Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTY362118ABRJFC929T8XR6

The brass bell above the door chimed as Aurora pushed into The Raven's Nest, shaking rain from her delivery jacket. The familiar smell of old wood and whiskey wrapped around her like a blanket. She nodded to Silas behind the bar, who raised an eyebrow at her early return. "Yu-Fei let me off. Said the weather would keep customers away." She slid onto a barstool, water dripping from her black hair onto the scarred wood. Silas poured her usual—gin and tonic, heavy on the gin. "Your loss is my gain. Been dead in here all evening." The door chimed again. A woman entered, designer heels clicking against the floor. Everything about her screamed money—the tailored coat, the leather handbag, the way she held herself like the world owed her passage. Aurora's hand froze halfway to her glass. "Eva?" The woman turned, and Aurora's chest tightened. Same heart-shaped face, same green eyes, but everything else had transformed. The wild copper curls she remembered were now sleek and straightened, the secondhand clothes replaced by what looked like Armani. "Rory?" Eva's voice climbed an octave. "Oh my God." They stared at each other across the dim bar. Five years dissolved and reformed in the space between them, heavy with everything left unsaid. Eva recovered first, crossing the room with practiced grace. "What are you doing here? In London?" "I live upstairs." Aurora forced her hand to complete its journey, wrapping fingers around the cold glass. "What about you? Thought you were in New York." "I was. Am. I mean—" Eva's polished facade cracked. "I'm back for a conference. Banking stuff." Banking. Aurora almost laughed. Eva, who used to rail against capitalism while spray-painting anti-establishment slogans on Cardiff University walls. "Sit." Silas appeared at Eva's elbow, all quiet authority. "What'll you have?" Eva glanced at her phone. "I shouldn't. I have drinks with clients at—" "Sit." This time it wasn't a suggestion. Eva sat, designer bag hitting the floor with an expensive thud. "Martini. Very dry." They waited in silence while Silas worked. Aurora studied the crescent scar on her wrist, remembering the day Eva had bandaged it after she fell from her bike. They'd been eight, racing through Bute Park, pretending to be explorers. "You look good." Eva's voice was carefully neutral. "Liar." "No, really. You look..." Eva's eyes tracked over Aurora's rain-soaked delivery uniform, the shadows under her eyes. "Healthy." "And you look rich." The words hung between them like an accusation. Eva's martini arrived, and she took a larger sip than necessary. "It's not what you think." "What do I think?" "That I sold out." Eva's fingers tightened on the stem. "That I became everything we swore we'd never be." Aurora shrugged. "Did you?" "Christ, Rory." Eva's mask slipped further. "Still straight for the jugular." "Some things don't change." "Everything changes." Eva's voice turned bitter. "You taught me that." The bar's old radiator clanged, punctuating the silence. Aurora remembered their last conversation—Eva begging her not to go back to Evan, Aurora insisting she could fix things, make it work. Two weeks later, she'd shown up at Eva's flat with a black eye and broken ribs. "I never thanked you," Aurora said quietly. "For getting me out." "You don't thank someone for basic human decency." "You gave up your job. Your flat." "Temporary setback." Eva gestured at her outfit. "Clearly recovered." But Aurora heard what lay beneath the bravado. Eva had been working at a nonprofit, trying to change the world one legal aid case at a time. She'd thrown it all away to get Aurora somewhere safe, somewhere Evan couldn't find her. "Tell me about New York," Aurora said, offering an olive branch. Eva grabbed it like a lifeline. "It's... intense. The firm keeps me busy. Sixty, seventy-hour weeks. But the money's insane. I have a apartment overlooking Central Park. Can you believe it? Me, living like some Wall Street princess." "Is that what you are now? A princess?" "Some days." Eva's laugh was hollow. "Some days I look in the mirror and don't recognize myself. Remember when we were going to start that legal clinic? Help refugees and asylum seekers?" "You were going to save the world." "And you were going to write the laws that would let me." Eva's eyes found Aurora's crescent scar. "Instead, you're delivering Chinese food and I'm helping corporations avoid taxes." The weight of their abandoned dreams pressed down like London fog. Aurora thought of her law textbooks gathering dust in Cardiff, her father's disappointment, her mother's worried calls she no longer answered. "We were children," Aurora said. "We were twenty. Old enough to know better." "Young enough to think love could save us." Eva flinched. They'd sworn never to talk about it—the complicated tangle of feelings that had underlain their friendship, the kiss they'd shared the night before Aurora went back to Evan, the words left unspoken when Eva bought her that one-way ticket to London. "I looked for you," Eva said suddenly. "After I got to New York. Tried calling, emailing. Your parents wouldn't tell me anything." "I needed to disappear for a while." "Five years, Rory. Five bloody years without a word." "I know." "Do you?" Eva's voice cracked. "Do you know I spent the first year terrified he'd found you? That I'd wake up to news that—" She pressed her lips together, composing herself. "I hired a private investigator. Just to make sure you were alive." Aurora's throat closed. "Eva—" "He told me you were safe. Working at some restaurant. Living above a bar." Eva's gesture encompassed the Raven's Nest. "This bar, apparently. I made him check every month for a year." The revelation sat between them, raw and pulsing. Aurora thought of all the nights she'd started to call, to write, to reach out somehow. But shame had held her back—shame at needing rescue, at choosing wrong, at running away from everyone who'd tried to help. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "For what? Surviving?" "For letting you think I was dead. For not being brave enough to—" Aurora stopped. Even now, the words wouldn't come. Eva's phone buzzed. She glanced at it, grimacing. "That's my reminder. The client drinks." Neither of them moved. "How long are you in London?" Aurora asked. "Three days. Fly back Sunday night." Three days. Nothing and everything. Eva stood, gathering her expensive bag. "Maybe we could—" She stopped, uncertainty flickering across features that had grown too used to certainty. "No. You've built a life here. I shouldn't complicate it." "Maybe I like complicated." Eva's smile was sad. "No. You like safe. You always have, even when you were pretending otherwise." It should have stung, but Aurora recognized the truth in it. She'd chosen Evan because he seemed safe, stable, normal. She'd been wrong about him but right about what she wanted—a quiet life, predictable days, no grand gestures or world-changing ambitions. "And you?" Aurora asked. "Are you happy being a Wall Street princess?" Eva paused at the door, rain streaming down the window beside her. "I'm successful. Sometimes that's enough." "Is it?" Eva's hand tightened on the door handle. For a moment, Aurora saw her as she'd been—fierce and idealistic, ready to fight the whole world for what was right. Then the moment passed, leaving only a beautiful stranger in expensive clothes. "Take care of yourself, Rory." The bell chimed as she left. Aurora stared at her half-empty glass while Silas polished the same spot on the bar for the third time. "Old friend?" he asked finally. "Something like that." He poured her another gin, stronger than the first. "Regret's a hell of a drinking companion." Aurora thought of Eva hiring someone to check on her, of five years of silence, of dreams abandoned and paths untaken. The crescent scar on her wrist caught the bar's dim light. "Yeah," she said, raising the glass. "It is."