AI The green neon sign buzzed a low, steady hum into the damp Soho evening, casting a sickly glow on the wet pavement. Rory shouldered open the heavy oak door of The Raven’s Nest, the familiar scent of old wood, spilled ale, and lemon polish washing over her. It was a Tuesday, dead quiet. Only the low murmur of a news bulletin from the ancient television behind the bar and the soft clink of glassware broke the silence .
Silas was at the far end, polishing a tumbler with a linen cloth, his movements precise, economical. He glanced up, his hazel eyes catching the dim light, and gave her a slow, almost imperceptible nod. His signet ring flashed silver as he set the glass down. Rory returned the nod, heading not for a stool but for her usual corner table, the one tucked under a framed, yellowed map of the London Underground from the 1950s. She shrugged off her damp jacket, the one with the faded ‘Golden Empress’ logo on the breast, and ran a hand through her straight black hair. The delivery run had been a long one, out to Chiswick and back in the pissing rain. All she wanted was a pint of bitter and thirty minutes of not moving.
She’d just taken the first deep, malty sip when the door opened again, letting in a gust of cool, diesel-scented air. A man stepped in, silhouetted against the green neon. He paused, scanning the room, his gaze sliding past Silas, past the empty booths, and landing squarely on her.
Rory froze, the pint glass halfway to her lips.
It was Evan.
But it wasn’t. Not the Evan she remembered. That Evan had been all sharp, restless angles, cheap leather jackets, and a smile that never quite reached his eyes. This man was softer, fuller. His hair, once a chaotic mess of dark curls, was now cropped short and neat, threaded with silver at the temples. He wore a sensible, expensive-looking wool coat over a button-down shirt, no tie. He carried an umbrella, furled and dripping. He looked like a banker. He looked settled. The recognition in his bright blue eyes—eyes that had once mirrored a frantic, possessive energy—was now tempered with a stunned, almost polite surprise.
“Rory?” he said, his voice lower, steadier than the high, insistent tenor she remembered. He took a step forward, then stopped, as if unsure of the protocol.
She set her glass down carefully , the *thunk * too loud in the quiet bar. Her left wrist, the one with the small crescent scar from a fall off a bike when she was seven, tingled faintly. A stupid, phantom memory.
“Evan.” She kept her voice neutral, cool. The tone she used with difficult customers or coppers asking why she was parked on a double yellow. “This is a surprise.”
“I… I had a meeting round the corner. Client dinner finished early. I was just… walking.” He gestured vaguely with the umbrella. “I’ve passed this place a hundred times. Never went in. Thought it looked a bit…” He trailed off, his eyes taking in the maps, the photographs of long-dead music halls, Silas’s impassive profile.
“A bit what?” Rory asked, though she knew. A bit shabby. A bit past it. A bit like her.
“Quiet,” he settled on, diplomatically . He approached her table, hovering. “Do you mind?”
She minded. Every nerve in her body minded. But she gave a slight, indifferent shrug. “It’s a free country.”
He unbuttoned his coat, draping it neatly over the back of the chair opposite her before sitting. He placed the umbrella precisely against the table leg. The old Evan would have thrown himself into the seat, his coat a heap on the floor. This new Evan arranged himself.
Silas appeared, a silent question in his raised eyebrow directed at Rory. She gave a tiny, almost invisible shake of her head. *Not a friend. Not a problem. Yet.* Silas retreated, his slight limp more pronounced on the worn floorboards tonight.
“You look well,” Evan said, the pleasantry hollow between them.
“You look different,” Rory replied, not bothering with the reciprocal lie .
A faint smile touched his lips. “Time. Responsibility. A better tailor.” He looked at her jacket, still on the chair back, the restaurant logo visible. “You’re… delivering food?”
“Among other things.” She took another sip, watching him over the rim. His gaze flickered to her hands, to the scar on her wrist. She saw him register it, and a complicated shadow passed behind his eyes. Guilt? Nostalgia? She couldn’t tell, and it infuriated her that she even tried to read him.
“I heard you left Cardiff,” he said, folding his hands on the table. His nails were clean, trimmed. “I heard you came to London. I didn’t know where.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“No,” he admitted. The word hung there, a admission of a smaller crime that stood in for the larger one. “I suppose I didn’t.”
The silence stretched, filled with the ghost of their last argument. The smashed mug. The names he’d called her. The way he’d grabbed her arm, right above the old scar, his fingers digging in. The cold, clear fear that had cut through the usual fog of drama. That was the night she’d called Eva. That was the night she’d decided to run.
“You’re a barrister now, then?” she asked, forcing the conversation onto the brittle surface of facts. “Following in your father’s footsteps ?”
He looked down at his hands. “Solicitor. Corporate. It’s… fine. Steady. Boring, sometimes.” He said ‘boring’ like it was a luxury he’d learned to appreciate. He looked up, his eyes searching her face. “And you? Pre-Law was the plan, last I knew.”
“Plans change.” The words came out sharper than she intended. She softened them, not for his sake, but for her own sense of control . “It wasn’t for me. All those rules. All that… posturing.”
“You were brilliant at it,” he said, and there was a flash of the old Evan, the one who’d been dazzled by her quickness in a debate, who’d called her his “secret weapon” at university parties. “The way you could pick an argument apart. It was like watching a surgeon.”
“Maybe I got tired of cutting things open,” she said quietly.
He flinched, just a little. The news bulletin on the television changed to weather. A low pressure system settling over the channel. More rain tomorrow.
“I’m sorry, Rory,” he said. The words came out in a rush, as if he’d been holding them behind his teeth for years and the dam had finally cracked. “For… for how it ended. For how I was. I was a mess. Arrogant. Insecure. I took it all out on you.”
She didn’t say anything. She just let the apology sit there in the sticky air between them, a strange, fragile object. It didn’t fit in the dim bar. It belonged in a therapist’s office, or a church.
“I’ve done a lot of work on myself,” he continued, encouraged by her silence . “Therapy. Anger management. The whole cliché. I’m married now. Her name is Claire. We have a little girl. Elowen. She’s two.”
He said it like a shield. *See? I’m normal now. I’ve been certified sane by a wife and a child.* Rory felt a bizarre pang , not of jealousy, but of a profound, dislocating distance . The Evan she had known was capable of many things—wild declarations, furious rants, moments of terrifying charm —but not this. Not this calm recitation of domestic milestones. He had become a stranger wearing her ex-boyfriend’s face.
“Congratulations,” she said, and it sounded genuine enough.
“Thank you.” He took a breath. “I think about that time… about us… and I’m ashamed. You didn’t deserve any of it. You were the best thing in my life, and I just… shattered it.”
The weight of time pressed down on the table. Here was the unspoken regret, given voice. It wasn’t dramatic. It was quiet, and clean, and terribly sad. The boy who had shattered things was gone , replaced by this careful man picking up the pieces and apologizing for the ghost of the breakage. It left her with nothing to push against. Her anger, which had been a cold, hard stone in her chest for years, felt suddenly obsolete.
“It was a long time ago, Evan,” she said, and she was surprised to find she meant it.
“Is that why you work here?” he asked, his gaze drifting around the bar again, taking in Silas, the secretive gloom , the air of suspended history. “In a place like this? It seems… it seems like a place to hide.”
Rory thought of the hidden back room behind the bookshelf, of the messages she sometimes carried for Silas, of the network of whispers and favors that hummed beneath the surface of the city. She thought of the sharp, quiet intelligence in Silas’s eyes, the way he’d taught her to observe, to listen, to think three steps ahead. It wasn’t the law, but it was a kind of logic. A different kind of order.
“It’s not hiding,” she said, her voice firm . “It’s a different kind of life. Quieter. On my own terms.”
He studied her, and she saw him trying to reconcile the Rory he’d known—the sharp, ambitious law student—with the woman in the delivery jacket, sitting in a near-empty Soho bar, speaking of quiet terms. He couldn’t do it. The gap was too wide.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said finally, and it was a surrender.
“I am,” she said. And she was.
He stood, gathering his coat and his umbrella. The moment was over. The unexpected collision of their past and present had occurred, and now the orbits were shifting apart again, for good.
“It was… really good to see you, Rory.”
“You too, Evan.”
He hesitated, then turned and walked to the door. He didn’t look back. The green neon illuminated his profile for a second before he stepped out into the rain, opening the umbrella with a soft *whoosh *.
Rory finished her pint. The bitter taste was familiar , grounding. Silas drifted over, collecting the empty glass from Evan’s side of the table—he hadn’t ordered a thing.
“Old ghost?” Silas asked, his voice a low rumble .
“Something like that,” Rory said. “He apologized.”
Silas grunted, a non-committal sound. “Do you feel better?”
Rory looked at the door, then at the scar on her wrist. The old hurt was still there, a fossil in her bones. But the living, breathing man who’d caused it was gone . In his place was a solicitor named Evan with a wife and a daughter, carrying an apology that was five years too late to be of any use to anyone.
“No,” she said honestly. “But I feel lighter.”
Silas nodded, as if that made perfect sense. “Another?”
“No,” she said, standing and pulling on her damp jacket. “I think I’ll walk for a bit.”