AI The green neon sign buzzed like a trapped insect, casting a sickly glow over the damp pavement. Inside The Raven’s Nest, the air was thick with the smell of old wood, spilled beer, and something else—something like forgotten secrets . Rory Carter sat on her usual stool at the far end of the bar, her back to the wall. A half-empty glass of ginger beer sweated on a coaster. In her hands was a battered copy of *The Trial *, but her eyes weren’t on the page. They were fixed on the rain-streaked window, watching the distorted shapes of Soho pass by.
Silas polished a tumbler with a clean white cloth, his movements slow and precise. The silver signet ring on his right hand caught the low light each time his hand turned. He didn’t speak. He never did when she was like this, lost in the grey space between memories and the present. The limp was barely noticeable tonight as he moved down the bar to refill a regular’s pint.
The door opened, bringing in a gust of cold, wet air and the murmur of the street. A man stepped in, shaking water from a dark overcoat. He was tall, with the kind of posture that spoke of boardrooms and expensive suits. He glanced around, his eyes adjusting to the gloom , and then they stopped on her.
Rory felt the weight of the gaze before she registered the face. She looked up.
For a long moment, there was only the hum of the fridge and the distant drip of a tap. The man’s expression shifted through phases like a slot machine: confusion, disbelief, then a slow, dawning recognition that seemed to physically pain him .
“Rory?”
The voice was deeper than she remembered, but the cadence was the same. The way he said her name—like it was a question he already knew the answer to.
Daniel Byrne. Her study partner from second-year torts. The one who’d quoted obscure legal precedents to make her laugh, who’d shared his notes when she’d missed lectures after another fight with Evan. The one she’d left without a word.
She closed the book, her thumb marking the page. “Daniel.”
He approached the bar as if navigating a minefield. His coat was wool, finely tailored. His shoes, though damp, were good leather. He looked like a photograph from a life she’d crumpled up and thrown away.
“I don’t believe it.” He stopped a few feet from her stool, not quite invading her space but close enough that she could see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, the subtle grey at his temples . Time had been kind to him in a conventional way. It had made him look established. Solid. “What are you doing in London?”
“I live here.” Her voice was calm, cooler than she felt.
“In this place?” The words were out before he could filter them. He winced, casting a quick glance around at the maps on the walls, the black-and-white photos of forgotten jazz musicians. “I mean—I’m meeting a client. He suggested this bar. I had no idea…”
“It’s a good bar,” Silas said from behind the counter, his tone neutral. He didn’t look up from his polishing.
Daniel seemed to notice Silas for the first time, gave a curt, polite nod. Then his attention snapped back to her. “Can I…?” He gestured to the empty stool beside her.
She shrugged. A non-answer. He took it as permission and sat, draping his coat over his knees. He ordered a single malt from Silas, specifying the year. Rory watched his hands. No wedding ring. The same long, slender fingers that had once highlighted passages in her textbooks.
“You look different,” he said, his eyes tracing her face .
“So do you.”
“I meant…” He shook his head, a faint, self-deprecating smile touching his lips. “You cut your hair.”
Her hand went automatically to the ends of her black hair, now straight and resting on her shoulders. It used to cascade down her back. Evan had liked it long. She’d chopped it off in a public bathroom the day she left Cardiff. “It’s easier.”
“It suits you.” He took a slow sip of his whisky, his gaze not leaving her. “I looked for you, you know. After you left. Your father said you’d gone to London. He was… worried. We all were.”
“I’m fine.” The words were automatic, a shield.
“Are you?” The question hung in the air between them, heavy and direct. “You just vanished, Rory. One day you were there, top of our class, next you were gone. No forwarding address. Your phone disconnected. Evan was…” He trailed off, his jaw tightening. “He was telling people you’d had a breakdown. That you were unstable.”
She felt a cold knot form in her stomach . She took a sip of her ginger beer, the sweetness cloying. “And you believed him?”
“No.” The answer was immediate, fierce. “Never. But when someone disappears like that… people talk. They fill in the blanks with whatever story makes sense to them.” He leaned forward slightly , his voice dropping. “I didn’t believe his story. I believed you were running from him.”
She didn’t confirm or deny. She just looked at him, at the earnest concern in his eyes that had somehow survived the intervening years. It made her feel exposed, like a specimen under glass.
“What are you doing now?” he asked, changing tack. “Are you… practicing?”
A laugh escaped her, short and dry. “No. I’m not practicing.”
“But you were so brilliant. Professor Alistair said you were the best natural legal mind he’d seen in a decade. You were going to change the world.”
“I deliver Chinese food,” she said, the statement flat and factual.
Daniel blinked. For a second, he seemed to think she was joking . Then he saw she wasn’t. His face did something complicated, a struggle between pity and confusion. “You… what?”
“I work for a restaurant. Golden Empress. I ride a bicycle with a thermal box on the back.” She held up her left wrist, where the small crescent-shaped scar shone pale in the bar light. “I’m better at navigating London traffic than I ever was at navigating the Law of Property.”
He stared at her wrist, then back at her face. “Why?”
The question was too big. It contained a universe of other questions: *Why did you leave? Why did you give it all up? Why didn’t you call me?*
“The law felt like a cage,” she said simply. “Every precedent was a bar. Every statute a lock. I was studying to become a very elegant key for a door I didn’t want to open.”
“And delivering food isn’t a cage?”
“It’s a different kind. One I chose. The walls are made of rain and traffic lights, not other people’s expectations.” She looked at Silas, who was now ostensibly checking stock, giving them the illusion of privacy. “And I have friends here.”
Daniel followed her gaze, taking in Silas’s quiet authority, the slight limp as he moved. “Friends,” he repeated, the word tasting strange in his mouth . He swirled the amber liquid in his glass. “I became a partner at Fletcher & Byrne last year. My father’s firm.”
“Congratulations.” She meant it. There was no bitterness in her voice, only a faint, distant sadness.
“It feels hollow,” he admitted, the confession quiet, almost ashamed. “I sit in a corner office and argue about commercial leases and intellectual property. I wear the suits. I give the speeches. I have the life we were supposed to have.” He looked at her, his eyes searching hers. “And sometimes, I think about you in that library, telling me that justice was about people, not profit. And I wonder what the hell I’m doing.”
The weight of time settled over them then, a palpable thing. It was in the silence that stretched, in the way the rain outside seemed to slow. Here was the unspoken regret, not just hers, but his . Regret for paths taken, for paths abandoned, for words never said.
“You were supposed to be there with me,” he said, so softly she almost didn’t hear it.
She remembered then, with sudden, painful clarity, the night before her final exams. They’d been in the library, surrounded by towering stacks of books. He’d been outlining a particularly Byzantine point of contract law, and she’d been doodling in the margin of her notes. He’d stopped, looked at her, and said, “We’re going to be brilliant, you and I.” Not as a question, but as a statement of fact . A shared future he took for granted.
She had smiled, but hadn’t answered. Evan was waiting outside in his car, engine running.
“I couldn’t stay,” she said now, the words finally finding their way out.
“Because of him.”
It wasn’t a question. She nodded, a single, sharp movement.
“I should have seen it. I should have done something.” The regret in his voice was raw, fresh, as if the years had done nothing to scab over the wound. “I was so focused on the next case, the next exam… I saw the bruises once, on your arm. You said you’d walked into a door.”
“I had.”
“Rory.”
“It was easier,” she said, echoing her earlier words about her hair. “It was easier to lie than to admit I’d let myself become that person. The one who needs saving.”
“You never needed saving. You just needed an exit.”
She looked at him then, really looked. The boy she’d known was still there, buried under the expensive suit and the weary eyes. The one who’d believed in justice. The one who’d believed in her. A wave of something close to grief washed over her—not for what they’d had, but for what they might have been, in a different world, with different choices.
The door opened again, and a middle-aged man in a pinstripe suit entered, looking around expectantly. Daniel’s client. Daniel saw him, and his posture shifted instantly, the vulnerability sealing over like ice on a pond. He became Daniel Byrne, partner at Fletcher & Byrne.
“That’s me,” he said, his voice regaining its professional timbre . He stood, pulling on his overcoat. He hesitated, then pulled a business card from his wallet. He placed it on the bar next to her glass. His name was embossed in crisp, black letters. A mobile number, an office number, an address in the City.
“If you ever need anything. Anything at all. A reference. A friend. A…” He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. “Just take it.”
She looked at the card but didn’t touch it. “Goodbye, Daniel.”
He held her gaze for a moment longer, a thousand unsaid words hanging in the air between them. Then he gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod, turned, and walked toward the waiting client. His footsteps were firm, confident on the wooden floor. He didn’t look back.
Rory watched him go. She waited until the door had closed behind him, swallowing him back into the London night. Then she picked up the business card. The paper was thick, expensive. She ran her thumb over the embossed letters, feeling the ridge of each one. She held it for a long moment, over the empty glass.
Then she let it go. It fluttered , a tiny white leaf, and landed in the dregs of her ginger beer. It darkened at the edges, the ink beginning to blur.
Silas moved down the bar and silently removed the glass. He didn’t ask. He just took it away to be washed, the card dissolving into pulp in the soapy water. Rory picked up her book again, but the words swam on the page. Outside, the green neon sign continued to buzz, a constant, steady hum against the silence .