Run: 2026-05-27-01KSMF531F2JNGNM239BE8NE31

Aurora pushed through the green neon glow of the Raven's Nest, the warmth from the interior enveloping her as she stepped from the London drizzle. The bar was exactly as she remembered—a sanctuary of shadows and history, with its worn leather booths, oak woodwalnut bar top, and the faint smell of aged whiskey and polished brass. Her eyes scanned the room instinctively, taking in the familiar chaos of Soho nightlife mixed with the quiet dignity that Silas imbued in every corner of his establishment. "Well, look what the cat dragged in." The voice stopped her cold. Thoroughly. In her tracks. Not from its sound, but from the weight it carried. Twenty years dropped away as she turned, her bright blue eyes fixing on the man sitting in the corner booth, shadows playing across his angular features. He looked different—harder, somehow. The softness of youth had been honed into sharp edges of experience and something else, something unreadable in the way his dark eyes held hers. "Aiden." His name left her lips without conscious thought, like a breath held too long finally escaping. She hadn't spoken his name in more than five years, not since the call, not since the funeral. Not since he had disappeared without so much as a goodbye. "You've changed," he said, his eyes drinking her in slowly, deliberately. She knew what he was seeing—shoulder-length black hair where she'd once had frizzy, spiraled curls; the confident set of her shoulders where she'd been hunched and scared. The crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, gleaming in the low light, was the only constant between then and now. "And you haven't," she replied, moving toward him with measured steps. Her heart thrummed against her ribs, but her expression remained carefully neutral. So much for coming to the Raven's Nest for a break from the Yu-Fei Cheung delivery route. So much for a quiet drink before climbing up to her flat above the bar. "I did, actually," he said, a hint of the old sarcasm flickering across his mouth. He leaned back in the booth, stretching his arm along the back in a way that instantly set her nerves on edge. "Just not in ways you can see." She slid into the booth across from him, the worn leather cradling her awkwardly. Silas was nowhere to be seen, but she caught the flicker of recognition in the eyes of the bartender—new, probably a university student saving money through the semester. "He's in the back," Aiden said, following her gaze. "Always with the books, that one. Same old, same old." Aurora clasped her hands together on the table, the cool surface belying the warmth of her skin beneath. "So you've been keeping an eye on me, then?" Aiden's smile was slow, dangerous. "Would that surprise you, Rory?" She hated the way her stomach tightened at the nickname. Back in Cardiff, in another life entirely, that's what he'd called her. Always Rory, like she was precious, like she was his. Now it felt like an accusation. "What brings you to London?" she asked, the professional mask firmly in place now. "Thought you were living it up in Dubai or something?" "Developments," he said, leaning forward and steering her empty glass away from her fingertips. "Lots of them. In many areas." The subtext was deafening. Her job, her life, her choices. Everything he was with himself and hadn't been with her. "You mean with the oil business?" "Aurora." He shook his head slowly. "Still playing the part, aren't you? Little Rory, just a delivery driver now, isn't that right? Must be fulfilling." Her fingers curled around the edge of the table, her nails biting into the leather. The thing about Aiden had always been that he could see right through her, the way no one else could. Not even Silas, who thought he knew everything. "I'm running a freelance logistics operation," she said finally, choosing her words carefully. "Major clients, including Yu-Fei's Golden Empress. It pays well." "And it keeps you busy," he finished for her. "So you don't have time for old friends to pop back into your life." The rally boy crossed one leg over the other, his thigh brushing against the table between them with the casual intimacy of someone who still believed he had the right to such familiarities. Twenty years in Prague, he'd said, working with the petroleum companies, traveling, living. She'd heard the stories piecemeal over the years through mutual acquaintances who'd been distant enough that they didn't know just how strained things had become toward the end. "Some lives take unexpected turns," she said, her voice going soft. "Some people make choices that change things." Like you, her unspoken words hung in the air between them. Like me. Aiden's eyes darkened, the irises disappearing into shadow as he contemplated her. He reached across the table, his fingers skimming over the scar on her wrist—tracing it, as he had once traced everything about her. The contact sent a jolt through her that went straight to her bones, a current of the past rushing back in all at once. "I'm sorry," he said suddenly, his rough thumb brushing against the crescent moon of raised skin. "About everything. About leaving like that." Aurora exhaled slowly, watching their skin touch—his dark against her pale. So much had changed, and yet the simple fact of his presence, of him in London in Silas's bar, feeling startlingly right. "That was a long time ago, Aiden." "Not so long," he corrected gently. She looked up into his face, saw the years etched around his eyes, the lines at the corners of his mouth that hadn't been there before. Fifty-year-old grief and regret stared back at her, filled with the things they'd never said, the paths they'd never taken. And between them sat everything they had lost, and could never get back.