Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTR2R39JMWEM2Y67VFSKZ5Q

The green neon hum was the same. Rory pushed through the heavy oak door of The Raven’s Nest, the familiar scent of old wood and polish wrapping around her. She’d just finished her last delivery for Yu-Fei—a complicated order to a reclusive art dealer in Mayfair who’d tipped her in crisp, expensive-looking euros. Her shoulders ached from the insulated delivery bag. Silas was behind the bar, polishing a glass with a crisp white cloth. His head lifted, a silent greeting in his hazel eyes. The silver signet ring on his right hand caught the low light. He gave a slight nod toward the far end of the bar, where a solitary figure sat hunched over a nearly empty pint. Rory hung her jacket on the peg by the door and slid onto a stool near the till. “Quiet tonight.” “For now.” Silas placed a glass of water in front of her without asking. His movements were economical, precise. The slight hitch in his step as he turned to replace the glass on the shelf was the only sign of the old injury. The man at the end of the bar shifted. Something about the angle of his shoulders, the way his head was bowed, snagged at Rory’s memory. A prickling sense of recognition traveled up her spine. She watched him drain the last of his pint and raise a hand to catch Silas’s attention. “Same again, please.” The voice. Low, roughened by time and maybe too many cigarettes, but unmistakable. Silas took the empty glass. “You’re sure?” “I’m sure.” Rory’s breath hitched. She turned fully on her stool. He hadn’t noticed her yet. His focus was on the polished wood of the bar, his fingers tracing the grain. The auburn hair she remembered—always messy, always falling into his eyes—was now threaded with silver at the temples and cut ruthlessly short. The lean, boyish frame had thickened through the shoulders and chest. He wore a dark wool coat over a simple grey sweater, the clothes expensive but worn with a kind of weary disregard. Silas set a fresh pint in front of him. “On the house. For old times.” That made him look up. His eyes, a blue she’d once known as well as her own, found Silas first. A ghost of a smile touched his mouth—a mouth now lined at the corners. “You always did know how to ruin a man’s penitence, Silas.” Then his gaze slid past Silas and landed on Rory. The world narrowed to the space between them. The low murmur of the jazz record Silas had put on faded into a distant hum. Rory saw the shock register in his face—a quick, sharp intake of breath, a widening of the eyes. Then a mask of careful neutrality slid into place, but it was too slow. She’d seen the fracture. “Rory,” he said. Her name in his voice sounded like something unearthed. “Jacob.” A beat of silence stretched thin between them. Silas pretended to be very busy with something under the bar. Jacob stood. Not the loose-limbed, careless rise she remembered, but a deliberate unfolding, as if each movement required calculation. He picked up his pint glass and walked the few steps to her stool. “May I?” She gestured to the empty stool beside her. He sat, placing the glass down with a soft tap. He didn’t look at her directly; instead, his eyes traced the crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, exposed as she rested her hands on the bar. “You still have that.” “It never really faded.” “I remember you got it trying to save a beetle from a puddle. You said it deserved a fighting chance.” “You said I was daft.” “You were.” He finally met her eyes. “And you were right. The beetle flew away.” Another silence, heavier this time. Rory took a sip of her water. The ice cubes clinked like stones. “You’re living in London,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “Above the bar, actually.” “Of course you are.” He glanced around, taking in the maps and photographs on the walls. “Still drawn to the edges of things.” “And you?” She let the question hang. He looked like a man who belonged in boardrooms, in private members’ clubs, in the back seats of black cars. Not in Silas’s dim sanctuary. He lifted his pint, took a long swallow. “I’m in finance. Mergers and acquisitions.” “Sounds…” She searched for a word that wasn’t a lie. “Substantial.” “It’s hollow.” The admission came out flat, stripped of self-pity. He stared into his glass. “I married. Two years ago. Her name is Claudia.” “Congratulations.” “Don’t.” The word was sharp, a knife-edge. He softened it with a weary shake of his head. “Don’t do that. We were never much for polite fences, you and I.” “We were kids.” “Were we?” He turned to face her fully now, and she saw the full weight of the years in his face. Not just the lines, but the settled resignation in his eyes. “You left Cardiff without a word. One day you were there, the next…” “I had to go.” “Because of Evan.” She didn’t flinch at the name. She’d trained herself not to. “Yes.” “I looked for you.” His voice dropped lower. “I went to your parents’ house. Your father told me nothing. Your mother… she just cried. I thought something terrible had happened.” “It had,” Rory said quietly. “Just not the kind you could see.” Jacob’s hand tightened around his glass. “I would have helped. You know that.” “I couldn’t bring that into your life. You were clean. You had your scholarship, your future.” “My future.” He let out a short, mirthless laugh. “A corner office and a marriage built on tax advantages and appropriate social circles.” “You wanted to be a photographer,” Rory said, the memory surfacing with sudden clarity. “You had that old film camera. You used to take pictures of rubbish bins and puddles and call them urban still lifes.” He flinched, as if she’d struck him. “I sold the camera to pay for a suit for my first interview. The suit cost more than the camera was worth.” The words hung between them, a monument to a thousand small surrenders. “Why are you here, Jacob?” Rory asked. “In Silas’s bar, drinking alone on a Tuesday night?” He was silent for a long moment. His thumb rubbed the condensation on his glass. “Claudia wants children. I keep… postponing the discussion. Today, she asked me why I seemed so afraid of the idea of a family. I didn’t have an answer.” He looked at Rory, his blue eyes stark. “So I walked. I walked for hours, and my feet brought me here. I hadn’t planned it. I didn’t even know if Silas would still be here.” “He’s always here.” “Yes.” Jacob’s gaze drifted to Silas, who was now studiously wiping down the already-clean counter. “Some things don’t change.” “Some things do.” He nodded, accepting the correction. “When I saw you just now… for a second, I was twenty again. Sitting in that horrible student flat, drinking cheap wine and arguing about whether Kafka was a genius or just very depressed.” “We decided he was both.” “We decided a lot of things.” He finished his pint. “Do you ever think about it? What if you’d stayed?” Rory thought of Evan’s hands, his voice, the careful isolation he’d built around her. She thought of the train to London, the feeling of the tracks rushing away beneath her. “Every day.” “And?” “And I don’t regret leaving. But I regret…” She paused, choosing her words with the same care she’d use to handle broken glass. “I regret the collateral damage.” “I wasn’t damage, Rory.” “Weren’t you?” He didn’t answer. He signaled to Silas for another pint, but Silas shook his head once, a sharp, negative gesture. Jacob’s shoulders slumped. He pulled out his wallet, laid a twenty-pound note on the bar. “I should go,” he said. “Claudia will be wondering.” “Does she wonder about you?” The question was out before Rory could stop it. Jacob stood, pulling his coat on. He looked older in the dim light, a stranger in the skin of someone she’d once loved. “She wonders why there’s always a part of me she can’t reach. I don’t know how to tell her that part stayed behind in Cardiff with a girl who believed beetles deserved a fighting chance.” He didn’t say goodbye. He just walked to the door, his steps echoing on the old floorboards. The green neon glow from the sign outside washed over him as he opened the door, and then he was gone, swallowed by the London night. Rory stared at the empty space he’d left behind. The twenty-pound note lay on the bar like a tombstone. Silas came over and picked it up. He tucked it into the till without a word. “Did you know?” Rory asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “I knew he came in sometimes. Always alone. Always left after two pints.” Silas closed the till with a soft click. “The past has a way of collecting in corners, Rory. Best not to stir it up unless you’re prepared to breathe the dust.” She looked down at her hands, at the small crescent scar. The beetle had flown away. But some things, once broken, never really heal. They just learn how to exist around the cracks.