AI The last of the evening’s patrons had shuffled out an hour ago, leaving The Raven’s Nest to the hushed hum of the refrigerator and the distant rumble of Soho traffic. Rory Carter traced the rim of her empty glass, the condensation cool against her fingertip. Silas, a shadow by the far end of the bar, meticulously arranged bottles, his movements economical, his sharp gaze missing little. The air hung thick with the scent of aged wood, stale beer, and something indefinably like secrets. Rory worked the late shift sometimes, helping Silas out, claiming the flat above the Nest felt less like loneliness and more like solitude when the city quieted. Tonight, she was just sitting , nursing a water, the black of her shoulder-length hair a stark contrast to the muted tones of Silas’s establishment.
The bell above the door gave a low scrape, more a sigh than a chime. Rory’s head lifted. A block of London’s damp night air rushed in, carrying with it the faintest hint of expensive cologne. A man stood there, framed by the green neon sign, shedding the street’s glare. He wore a charcoal suit, impeccably tailored, a stark grey against the bar's dim warmth . He moved with a practiced grace that caught her eye. He scanned the room, his gaze sweeping past Silas, landing briefly on her.
And then, it snagged. A peculiar stillness settled over him. He pushed the door shut, the bell’s chime swallowed by the click of its latch. He took a step in, then another, his movements losing some of their initial polish, replaced by a hesitant curiosity. Rory’s breath hitched, a faint tremor running down her spine . The angle of his jaw. The way he ran a hand over his neatly slicked-back hair, a gesture she hadn’t seen in a decade.
"Rory?" The voice was deeper, richer, but possessed a familiar cadence. It was an echo from a life carefully packed away.
She pushed her glass aside, her own voice a rougher edge than she intended. "Liam?"
He offered a small, tight smile. It stretched his lips, but the flicker of recognition in his storm-grey eyes did little to warm their depths . Years had etched faint lines around them, and his once boyish face had settled into a more severe, guarded geometry. The suit, the posture, the reserved nod he gave Silas – it was all a performance of arrival.
"Bloody hell," he breathed, stepping closer . "Rory Carter. I thought… I thought that was you. You haven’t changed."
She met his gaze, a wry twist playing on her lips. "You're lying. Or you have a terrible memory." She gestured loosely around the bar. "This is me now. The girl who delivers noodles and lives above a bar."
He chuckled, a dry sound. "Still looking out for Yu-Fei's, then?"
"When the rent needs paying." She watched him, the suit, the expensive watch glinting . He looked like someone who’d stepped out of a magazine her mother might have read. "And you? You look like you've conquered every city, bought up half the world, and still wear suits to bed."
He took her comment with a slight tightening around his mouth. He finally reached the bar, stopping a few stools away. Silas’s hazel eyes flickered towards them, a brief, almost imperceptible nod, before he returned to his bottles. Liam slid onto a stool.
"Silas," Liam acknowledged, his tone polite, distant .
"Liam went to school with Rory, Liam," Silas said, his voice a low rumble, cutting through the small talk without actually cutting it. He moved towards them, his slight limp almost invisible on the worn floorboards. "Fancy seeing you in this part of town."
"Just passing through for a meeting," Liam replied, his attention already drifting back to Rory . He raised a hand. "A double whiskey. Scotch, if you have it."
Silas nodded, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips as he walked away.
"So," Liam began, turning to her, the initial shock giving way to a practiced ease . "Cardiff feels like another lifetime, doesn't it? We were going to change everything."
Rory leaned back, the worn leatherette of the stool cool against her arms. "You were. I was mostly trying to pass my tutorials and avoid my father’s disappointed silences."
He winced, a fleeting shadow crossing his face before it smoothed over. "Brendan. Right. Tough bloke." He looked at his hands, turning them over as if seeing them for the first time . His left wrist bore no scar. "You were always the one with the sharp mind, the quick retort. I always imagined you in court, a formidable prosecutor."
"I imagined you building bridges," she countered, her voice low . "Or designing them. Something solid. Constructive."
The whiskey arrived, amber and potent. Liam picked up the glass, his knuckles white for a second before he relaxed. He took a long sip. "Life takes… unexpected turns."
"So I've heard," Rory said. She watched his eyes, searching for the boy who’d talked about architectural marvels and dreamt of leaving their damp Welsh town. This man was a stranger wearing a familiar face. She could feel the weight of years settling between them, not just the time elapsed, but the vast, uncharted territories of lives lived apart .
"I saw your mother at Christmas," Liam offered, his tone carefully neutral . "She still asks about you regularly. Worries. You know how she is."
Rory’s expression remained unreadable . "She always worried." She remembered her mother’s gentle anxieties, her father’s gruff pragmatism. Evans , her ex, and the terror he’d instilled, had forced her to find a resilience she hadn’t known she possessed. London, then. London had been a refuge, a place to disappear and then, slowly , rebuild.
"She told me you'd moved to London. Works for a bar owner. That wasn't quite the barrister's chambers I pictured." He swirled the amber liquid, the ice clinking like tiny bones.
"No," Rory conceded. "It isn't. But Silas runs a tight ship. And the rent's manageable." She felt a peculiar detachment, as if recounting a story about someone else . The sharp-witted student, the determined law applicant – that person felt distant, a sketch in a notebook. This Rory, the one who understood the rhythm of late-night deliveries and the quiet competence of Silas Blackwood, was real.
"And you? Heard you went into finance. Became one of those sharp-suited dragons breathing fire on the trading floor." The words came out too quickly .
Liam’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. He took another sip, the whiskey doing little to soften the hard edges of his face. "Something like that. It’s… challenging."
"Challenging," Rory echoed softly . She knew that word . She knew the way people used it to paper over a multitude of things they’d rather not examine too closely. The way she’d used it herself when she first landed in London, fresh from an abusive relationship Evan had meticulously crafted.
"So, this… Silas," Liam continued, shifting uncomfortably, his gaze flicking to the owner who now stood polishing glasses at the other end of the bar, a quiet sentinel . "He's a friend?"
"He's… complicated," Rory said. Silas was her anchor, her unexpected guardian angel in a city that had initially felt like a hungry maw . He saw things. He knew things. He’d offered her the flat above the Nest when she’d arrived, broke and adrift, having fled Cardiff with only a suitcase and the crescent-shaped scar on her wrist as proof of her past.
Liam let out a short, dry laugh. "Complicated is good. Means there’s a story. My life is all… streamlined . Efficient. Every step calculated ." He met her eyes. "Sometimes I wonder if I forgot how to just… stop. To breathe. To remember what it felt like before all the calculations."
"Cardiff," she supplied. "Before the calculations began."
He nodded, his gaze fixed on the swirling amber in his glass. "Before the choices were made. Before… well, before we knew what was at stake for everyone else." He lifted the glass, a toast in the dim light. "To the crossroads, I suppose. The ones you took, and the ones you left standing behind you."
Rory watched him, the sentiment a bittersweet ache deep in her chest. She’d left Cardiff to escape Evan, yes, but also to escape the suffocating certainty of a future that felt pre-ordained, a path she hadn’t chosen. Liam had chosen a different kind of path, one that clearly weighed on him now. The easy camaraderie they’d shared, the shared dreams whispered in late-night cafes, the fierce loyalty—it all seemed to have been shed like an outgrown, ill-fitting coat.
"We were never good at goodbyes, were we?" Liam’s voice was softer now, the practiced veneer cracking. "Or perhaps, at saying hello to what came next."
She finally picked up her own glass, turning it slowly . "The goodbye usually happens before you even realize it’s started." A faint smile touched her lips. They were in a bar, miles from home, surrounded by maps and shadows, talking about a life that had dissolved like sugar in this very drink. The weight of it all settled, not with a crash, but with the quiet, insistent pressure of returning tide .