Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTY3P8CW799HXPYDKX8FWFW

The green neon sign of The Raven’s Nest bled its emerald light onto the wet Soho pavement. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of old wood, spilled whisky, and the faint, sweet haze of cigar smoke from a corner booth. Aurora Carter wiped down the mahogany bar, her movements efficient, her mind elsewhere. Silas was in the back office, leaving her to mind the quiet, mid-week crowd. A few regulars murmured over pints. The soft clink of glass and the low hum of a jazz record were the only constants. The door opened, letting in a gust of damp, chill air and the distant rumble of a night bus. A man stepped in, shaking rain from a dark overcoat. He was tall, broad-shouldered, his face momentarily shadowed by the doorframe. He scanned the room, his gaze passing over the maps on the walls, the photographs of forgotten faces, before landing on her. Rory froze, the damp cloth still in her hand. His name formed on her lips, silent. Evan. Not her Evan. The ghost of him, maybe, but a ghost made flesh, older, harder. The boyish softness she remembered had been planed away, leaving sharp angles at his jaw and a tightness around his eyes. His hair, once a floppy chestnut, was cut severe and short, darkened by the rain or by time. He looked like a man who wore a suit like armour. He saw her. A flicker of something—shock, recognition, a quick calculation—crossed his face before it settled into a careful, neutral mask. He walked toward the bar, each step measured, and slid onto a stool three down from where she stood. “Rory.” His voice was lower, rougher. It didn’t sound like him. “Evan.” She made herself move, dropping the cloth under the counter. She mirrored his tone, flat, devoid of the warmth that might have once been there. “You’re a long way from Cardiff.” “Business.” He shrugged out of his coat, draping it over the stool beside him. His suit was expensive, a deep charcoal. It fit him perfectly. The Evan she knew lived in worn jeans and band t-shirts. “I had a meeting nearby. Saw the sign. Thought I’d… I didn’t know you’d be here.” “I work here.” She stated it plainly, a fact to be filed away. “Right.” His eyes travelled over her—the simple black t-shirt, the apron tied at her waist, the way she stood behind the bar as if she owned it. “You look… well.” “You look different.” A faint, humourless smile touched his lips. “Time does that.” “What can I get you?” “Bourbon. Neat. Something good.” She turned to the shelves, her back to him, and took a moment to breathe. Her hands were steady as she selected a bottle, the glass quiet as she set it down. She poured two fingers of amber liquid, slid the glass across the polished wood. He took it, his fingers brushing hers for a split second. She pulled her hand back as if scalded. “Cheers.” He took a sip, his eyes never leaving her face. “So. London.” “So. Business.” “I’m in acquisitions.” He swirled the bourbon. “Corporate mergers, mostly. It’s… it pays.” “I’m sure it does.” She leaned her hip against the back counter, crossing her arms. A defensive posture. She knew it. He’d know it too. “How’s your mother?” “She passed. Two years ago. Cancer.” “I’m sorry.” She meant it. His mother had been kind to her, had made tea and worried about her studying too hard. He nodded once, a sharp dip of his chin. “Thank you. And yours? Your dad still…?” “Still arguing for a living. Mum’s still trying to correct the grammar of the entire world. They’re fine.” A silence stretched between them, taut and heavy. The jazz record ended. In the sudden quiet, the tap of Silas’s uneven footsteps echoed from the hallway before fading again into the back room. “You left,” Evan said, his voice quiet now, stripped of its corporate veneer. “You just… left. No note. Your number changed. Eva wouldn’t tell me a damn thing.” “There was nothing to say.” “Nothing to say?” He set his glass down with a soft *click*. “Four years, Rory. We were talking about buying a flat. You were going to finish your degree. Then one day you’re just… gone. You vanished.” “I moved.” She kept her voice even, cool. “People do that.” “Not like that. Not without a word.” He leaned forward, his forearms on the bar, and she caught a scent of his cologne—spicy, unfamiliar. The old Evan smelled of soap and the faint, sweet hint of the weed he’d sometimes smoke. “Was it me? Something I did?” She looked at him then, really looked. At the small, pale scar above his eyebrow from a drunken stumble, a scar she’d kissed better. At the tired lines fanning from his eyes. At the way his knuckles were white where he gripped his glass. “You didn’t do anything, Evan.” The truth, but not the whole truth. It sat between them, a void. “Then why? Was it… was it the arguing? I know I could be a bastard when I drank too much. I said things—” “It wasn’t the arguing.” She cut him off. She couldn’t let him apologise. An apology would be a thread, a connection, and she had spent years severing every single one. “It was the silence after. The way the air would go cold for days. The way I’d have to tiptoe around your moods, guessing what might set you off next. The way I stopped recognising myself in the mirror because I was too busy trying to be the version of me that wouldn’t make you angry.” He flinched, recoiling as if struck. He stared into his bourbon. “I didn’t… I didn’t know you felt like that.” “You weren’t supposed to know. That was the point. I made sure you didn’t know. I became very good at it.” She uncrossed her arms, picking up a clean glass to polish, just for something to do. “I got tired. So I left.” “And now you’re here. Polishing glasses in a Soho dive.” He said it without malice, more a statement of bewildered fact. “I deliver Chinese food by day. I pour drinks by night. I live in a flat upstairs. It’s simple. It’s mine.” “You were going to be a barrister. You were brilliant.” “I was miserable.” She put the glass down. “I am not miserable now.” He finished his bourbon in one long swallow, wincing slightly as it went down. “I see that. You look… calm. You always had this nervous energy, like you were waiting for a starting pistol. It’s gone.” “It was never a starting pistol, Evan. It was a timer. Counting down.” He gestured for another drink. She poured it, her movements automatic. “I got married,” he said abruptly, watching the liquid fill the glass. The words hung in the air. She felt a curious emptiness, a hollow where an ache might have been. “Congratulations.” “It didn’t last. Eighteen months. She said I was… remote. That I had walls she couldn’t climb.” He gave a short, bitter laugh. “I suppose I learned that from you.” “Don’t.” Her voice was sharp, final. “Don’t put that on me. Your walls are your own.” He nodded slowly, accepting the rebuke. “Fair.” He sipped the fresh drink. “I think about you, you know. Not all the time. But sometimes. I’ll see a girl with black hair on a bike and my heart will stop. Or I’ll hear that terrible punk song you used to play, and for a second, I’m back in your old room in Cathays, and you’re laughing.” She said nothing. The memory was a physical thing, a warmth in her chest that she instantly, viciously, suppressed. “Do you ever think about me?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. “I think about who I was when I was with you. And I am grateful, every day, that I am not that person anymore.” It was the cruelest thing she could have said, and she saw it land. His face crumpled for an instant before he rebuilt the mask, smoother, harder this time. The businessman. The acquirer. The man who closed deals and felt nothing. “Right.” He stood up, pulling his wallet from his inside pocket. He placed two crisp fifty-pound notes on the bar, far more than the drinks were worth. “Keep the change.” “You don’t have to—” “I do.” He put his coat on, straightening the collar. He looked at her one last time, his eyes searching her face as if trying to find the girl he’d known buried beneath the woman she’d become. “Be well, Aurora.” He used her full name. A formal dismissal. He turned and walked toward the door, his steps firm and even on the old floorboards. He didn’t look back. The door swung shut behind him, sealing out the night. The green neon glow painted the empty space where he’d stood. Rory let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. She picked up the banknotes, their edges sharp against her fingers. She folded them neatly and tucked them into the till. Then she picked up his empty glass. It was still warm from his hand. She held it for a moment before plunging it into the soapy water, watching the ghosts of his fingerprints dissolve into the suds.