Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYRFKR30X71BVDXCQ05KB7

The green neon sign buzzed overhead, casting a sickly glow on the damp pavement. Aurora pushed open the heavy door to The Raven’s Nest, the familiar scent of old wood, spilled whiskey, and lemon polish washing over her. It was a Tuesday, slow and quiet. Silas was polishing a glass behind the bar, his movements economical, his gaze missing nothing. She slid onto her usual stool. “Rough one?” He set the glass down without looking up. “The usual clientele. Whispers and bad decisions.” He poured two fingers of a decent Scotch, no ice, and slid it toward her. It was their ritual. She’d just finished her last delivery run for Yu-Fei, and the city’s grime felt like a second skin. The first sip was fire and peat, burning away the memory of London’s endless drizzle. The door creaked open again, letting in a gust of cool night air and a man she hadn't seen in seven years. He’d filled out, the lanky frame of his university days squared off with the solid weight of adulthood. The expensive cut of his charcoal overcoat screamed money, a stark contrast to the worn cords and threadbare jumpers he’d lived in back in Cardiff. His face was harder, the boyish softness carved away by time or circumstance, but the eyes were the same. Evan. His gaze swept the room, a quick, dismissive scan, before landing on her. A flicker of surprise, then a slow, deliberate smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He walked over, the click of his designer shoes on the floorboards unnaturally loud in the quiet bar. “Rory. Fancy that.” Aurora felt the stool beneath her become a block of ice. Her fingers tightened around the glass. Silas had stopped polishing, his attention a tangible weight at her back. “Evan.” Her voice was steadier than she felt. “May I?” He gestured to the stool beside her, already pulling it out. He shrugged off his coat, draping it with care over the backrest. The suit underneath was just as immaculate. He signaled Silas with a curt nod. “Macallan 18. Neat.” He turned back to her, his eyes cataloging her own simple jeans, the delivery-service jacket she’d shrugged off and hung on the stool. “Still drinking the cheap stuff, I see.” “It does the job.” His drink arrived. He swirled the amber liquid, sniffed it with an air of performance. “I was just thinking about Cardiff the other day. The old gang. Brendan and Jennifer’s girl, all grown up and… well. Here.” He finally looked at her directly, a long, assessing stare. “You vanished. One day you were there, top of our torts class, the next… poof. No forwarding address. Your father was livid.” “I left a note.” “A note.” He chuckled, a dry, humorless sound. “Hardly worthy of a future barrister. ‘Gone to London. Don’t worry.’ Very dramatic.” “It wasn’t meant to be dramatic. It was meant to be final.” He took a slow sip, his eyes never leaving hers over the rim of the glass. “Everything was so final with you, wasn’t it? Black and white. Right and wrong. The world doesn’t work like that, Rory. It’s all shades of grey.” “Is that what you tell yourself?” She heard the bite in her own voice and didn’t try to soften it. “Is that the philosophy that got you the fancy coat?” A shadow passed over his face, quick as a cloud. “Ambition isn’t a sin. Some of us had to make something of ourselves. I seem to recall you had ambitions once, too. What was it your dad used to say? ‘The finest legal mind of her generation.’” He leaned closer, his voice dropping, though there was no one else to hear. “And now you’re… what? A barmaid?” “Delivery driver.” He waved a dismissive hand, the silver cufflink at his wrist glinting in the low light. “Same difference. A job for transients. Not for someone with your potential. It’s a waste.” The word hung in the air between them. *Waste*. It echoed other words, older words, spoken in the dark of a different flat. *Ungrateful. Hysterical. A waste of my time.* “Potential is a heavy burden,” she said quietly, tracing the crescent-shaped scar on her wrist with her thumb. A childhood fall from a tree. A simple, clean pain. “Sometimes you have to set it down to save yourself.” “Save yourself from what?” he pressed, his gaze sharpening. It was the same tone he’d used when cross-examining moot court opponents. “From a little pressure? From high expectations? From me?” She didn’t answer. She looked past him, to the wall of black-and-white photographs. A young Silas, standing before the Charles Bridge in Prague. A different life. Evan followed her gaze, then turned back, a new understanding dawning in his expression. It wasn’t kindness. It was a predator recognizing old territory. “Oh, I see. This is still about that, isn’t it? That night.” He shook his head, a parody of regret. “You always did blow things out of proportion. A simple disagreement between two people who cared for each other.” “You threw a book at my head, Evan.” “It was a textbook! And I missed.” He said it with such casual exasperation, as if correcting a minor factual error. “You didn’t miss the wall. There was a dent in the plaster. I paid the landlord extra for that when I left.” He drained his glass and signaled Silas for another. The silence stretched, thick and uncomfortable. The bar felt smaller, the walls closer. “We were kids,” he said, his voice lower now, losing some of its polished edge. “Stressed. Finals. You know how it was. I wasn’t… I wasn’t at my best.” “You were exactly who you were.” The second drink arrived. He didn’t touch it immediately. He just stared into it, and for a fleeting second, the successful man vanished, and she saw the anxious, intense boy she’d once thought she loved. The one who’d held her hand during her mother’s illness, who’d quizzed her for exams until dawn. “I looked for you, you know,” he murmured. “After. Asked around. No one knew a thing. It was like you’d been erased.” He finally looked up, and his eyes held a genuine, bewildered hurt that was somehow more disarming than his anger. “Why, Rory? Why such a… a nuclear option? We could have talked.” She thought of the packed bag hidden under Eva’s bed. The train ticket bought with cash. The sheer, animal terror of those final weeks. The way he’d check her phone, question her about every minute of her day, his apologies always followed by a new set of rules. How telling him she was leaving felt more dangerous than just disappearing. “Talking with you was like negotiating a surrender,” she said, her voice flat. “I decided I didn’t want to surrender anymore.” He flinched as if she’d struck him. The vulnerability vanished, sealed behind a wall of cold pride. He stood up, pulling a leather wallet from his inside pocket. He tossed a fifty-pound note onto the bar, far more than the cost of his drinks. “Well. It seems you got your victory. You’re here, living your authentic life.” The sarcasm was acid. He shrugged his coat back on, buttoning it with sharp, precise movements. “I have a merger to close tomorrow. Multi-million pound deal. The kind of thing that actually affects people’s lives.” He stood there for a moment, a silhouette against the green neon, a man who had become exactly what he’d always wanted to be. And he looked profoundly, utterly lonely. “Goodbye, Aurora.” He didn’t wait for a reply. The door swung shut behind him, swallowing him into the night. Aurora released a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. Her hands were trembling. She clenched them into fists on the sticky bar top. Silas materialized, picking up the fifty-pound note with distaste. He cleared Evan’s glass. He didn’t speak. He simply refilled her Scotch, pushing the fresh glass next to her half-finished one. She picked it up, the crystal cool against her palm. She looked at her reflection in the dark mirror of the bar back, at the girl from Cardiff who was gone, and the woman in London who had taken her place. The weight of the years settled on her shoulders, not as a regret, but as a fact. A choice made. A life lived. She took a long, slow drink, and this time, she tasted nothing at all.