Run: 2026-05-10-01KR8YHB3QQVFPXD9PBEZM5ACZ

The rain had soaked through her coat by the time she reached the top of the stairs above the curry house, leaving dark streaks on the shoulders and the faint metallic smell of wet wool in her nose. Rory lifted her hand, hesitated with her knuckles an inch from the paint-chipped door, then knocked once—three short raps, the pattern they’d always used when one of them was already half-drunk or half-angry and needed to say something before it burned through her tongue. No answer came. She shifted the slim folder she’d carried from the restaurant under her arm, tightened her grip on the strap of her messenger bag, and tried the knob. It turned. The door swung inward on the cluttered little hallway that smelled of cumin and old paper. Eva stood not three feet away, barefoot on the scuffed floorboards, wearing an oversized jumper that had once belonged to Rory’s father and clutching a steaming mug that was already leaking the sharp edge of black tea into the air. The surprise in her face lasted only a heartbeat. It was replaced by something tighter, older, the kind of stillness that came right before a person decided whether to slam the door or walk away from it. “I didn’t buzz you in,” Eva said. Her voice was low, Dublin-soft at the edges, the way it always got when she was tired or trying not to be. “I still have the spare,” Rory answered. She held up the small brass key between two fingers, then let it drop back into her pocket. Water dripped from the hem of her coat onto the doormat. “I was going to leave this on the step if you didn’t answer.” She offered the folder. Eva didn’t take it. Instead she studied Rory’s face the way she used to when they were nineteen and trying to decide whether the night was going to end in laughter or in tears they’d both pretend not to remember. The flat behind her was the same chaos it had always been: towers of books leaning like drunks against every wall, scrolls curled on the kitchen table beside a half-eaten naan, Ptolemy the tabby watching from the top of the bookshelf with narrowed green eyes. Rory stepped inside anyway. The door clicked shut behind her, and the three deadbolts remained untouched. She toed off her boots on the small square of tile, left them side by side the way Eva liked, and shrugged out of the wet coat. The crescent scar on her left wrist caught the lamplight as she hung the coat on the hook; Eva’s gaze flicked to it and stayed there a second too long. “I’m not here to fight,” Rory said. “You never are until you are.” Eva set the mug down on a stack of papers. The steam rose between them like a curtain they both refused to acknowledge. “You look thinner. Still doing the deliveries?” “Only when Cheung needs help. Mostly I’m still at the bar.” She rubbed the back of her neck, the movement tugging at the damp collar of her shirt. “Lucien said you asked him about the Avaros documents again.” Eva’s mouth tightened. “Lucien talks too much.” “He talks exactly enough to get paid twice.” Rory crossed the narrow space to the table and set the folder down gently, careful not to disturb the precarious piles. “I brought the ones you marked last time. Annotated. I didn’t read them,” she added, though the lie felt thin even as she spoke it. She had read every line. Twice. For a moment neither woman moved. The rain ticked against the single small window above the sink. Ptolemy jumped down, padded across the mess, and wound once around Rory’s ankles before disappearing under the bed. Eva’s fingers flexed once against the edge of the table. “You could have posted them,” she said. “I could have. Didn’t.” Rory met her eyes. The bright blue she’d inherited from her mother was darker now under the flat’s low light, the same blue that used to make Eva forget sentences halfway through. “I wanted to see you. Properly. Not through a half-closed door or Lucien’s encrypted messages.” Eva let out a breath that might have been a laugh or a sigh. She reached for her mug again, took a slow sip, and studied Rory over the rim like she was trying to measure how much of the old girl was still standing there in damp socks on her kitchen floor. “You left without saying goodbye the last time. That night at the bar. I came downstairs at two in the morning and your key was on the counter and your coat was gone.” “I know.” Rory’s voice stayed level, but her hands betrayed her: one thumb tracing the scar on her wrist in a nervous loop. “I was bleeding out everything I’d been carrying since Cardiff. Since Evan. Since the night I told you I was scared of what would happen if I let myself want more than I could keep.” She swallowed. The flat’s heat was starting to steam the rain from her hair; strands clung to her cheek. “I didn’t trust myself to stay and not ruin it.” Eva set the mug down harder than necessary. A small spill darkened the corner of a handwritten note about demon contracts. “You think showing up soaked and polite fixes that?” “No.” Rory took one careful step closer. The space between them shrank until the air felt charged, the way it always had when the two of them were in the same room too long. “I think it gives me a chance to say I’m sorry without running. And to hand you the papers you need so you don’t have to keep risking yourself with Lucien just to get answers.” She could smell Eva’s shampoo—something herbal and familiar—and underneath it the faint trace of the curry house below. The memory of other nights in this flat rose uninvited: the two of them half-dressed on the sagging sofa, whispering about futures neither of them believed would arrive, Eva’s fingers tracing the scar on Rory’s wrist like she could smooth it away with touch alone. Rory’s pulse kicked once, hard, behind her ribs. Eva looked at the folder, then back at Rory. Her eyes were darker than they used to be, the green almost swallowed by the low light. “You still talk like you’re the one who has to hold everything together.” “I tried to stop.” Rory’s mouth curved, a small, self-aware thing. “Didn’t take.” She lifted her hands in a gesture that was half surrender, half invitation. “I can leave. The papers stay. You can lock the deadbolts behind me. I’ll even text Lucien to stop meddling.” She turned toward the coat hook. The movement was slow, deliberate, giving Eva every second to speak or to let her go. The rain outside had softened to a steady drizzle; water still ran in thin streams down the window pane and dripped into the small tin bucket Eva kept beneath it. Eva’s voice stopped her before she reached the coat. “Stay.” The word was quiet, but it landed like a key sliding home. Rory turned. Eva stood with both hands braced on the table now, shoulders squared the way they always were when she decided something difficult. The oversized jumper had slipped off one shoulder, revealing the thin strap of a vest beneath. Rory’s gaze lingered there a moment too long before she forced it back to Eva’s face. “I’m not promising anything,” Eva said. “I’m tired of promises. But if you’re here, you’re here. No leaving in the middle of the night without a word.” Rory nodded once. She left the coat where it hung and crossed the last few feet to the table. She didn’t touch Eva—not yet—but the distance between them felt newly fragile, like the surface of a pond after a stone has been tossed. “All right.” They stood like that for a breath, two women in a room full of books and rain and the weight of every unsaid thing between them. Then Eva reached for the folder, opened it, and the mundane business of retrieving information began. Yet every time their hands brushed while sorting pages, every time Eva’s bare foot accidentally knocked against Rory’s socked one under the table, the old current ran through the contact like a live wire no amount of history could quite short out. Rory’s chest felt tight with the effort of keeping her voice steady while they worked, but she stayed. The scent of tea and rain and old paper filled the cramped space, and for the first time in months the silence between them was no longer an ending. Eventually Eva leaned back in her chair, rubbed her eyes with the heel of one hand, and looked at Rory across the scattered pages. “I missed you.” Rory’s reply came without thought. “I missed you too.” Neither moved to close the gap, but the admission hung between them, warm and dangerous and far from finished. Outside, the rain kept falling on Brick Lane, and above the curry house the flat held its breath, waiting to see what would happen when the papers were finally put away and the night stretched out in front of them, empty of excuses.