AI The door swung open with its familiar groan, and Aurora heard Silas shift behind the bar, his weight settling onto his good leg. She kept her eyes on the inventory spread before her, the clatter of bottles a comfortable rhythm.
"Rory."
Not the casual drawl of a regular. Not Silas's clipped tone. The voice cut through the bar's murmur like a blade, and her hands stilled on the gin.
She turned slowly .
He stood near the entrance, shedding a Burberry trench that had no business in a Soho dive. Bespoke suit. Cufflinks catching the green neon from the sign outside. Hair cropped sharp and clean. But the eyes were the same, dark and earnest, the eyes of a boy who'd passed her notes in Constitutional Law.
"Thomas," she said.
"God, Rory. It is you."
He moved toward her, and she noticed the weight he'd lost, the lines around his mouth, the way he carried himself now like a man who expected doors to open before he touched them. Three years had rewritten him.
"The prodigal son returns to London's armpit." She set the bottle down . "What brings you here?"
"Meeting ran late. Partner's choice." He gestured vaguely westward . "Some absurd place with gold-plated menus. I needed air that didn't taste like truffle oil."
"Mission accomplished, then. We only have air that tastes like old beer and poor decisions."
Thomas laughed, but it came out hollow, the way people laughed when they were buying time. His gaze swept the room, lingering on the black-and-white photographs, the yellowed maps peeling at the corners. A group of students huddled near the back, their laughter too loud, too oblivious.
"You work here?"
"I'm not a taxidermied exhibit, Thomas. Yes, I work here. I also live upstairs, if you're taking inventory."
The edge in her voice surprised her. She pulled a glass and poured two fingers of whisky without asking.
"Eva's mum said you'd left Cardiff." Thomas slid onto a stool . "My mother ran into her at Waitrose. The Cardiff gossip pipeline remains undefeated."
"God bless the Waitrose deli counter."
"Rory."
The way he said her name, soft and loaded, made her want to throw the whisky in his face. Instead, she pushed the glass toward him and took a sip from a bottle of lager she'd opened earlier.
"I heard about Evan," he said.
The glass paused halfway to his lips. She watched his reflection in the mirror behind the bar, the careful way he arranged his features into neutrality.
"Cardiff grapevine again?"
"Something like that." He set the drink down untouched. "I wished you'd called."
"Called you? Thomas, last time I saw you, you were polishing your father's name plate for the firm. What was I supposed to say? 'Hello, I know it's been two years, but my boyfriend's taken to rearranging my ribs'?"
Thomas flinched. Properly, visibly flinched, and for a moment she saw the boy who'd lost a moot court final and cried in the library stacks. Then the mask slid back.
"I could have helped."
"Could you?"
"I'm a barrister now, Rory. I have contacts. Resources."
"And I'm a delivery driver for a Chinese restaurant. What do you want, a gold star for lateral thinking?"
The words hung between them, caustic and unfair. She knew it even as she said them, but the apology lodged in her throat like a fishbone. Thomas picked up his whisky and drank deeply.
"The Golden Empress," he said. "Cheung's place."
"You've done your homework."
"Loose end. I've been looking for you."
"Why?"
He didn't answer immediately. His fingers traced the rim of his glass, and she noticed his hands were shaking , just slightly , the tremor she remembered from exam seasons.
"Remember Professor Watkins's lecture on mens rea?" he said. "You corrected him on a citation. Fourth week of first year. He was furious."
"I remember."
"You said the law wasn't about intentions but about actions. That what we actually did mattered more than what we planned to do." Thomas smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I thought about that a lot. After you left."
"Thomas—"
"You were the best of us. Better than me, better than everyone in that bloody lecture hall. And you just vanished."
"I didn't vanish. I ran. There's a distinction."
"Aurora Carter runs from nothing." He said it as a statement of fact, the way he used to argue points in tutorials, chin lifted, eyes steady. "Not from dragons, you said. Especially not from dragons."
"You're misquoting Eva. 'Here be dragons.' Old map stuff."
"Same principle."
She was silent for a long moment, the lager souring on her tongue. The photograph above the till showed a man in a trench coat crossing a cobbled street in Prague. She knew the photo well. She'd asked Silas about it once, and he'd said, "He walked out of the frame five minutes before a bomb went off. Never knew."
"I didn't run from Evan," she said quietly . "I ran from who I became with him. That's harder to explain."
Thomas's jaw tightened. He looked at her hands, at the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist.
"You still play piano?"
The question was so unexpected, so absurdly mundane, that she almost laughed.
"No."
"But you could."
"Could and do are different things, barrister."
He leaned back, his suit jacket falling open to reveal a silver tie pin shaped like a tiny set of scales. The symbolism was so on the nose she wanted to roll her eyes, but she held his gaze instead.
"I came here to say something," he said. "And I'm going to say it, even if you throw me out."
"Silas carries a cricket bat behind the bar. I'll give you fair warning."
"There's a place at the firm. Not for me to offer, I'm not senior enough, but I can recommend . They need researchers, paralegals to start, but with your mind—"
"No."
"Just listen—"
"I said no, Thomas. You're not hearing me." She planted both hands on the counter and leaned forward. "I don't want back into that world. I don't want the suits and the stipulations and the men who think 'no' is a negotiating tactic. I scrub dishes and deliver noodles and it's the freest I've ever been."
"That's not freedom. That's hiding."
The lager bottle sweated in her grip. Condensation dripped onto the wood, pooling like a tiny lake.
"Maybe," she said. "But it's mine."
Thomas stood, abruptly, his stool scraping against the floor. The students glanced over, sensing drama, then returned to their pints. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a card, cream stock, embossed lettering.
"My number's the same. It's always been the same." He placed it on the bar between them. "I meant what I said, Rory. All those years ago. Before everything."
She picked up the card. T. Harrington, Barrister-at-Law. The words blurred.
"You're three years late."
"I know."
He reached for his coat, and she saw it clearly then, the way he moved, careful and deliberate, the slight flinch when he reached too fast with his right arm. The injury she'd read about in a newspaper clipping Eva had sent her, the one she'd tucked into a drawer and never opened again.
"Thomas. Your shoulder."
He paused, one arm in the Burberry.
"Car accident. Last winter. Took six months to lift a briefcase."
"Why didn't you—" She stopped. The hypocrisy was too large to swallow.
"I did try to call. Once. A few months after you left Cardiff." He shrugged, and the coat settled around his shoulders like armour . "You didn't answer. I assumed you didn't want to be found."
She had no answer for that. The silence stretched, and in it she heard all the things they'd never said.
Then the door opened again, and Silas limped through from the back, his signet ring catching the light as he scanned the room.
"Everything all right, Aurora?"
The use of her full name wasn't accidental. Thomas straightened, and the two men sized each other up in that peculiar way that men did, testosterone and territory disguised as posture.
"Mr. Harrington was just leaving," she said.
"Was I?"
"Yes." She slid the card into her pocket, and Thomas's eyes followed the movement. "You were."
He held her gaze for one breath, two. Then he nodded, a short, sharp jerk of the chin.
"Goodbye, Rory."
"Goodbye, Thomas."
The door closed behind him, and the bar's atmosphere settled back into its familiar hum. Silas picked up the untouched whisky and sniffed it.
"Decent taste for a man who doesn't drink."
"He drank," Aurora said. "Once."
Silas said nothing. He wiped the glass with his towel and placed it back on the shelf.
"You've got a delivery at six," he said.
"I know."
But she didn't move. She stood at the bar, watching the door, the card burning a hole in her pocket like a coal she'd somehow agreed to carry. Outside, the rain began, a soft London drizzle that turned the neon green into smudged watercolour, and somewhere beyond the glass, Thomas Harrington walked away from The Raven's Nest for the second time in his life.
The first time, she'd been too afraid to watch him go.