what everyone expected. Good daughter. Good student. Good girlfriend." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I didn't know who Aurora Carter was anymore. I only knew who she was supposed to be."
Ellis was quiet. He'd picked up his whiskey but still hadn't drunk it.
"I thought about calling you," she continued. "A hundred times. I had your number memorized. I used to recite it at night like a prayer, just to prove I hadn't forgotten. But every time I thought about reaching out, I imagined what I'd have to say. How I'd have to explain, apologize, make sense of the mess I was. And I couldn't—" Her voice caught. "I couldn't let you see me like that."
"Like what?"
"Broken."
The word fell between them like a stone into still water. Ellis set down his glass and moved his hand closer to hers on the bar, close enough that she could feel the warmth of his skin but not quite touching .
"You were never broken," he said. "You were scared. Those aren't the same thing."
"They feel the same."
"I know." His voice was soft. "I know they do."
She looked at his hand, so close to hers. She thought about the night on the fire escape, the way the city had sparkled below them like a fallen constellation. She'd wanted to reach for him then. She'd wanted to lean her head on his shoulder and pretend, just for a moment, that she could have a life that wasn't a performance.
But she'd been so sure she didn't deserve it.
"I'm sorry," she said. "For what it's worth. I'm sorry I made you feel like you weren't—"
"Stop." He shook his head. "Don't apologize. Not tonight. We've spent seven years with you apologizing in your head—I can see it, you know, the way you're doing that thing where you take responsibility for everything. Stop."
She laughed, surprised. "I didn't know you were a mind reader now."
"I learned." A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Had to. Someone had to keep track of all your terrible decisions."
"Rude."
"Honest."
They were both smiling now, and it felt so familiar , so achingly normal, that for a moment Aurora could pretend they were twenty again and the world hadn't yet taught her all its cruelest lessons.
"So," Ellis said, leaning back on his stool. "Finance. It's terrible, by the way. All the worst parts of humanity in a single industry. I hate it. But the money's good, and I'm very good at pretending to care about stock prices."
"That's shockingly honest."
"I learned that too. From someone who used to tell me honesty was the only currency that mattered." He glanced at her. "She was right, by the way. Even if she didn't always follow her own advice."
Aurora felt the twist in her chest ease, just slightly . Not gone—maybe it would never be entirely gone—but easier.
"What about you?" he asked. "What do you do? Besides sit in bars looking mysterious."
"I deliver Chinese food." She shrugged. "Part-time. The rest of the time I'm—" She hesitated. "Figuring it out."
"Figuring out what?"
"Who I am. What I want. All the stuff I should have figured out when I was twenty and had the chance." She looked at him. "Turns out you can't skip the difficult chapters and expect to understand the story."
Ellis nodded slowly . "That's uncomfortably accurate."
"You didn't skip them?"
"I tried. But—" He paused, his thumb tracing the rim of his glass . "Some things catch up with you. Eventually."
She understood. She could see it in the shadows under his eyes, in the way his smile didn't quite reach . Whatever his years had held, they hadn't been uncomplicated . None of theirs had.
"So what now?" she asked. "We sit here and compare war stories? Trade scars?"
"Or we could just—" He stopped, seemed to consider . "Talk. Like we used to. Without the weight of everything we didn't say."
"That sounds terrifying."
"It does." He smiled, smaller this time, more real. "But I've found that the terrifying things are usually the ones worth doing."
Aurora looked at him for a long moment. Then she signaled Silas for another drink.
"Whiskey," she said. "Neat."
When the glass came, she raised it toward him.
"To terrifying things," she said.
Ellis touched his glass to hers.
"To finally saying them out loud."
They drank. And outside, the neon sign glowed green against the dark, and the city continued its endless hum, and somewhere in the space between who they'd been and who they'd become, two old friends began the slow, frightening work of finding their way back.