AI The green neon sign bled across the wet pavement and turned the puddles the colour of old bottles. Aurora pushed through the door of The Raven’s Nest with the cold still stuck to her jacket. The place held its usual mix of stale beer, lemon peel, and that faint paper-dust smell that came off the wall maps when the radiators kicked in.
She slid her helmet strap loose and hooked the helmet on her bag. Her hands ached from gripping handlebars all evening. A delivery shift always left her with the same small fury in her knuckles, like the city had tried to grind her down and failed.
Silas stood behind the bar with his sleeves rolled. His silver signet ring caught the light each time he reached for a glass. The limp didn’t slow him; it only changed the rhythm of how he moved, a beat you started to hear once you knew it.
Rory lifted two fingers.
Silas’s eyes flicked up, hazel under the bar’s warm gloom .
“Kitchen feed you or starve you?” His mouth tugged into something that passed for a smile in him.
“Yu-Fei slipped me dumplings.” Rory shook rain out of her hair and crossed to the bar. “If I die, it won’t be from hunger. It’ll be from traffic.”
Silas set a clean tumbler down.
“Traffic always did want you dead. Same as the rest of London.”
Rory leaned on her forearms. The crescent scar on her left wrist flashed pale against the bar top when she pulled her sleeve back.
“Water first.” She rolled her shoulders . “Then something that burns.”
Silas reached for the soda gun. The hiss cut through the murmur of voices and the low jazz that came through the speakers like smoke.
Rory drank half the water in one go and let it sit cold in her stomach . She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Quiet tonight,” she muttered.
Silas’s gaze slid past her, toward the far end of the bar.
“Depends what you call quiet.”
Rory followed his look without turning her head, a habit he’d drilled into her when he started teaching her how to read a room. A woman sat with her back half to the wall, elbows close, glass untouched. Her coat looked too expensive for Soho rain. Straight posture. Not a tourist.
The woman turned her head a fraction. The light from the bar lamps cut across her cheekbone, across a mouth Rory remembered as always laughing.
Rory’s throat tightened so fast it felt like a hand .
Eva.
Rory’s hand went numb around the glass. She put it down before she dropped it.
Silas kept wiping the same patch of bar, like he’d decided not to be part of this.
Rory stepped away, slow. Each footfall sounded louder than it should have in her ears. She stopped beside Eva’s stool.
Eva looked up. Her eyes moved over Rory in one sweep—wet jacket, delivery bag strap, black hair stuck to her cheek, the faint grime under her nails that never scrubbed out fully.
For a second Eva’s face stayed blank. Then her jaw shifted. Something held tight behind her eyes.
“Rory.”
Rory’s mouth opened and closed. Her tongue felt too big.
“Eva.”
Eva’s gaze dropped to Rory’s wrist, to the pale crescent. It travelled back up.
“You cut your hair.”
Rory touched the ends without thinking.
“Years ago.”
Eva’s laugh came out sharp and short, like it hurt.
“Right. Years.”
Rory pulled the stool beside her a few inches away instead of taking the one right next to her. The gap looked stupid and loud.
“You… you live here?” Rory nodded toward the room, toward the maps and photographs and the familiar dark. “Or you just wandered in off the street like a ghost?”
Eva’s fingers tightened around the base of her glass. The drink inside stayed level, untouched.
“I came for a drink.”
“At this place.”
Eva’s mouth twitched again.
“I remembered it.”
Rory stared at Eva’s hands. No nail polish. A small pale line across the knuckle of her index finger. Not a ring.
“You remembered.” Rory swallowed. “You never liked bars.”
“I never liked your bars.” Eva tapped the rim of the glass with one fingernail. “This one always felt… organised. Like someone kept an eye on it.”
Rory glanced at Silas. He pretended to be busy.
“You came all this way for organised misery?” Rory tried to make it sound like a joke. It fell flat between them.
Eva’s gaze cut into Rory’s face, direct, the way it never used to.
“You still do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make it a joke so you don’t have to answer anything.”
Rory felt heat crawl up her neck.
“I answered plenty.”
Eva snorted, then leaned closer across the gap. Rory caught the scent of rain on wool and something clean, like soap from a good hotel.
“When was the last time you spoke to me?”
Rory’s mouth dried. She looked away, at the wall behind the bar where a black-and-white photo showed men in old suits, half-smiling as if someone off-camera held a secret.
Eva followed her glance, then looked back.
“You can’t even look at me.”
Rory dragged her eyes back.
“I didn’t know you were gone.”
Eva’s shoulders lifted and dropped. A small movement. Controlled.
“You didn’t ask.”
Rory’s laugh sounded wrong, too high.
“I did ask. I texted. I—”
Eva’s hand came up and stopped Rory’s words with one hard, open-palmed gesture, not touching her, but close enough Rory felt the air shift .
“Don’t do that. Don’t dress it up.”
Rory’s fingers curled around the edge of the stool. Splinters caught her skin. She welcomed the sting.
“I left Cardiff because I had to.” Rory kept her voice even. “You knew why.”
Eva’s eyes flicked , once, like she’d blinked away something.
“I knew you ran. I didn’t know you cut the cord and burned the rest.”
Rory’s breath scraped.
“I didn’t burn you.”
Eva’s smile showed no teeth.
“You didn’t have to. You just walked away and let the smoke choke whoever stood behind you.”
Rory sat back, the stool creaking under her. She forced herself to hold Eva’s gaze.
“You look different.”
Eva’s eyes stayed on her, unblinking.
“So do you.”
Rory tried to find the old Eva in the angles of her face. The same nose, the same brows. But the softness that used to sit around her mouth had gone. Even her hair looked different—pulled back tight, not the wild halo Rory remembered from Cardiff nights when they’d shared chips on the kerb and pretended the future waited for them like a door they could open.
“What happened?” Rory asked. “Where did you go?”
Eva’s fingers left the glass and flattened on the bar top, like she had to anchor herself.
“I went home.”
Rory blinked.
“You hated home.”
Eva’s eyes narrowed .
“You didn’t see it.”
Rory’s throat clenched. She glanced toward Silas again, but he stayed out of it, polishing glass, watching the room in the mirror behind the shelves as if he could see every exit at once.
Rory leaned closer, lowering her voice.
“Eva, what’s going on?”
Eva held Rory’s gaze and took her drink for the first time. She swallowed and set it down with care.
“My mum died.”
The words landed clean. No drama. No waver. Rory felt them hit her ribs like a thrown stone.
Rory’s mouth opened. Air went in and out.
“When?”
Eva’s eyes stayed dry.
“Three years ago.”
Rory stared. Three years. The number sat between them like an object neither of them could move.
“Why didn’t you—” Rory stopped. She heard how stupid it sounded.
Eva nodded once, like Rory had confirmed something.
“Because you weren’t there.”
Rory pressed her thumb into the scar on her wrist until it hurt.
“I didn’t know.”
Eva’s laugh came again, harsh.
“You didn’t know because you didn’t ask. You didn’t know because you took what you needed from me and then you disappeared into London and—” Eva’s voice dropped. “And I watched you build a new life like I never existed.”
Rory’s stomach turned.
“I didn’t build anything,” Rory snapped, then caught herself. She let her voice soften. “I stacked shifts. I slept. I kept my head down. That’s not a life, Eva.”
Eva’s gaze swept Rory’s face, and something in it softened for a fraction. It vanished again.
“You always did love the idea that you suffered more than anyone else.”
Rory flinched.
“That’s not fair.”
Eva leaned back on her stool. Her coat creased at the shoulders. The fabric looked heavy enough to stop a knife.
“Fair.” Eva turned the word around like it tasted odd. “Do you remember that night by the river? The one where you promised you’d never leave without telling me.”
Rory’s chest tightened. The memory came sharp: cold metal railing, Eva’s fingers laced through hers, the smell of cider, Rory’s laughter cracking because she’d almost cried.
“I remember.”
Eva’s eyes held Rory’s.
“You left without telling me.”
Rory’s tongue stuck.
“I left because Evan—”
Eva’s hand lifted again, and Rory stopped.
“Don’t give him that much space in this,” Eva murmured. “Don’t hand him the credit for what you chose.”
Rory stared at Eva, shock and anger twisting together.
“I chose to live.”
Eva nodded.
“You chose to live without me.”
Rory’s nails bit into her palm. She felt the dampness under her fingertips. She hadn’t realised she’d started sweating.
“I thought you’d be fine,” Rory whispered, and hated herself as soon as the words left her mouth.
Eva’s face changed. Not much. Just the slightest stiffening around her eyes.
“Fine.” Eva repeated it, flat. “You always did think I bounced back.”
Rory swallowed.
“I’m sorry.”
Eva’s mouth tightened. She looked down at her drink, at the amber line in the glass.
“Don’t.”
Rory’s voice rose before she could stop it.
“Don’t what? Don’t apologise? Don’t admit I messed up? What do you want from me, Eva?”
Eva looked back up. Her eyes held Rory like a pin through fabric.
“I wanted you to show up.”
Rory’s breath shuddered. She nodded once, slow, like movement would keep her from breaking into pieces right there on the stool.
“I can’t fix what I didn’t know,” Rory said. “But I’m here now.”
Eva’s lips parted as if she’d meant to answer, then she shut them. She turned her head and looked around the bar, at the maps, at the dark corners, at Silas moving with that measured limp, at the greenish light bleeding in from the sign.
“You live above this place,” Eva murmured.
Rory’s eyes snapped back.
“How do you know that?”
Eva didn’t look at her.
“Your window. Light on at odd hours. Same shadow moving past the curtain.”
Rory stared at Eva’s profile, at the smooth line of her cheek.
“You watched me.”
Eva’s jaw flexed.
“I walked past.”
“How many times?”
Eva turned back, and that direct stare pinned Rory again.
“Enough.”
Rory’s mouth went dry. She forced herself to breathe through her nose.
“You could’ve knocked.”
Eva leaned forward, elbows on the bar. Her voice dropped.
“You would’ve opened the door and looked right through me. Like you did before.”
Rory shook her head.
“No. I wouldn’t.”
Eva’s expression stayed calm, but her hands tightened, knuckles whitening.
“You don’t get to tell me how it felt.”
Rory’s eyes stung. She blinked hard and focused on Eva’s glass instead.
“I missed you.”
Eva’s laugh came out like a cough.
“You missed the version of me that made you feel safe.”
Rory’s head jerked up.
“That’s not—”
Eva cut her off with a small shake of her head.
“You remember my old number?”
Rory hesitated. She hated the pause. It betrayed her.
Eva watched it happen and looked away first, like that tiny victory left a bad taste.
“Of course you don’t.”
Rory reached into her jacket pocket with stiff fingers and pulled out her phone. The screen lit her hands in pale blue. She scrolled, too fast, past names and missed calls and delivery app notifications.
Eva’s gaze flicked down, then up again.
Rory stopped, thumb hovering.
“I saved it,” Rory murmured. “I never deleted it.”
Eva’s eyes narrowed , a flicker of something—hurt, anger, both.
“And you never used it.”
Rory locked the phone and shoved it back in her pocket.
“I kept thinking you’d call,” Rory admitted. “Stupid, I know.”
Eva stared at her for a long beat. The jazz track ended. A new one started, slower, a bass line like footsteps down an empty stairwell.
Silas set a fresh drink on a tray and moved down the bar toward a couple in the corner. As he passed, his gaze landed on Rory for a second—sharp, assessing—then moved to Eva. He didn’t smile. He didn’t greet her. He clocked her and kept walking.
Eva followed him with her eyes, then looked back at Rory.
“You picked up new friends.”
Rory’s mouth pulled into something that almost counted as a smile.
“He came with the flat. Landlord’s a nightmare.”
Eva’s lips twitched, and for a second Rory saw a ghost of the old expression, the one that used to crack open rooms.
“Still dodging,” Eva muttered.
Rory leaned in again, lowering her voice until it sat between them like a secret.
“Tell me what you want,” Rory pressed. “Not in riddles. Not in punches. What did you come here for?”
Eva’s fingers slid into her coat pocket. She pulled out a small, worn envelope and set it on the bar between them. The paper looked handled, corners soft.
Rory stared at it.
Eva didn’t take her eyes off Rory.
“I came because I got tired of carrying this alone.”
Rory’s hand hovered over the envelope, then stopped.
“What is it?”
Eva’s gaze didn’t flinch.
“Open it.”
Rory’s fingers closed around the envelope. The paper felt warmer than it should have, like it had lived against skin. She slid a thumb under the flap, paused, then looked back up at Eva.
“You’re not going to disappear again, are you?”
Eva’s face stayed still, but her shoulders rose with a breath.
“Just open it, Rory.”
Rory pulled the flap free. The paper rasped in the quiet between notes of the bass. She eased whatever lay inside toward the opening, her fingers shaking despite herself.