Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYKZ8RGH32YK9N3FG8J56X

The air in The Raven’s Nest was thick with the scent of old wood and spilled whiskey. Aurora Carter wiped a damp cloth over the mahogany bar, her movements rhythmic and practiced. The low hum of a Miles Davis record spun on the turntable behind her, a familiar comfort in the dim light. Silas was in the back, inventorying stock, leaving her alone with the handful of late afternoon regulars nursing their pints in quiet corners. The door swung open, slicing a brief rectangle of grey London light across the floor. A man stepped in, shaking rain from a dark overcoat. He hesitated just inside, his eyes adjusting to the gloom, scanning the room with a slow, deliberate sweep. His gaze passed over her once, then snapped back, locking onto her face. A flicker of something—shock, recognition—passed over his features. Aurora went still, the cloth frozen in her hand. The years fell away in a dizzying rush. The set of his shoulders was broader, the lines around his eyes deeper, but it was him. Evan. He approached the bar, his footsteps silent on the worn floorboards. He didn’t smile. He slid onto a stool, placing his hands flat on the bar top. His knuckles were scarred now, the hands of a man who’d done more than push paper. “Rory,” he said. Her name sounded foreign in his mouth, a relic from a life she’d boxed up and left behind. “Evan.” Her voice was even, cooler than she felt. She resumed wiping the bar, focusing on a sticky ring of condensation. “Didn’t figure you for a Soho pub.” “Business,” he said, his voice a low rumble. It had lost its old, easy cadence, replaced by a clipped, guarded tone. “Meeting got cancelled. Saw the sign. Thought I’d wait out the rain.” She nodded toward the green neon glow beyond the door. “It’s stopped.” A faint, humorless smile touched his lips. “So it has.” Silence stretched between them, taut and heavy. The man she’d known was all restless energy and loud opinions, a live wire that constantly sought a ground. This man was a closed book, his stillness unnerving. “You work here?” he finally asked, watching her polish a glass. “Part-time. I deliver for a restaurant, too. Yu-Fei’s. Golden Empress.” “Delivering noodles.” He said it flatly, a statement, not a question. There was no judgment in it, just a dull sort of surprise. “It pays the rent. The flat’s upstairs.” She gestured vaguely toward the ceiling. His eyes followed the gesture, then returned to her. “You live above a bar.” “It’s quiet. Silas is a good landlord.” “Silas?” “The owner.” She didn’t elaborate. The less Evan knew, the better. The less he could find, if he ever went looking. He was studying her now, really looking, and she fought the urge to shrink back. His eyes traced the line of her shoulder, the way she held herself, the small crescent scar on her wrist she’d gotten falling off her bike at ten. He was cataloging the differences. “You cut your hair,” he said. Her free hand went instinctively to the ends of her black hair, now resting on her shoulders. It used to tumble down her back. “Easier.” “It suits you.” The compliment sounded rote, something he felt obligated to say. “You’ve changed too,” she countered, her tone carefully neutral. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking how, or why. He let out a short, sharp breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Yeah. I have.” He’d filled out, the lanky frame of his youth now solid, almost bulky. His suit was expensive, a sharp, dark wool that didn’t quite hide the tension in his shoulders. The boy who’d wanted to be a poet, who’d read Yeats to her on the banks of the Taff, was gone. This man smelled of crisp cologne and the metallic hint of rain. “What kind of business?” she asked, because the silence was becoming a physical weight. “Consulting.” The answer was immediate, smooth. Too smooth. “Consulting,” she repeated, letting the word hang in the air between them. “Vague.” “It pays the rent,” he echoed her earlier words, a hollow mimicry. His eyes finally left her face and scanned the bar—the maps on the walls, the black-and-white photos of a London long gone, the hidden door to Silas’s office disguised as a bookshelf. His gaze lingered there a moment too long, a predator noting an exit, a potential threat. “This is a strange place for you.” “I like it. It’s honest. People come here to drink, to talk, to be left alone. No pretensions.” “Unlike me.” She didn’t deny it. She just held his gaze. The unspoken words piled up in the space between them: the frantic phone calls, the slammed doors, the way he’d curl his hand into a fist when he was frustrated, the sharp, cruel things he’d say that he’d always apologize for later. The apologies that got quieter, less frequent, until they stopped altogether. “You left,” he said. It wasn’t an accusation. It was a fact, heavy with consequence. “Cardiff was… small.” “For both of us, apparently.” He finally looked away, down at his own hands on the bar. He turned his right hand over, studying the palm as if reading a fate he didn’t like. “I heard you were in London. From your mum. Ran into her at the market, must be… Christ, two years ago now.” The image of her mother making polite, strained conversation with him, of him walking away knowing where she was, sent a cold trickle down her spine. “She never said.” “I asked her not to.” He looked up, and for a fraction of a second, the mask slipped. She saw not the angry boy or the hardened man, but someone tired, burdened by a regret so deep it had carved grooves in his soul. “I thought about… looking you up. Wanted to.” “But you didn’t.” “No.” The mask was back. The consultant. The closed book. “Wouldn’t have been right.” The truth, the one they were both dancing around, settled over them. It hadn’t been right then, either. Her leaving wasn’t about the size of the city. It was about the size of his anger, the shrinking space he allowed her to occupy. He pushed back from the bar, the stool legs scraping against the floor. He pulled a wallet from his inside coat pocket, crisp black leather, and laid a fifty-pound note on the counter. “For your time.” “I didn’t pour you a drink.” “Keep it.” He stood, buttoning his coat. He looked every inch the successful man he’d become, a world away from the girl wiping down a bar. Yet he seemed smaller somehow, diminished by the performance. “It was good to see you, Rory. Really.” He was lying. It had been awful for both of them. A glimpse into a shared grave. “You too, Evan.” She left the money on the bar. He gave a curt nod, then turned and walked out. The door sighed shut behind him, cutting off the distant sound of traffic. The rectangle of light was gone. The bar felt darker, quieter. Aurora picked up the fifty-pound note. It felt cold between her fingers. She folded it neatly, once, twice, and slipped it into the tip jar. She watched the rain begin to sheet down the window, blurring the world outside into streaks of green neon and grey stone. She picked up her cloth and started wiping the bar again, right where he had been sitting, erasing the faint imprint of his presence.