The rain fell in a relentless, grey sheet, blurring the London cityscape into an impressionist painting of smeared headlights and slick, black asphalt. For some, a Saturday like this was an excuse for cozy domesticity. For Clara, it was a summons. Rain had a way of driving ghosts indoors, and her small apartment could feel crowded on days like these. She needed to be somewhere else, somewhere filled with the ghosts of strangers, where her own might feel less conspicuous.

That was how she found herself in the sprawling, cavernous expanse of the Portobello Green Market, under the relative shelter of its vast, echoing roof. It was a cathedral of forgotten things, a chaotic library of objects that had outlived their owners. The air was thick with the scent of damp wool, cold metal, and the sweet, dusty perfume of decaying wood. It was a place of endings, a boneyard of stories, and Clara felt strangely at home here.

She moved through the labyrinthine aisles with no agenda, letting her fingers trail over the detritus of countless lives. A row of tarnished silver lockets, their faces blank, their secrets held tight within. A stack of vintage postcards, their faded ink speaking of long-ago holidays and affections. Each object was a quiet tragedy, a testament to the fact that everything, eventually, gets left behind.

A worn leather wallet, soft and supple with age, caught her eye. It lay open in a glass case, its empty compartments exposed. Instantly, a memory, sharp and unbidden, ambushed her. Liam’s wallet. The feel of it in her hands as she’d slipped a picture of them inside on their first anniversary. The scent of well-worn leather and him. He’d laughed when he found it, that warm, easy sound that used to be the bedrock of her world. “Now you can haunt my finances, too,” he’d joked. The memory was so vivid she could almost feel the rough texture of his jacket under her hand. A familiar ache bloomed in her chest, and she forced herself to move on.

She navigated deeper into the market’s heart, past stalls hawking military medals and chipped porcelain dolls with unnervingly vacant eyes. Her grief was a physical presence today, a cold stone in her stomach. It had been two years, four months, and twelve days. The world had kept spinning, seasons had turned, but a part of her remained frozen on the day of the accident, a silent monument to a future that had vanished. People told her time would heal. Time didn’t heal; it sanded the edges of a wound down, making it less raw, but the scar remained, a permanent part of her topography.

Tucked away in a dimly lit corner, run by an old man with a cloud of white hair and glasses perched on the end of his nose, was a stall dedicated entirely to ephemera. Maps, journals, letters, photographs—the paper souls of the dead. It was here she saw it.

It wasn't much to look at: a small, unassuming wooden box, about the size of a shoebox, its dark wood scuffed and time-worn. The clasp was rusted shut. A small, handwritten tag tied to it with twine simply read: “Letters, 1946-1948.”

Curiosity, a feeling she hadn’t experienced with any real strength in years, stirred within her. As a restorer of old books, she had a professional reverence for paper and ink, for the stories they held. She asked the proprietor if she could see it. With a nod, he produced a small key and opened the rusted clasp.

The scent that rose from the box was intoxicating—the scent of history, of patiently waiting paper and faded ink. Inside, nestled together, were dozens of envelopes, tied in neat bundles with faded silk ribbon. The paper was thin, almost translucent in places, covered in an elegant, looping script. She gently lifted the top letter from its bundle. The return address was from a naval base in Portsmouth. The letter was addressed to an “Eleanor” in London.

My Dearest Eleanor, the letter began. The sea is a lonely place tonight. It stretches out into an endless, grey emptiness, and the only thing that feels real is the thought of you. I trace the shape of your name in my mind and it becomes a lighthouse, guiding me back to shore…

Clara’s breath hitched. It felt like an unforgivable intrusion, like reading a private prayer. Yet she couldn’t look away. This was the archaeology of a heart, laid bare in ink. A love that had existed in a world recovering from war, a love that had survived on paper and hope across a lonely sea. A complete story. A story that had an ending, for better or worse. Unlike her own, which had simply… stopped.

She was so engrossed in the fragile world within the box that she didn’t notice the man who had stopped beside her until he spoke.

“It’s a strange feeling, isn’t it?”

His voice was a low, resonant baritone, quiet but clear enough to cut through the market’s gentle hum. Startled, Clara looked up. He was tall, with a lean frame beneath a well-worn tweed jacket. His dark hair was damp from the rain, curling slightly at his collar, and his eyes were a shade of blue so deep and clear they seemed to hold a light of their own. He was looking not at her, but at the letter in her hand, a thoughtful, almost melancholy expression on his face.

“Holding someone else’s past in your hands,” he continued, finally meeting her gaze. “It feels both sacred and like a trespass.”

His words so perfectly mirrored her own thoughts that she was momentarily speechless. “Yes,” she finally managed. “Exactly that.”

“Find anything interesting?” he asked, his gaze gentle, his smile small and hesitant, as if he were afraid of startling her.

“A love story, I think,” she said, her voice soft. “From a sailor to his girl after the war.”

“The best kind,” he murmured, his eyes lingering on the box. “They had to work for it. They had to pour their souls onto a page and wait weeks for a reply. Every word had to count.” He looked back at her. “We’ve lost that art. Now we have emojis.”

A small, genuine laugh escaped Clara’s lips before she could stop it. The sound was so foreign she almost didn’t recognize it as her own. The man’s smile widened in response, reaching his eyes and making them crinkle at the corners. The sight sent an absurdly pleasant warmth through her.

“I’m Julian,” he said, extending a hand.

She hesitated for a fraction of a second before placing her hand in his. His grip was firm and warm. “Clara.”

“Clara,” he repeated, his voice giving the name a certain weight. “The book restorer.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “How did you…?”

He gestured with a slight nod towards her hands. “You have a conservator’s hands. Steady, patient. And there’s a faint smudge of iron gall ink on your thumb. It’s a very specific shade.”

She looked down at her thumb, and sure enough, a faint, brownish smudge marred her skin. She’d been working on a 17th-century manuscript just yesterday. His power of observation was unnerving and impressive in equal measure. “That’s… remarkably perceptive.”

“I work with old things, too,” he said by way of explanation, though he didn’t elaborate. He motioned back to the box. “Are you going to buy them? Give their story a new home?”

“I was thinking about it,” she admitted. “It feels like they should stay together.”

“They should,” he agreed, his expression turning serious again. “Scattering a story like that to the winds seems like the real trespass.” His gaze was intense, and for a moment, Clara felt as if he wasn't just talking about the letters anymore. It felt like he understood something fundamental about her, about the precious, broken pieces she carried inside her. The connection was so immediate, so potent, it frightened her.

It was too much. The intimacy of the letters, the unexpected intensity of this stranger—it was all cracking the carefully constructed shell of her solitude. The ghost of Liam was screaming now, a silent, furious alarm.

“Well, I should…” she began, starting to pull away, her default retreat mechanism kicking in.

“You should buy them,” Julian finished for her, his voice soft but firm. He stepped back, creating space between them, as if sensing her panic. “A story like that belongs with someone who knows how to care for it.” He gave the proprietor a nod, then looked back at Clara. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Clara the book restorer.”

And then, with another one of those small, understanding smiles, he turned and walked away, disappearing into the crowded aisles of the market as quietly as he had appeared.

Clara stood frozen for a moment, her heart beating a fast, erratic rhythm. The encounter had lasted no more than five minutes, but it had left her feeling strangely exposed, seen in a way she hadn’t been in two years.

She bought the box of letters.

Walking home under the grey, weeping sky, the cool weight of the box tucked under her arm, her mind replayed the encounter. Julian. The name settled in her thoughts, an unwelcome but persistent guest. The way he had looked at her, as if he knew the difference between being alone and being lonely. The easy intelligence in his eyes. The warmth of his hand.

Back in the sanctuary of her apartment, the silence felt different. It was no longer a comfortable, static quiet filled only with her memories of Liam. Now it was a charged, expectant silence, humming with the ghost of a new voice.

She placed the wooden box on her coffee table but didn’t open it. Instead, she walked to her bedroom, her feet moving on autopilot. She picked up the single, silver-framed photograph from her bedside table. This time, it was already face-up. She’d forgotten to turn it back over this morning.

Liam’s perfect, handsome face smiled out at her, his eyes full of laughter and adoration for the woman—the girl—tucked under his arm. That girl, with her unguarded heart and her belief in forever, felt like a stranger now.

A wave of guilt, so powerful it made her physically nauseous, washed over her. She had laughed with another man. She had felt a spark of connection, a warmth that had nothing to do with Liam. It felt like a profound betrayal, a desecration of the sacred space his memory occupied.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her fingers tracing the cold glass over his face.

The rain beat a steady, mournful rhythm against her windowpane. She was apologizing to a photograph, to a ghost. But as she stood there, clutching the image of her lost love, she couldn’t escape the disquieting truth. For the first time in two years, four months, and twelve days, another name, another face, had managed to echo louder than his. And that was the most terrifying betrayal of all.

Sunday dawned not with light, but with a deeper shade of grey. The rain had softened overnight to a persistent, melancholic drizzle that clung to the windowpanes like a shroud. For Clara, the apartment, once her sanctuary, now felt like a stage. In one corner stood her quiet, ordered life of restoration and remembrance. In the center, sitting on the low coffee table like a piece of unexploded ordnance, was the small wooden box.

She had left it there after returning from the market, a silent testament to the previous day’s strange encounter. It was an intrusion, a foreign object in the carefully curated museum of her grief. For two years, every object in her home had a story, and every story was tied to Liam. The ceramic mug he’d bought her on a whim, the worn armchair he used to read in, the throw blanket he’d wrapped around her shoulders on chilly nights. Her apartment wasn’t just a living space; it was the cartography of their shared memory. This box, however, held a story that was not her own, brought into her life by a man whose name she now found herself actively trying to forget.

Julian.

The name had substance. It had texture. It replayed in her mind with the same low, resonant timbre of his voice. She tried to smother it with work. In her workshop, she returned to Wuthering Heights, to the familiar, methodical process of mending its broken spine. But her hands, usually so steady, felt clumsy. Her focus, usually so absolute, kept fracturing. The ghost of Catherine Earnshaw crying for her Heathcliff on the moors felt too close, too loud. All love stories, she thought with a bitter pang, were just ghost stories in the end.

Defeated, she abandoned the book and returned to the living room, surrendering. The box drew her in. She sank onto the rug before the coffee table and lifted the lid. The scent of old paper and time rose to meet her. She wasn't just a book restorer; she was an archivist of emotion, and this was an irresistible archive.

She chose a bundle at random, the faded blue silk ribbon crumbling slightly under her touch. The letters were from Arthur to his Eleanor. She spread them out, arranging them by date, her conservator’s instincts taking over. His handwriting was neat, disciplined, but imbued with a desperate energy, the loops and crosses of his letters leaning forward as if eager to reach their destination. She began to read.

October 17, 1946.

My Dearest Eleanor,

Another week has passed. I measure time not in days, but in the distance between this letter and the hope of your reply. The work here is hard, and the men are good, but at night, when the sounds of the base die down, the silence is a physical thing. It’s in those moments I allow myself to think of you properly. I remember the exact shade of your eyes when you laugh. I remember the feel of your hand in mine as we walked along the South Bank. These memories are more real to me than the steel and sea that surround me. They are my rations. They keep me alive. Hold onto hope for me, my love. I am holding onto you.

All my love, always,

Arthur

Clara’s throat tightened. Arthur’s longing was a clean, sharp blade of devotion. It was pure. It was simple. He had a lighthouse—his Eleanor—to guide him through the grey emptiness. Clara’s lighthouse had been extinguished, leaving her adrift in a permanent fog. The parallel was agonizing. She had also measured time by Liam, treasured small memories like precious rations. The difference was, Arthur’s story had the promise of a reunion. Hers was a book with the final chapter torn out.

She read on for hours, losing herself in their story. She learned of Arthur’s younger brother who had been lost in the war, of Eleanor’s job as a nurse, of their shared dream to one day buy a small cottage in Devon with a garden for her roses. Through his words, Eleanor became a vivid presence: resilient, kind, the steady anchor to his drifting ship. Clara felt a growing affection for this woman she would never know, a kinship with this fellow keeper of a heart held miles away.

In one of the later letters, dated Spring 1948, she found something tucked inside the folded paper. A pressed flower. It was a forget-me-not, its tiny blue petals flattened by time into a delicate, papery ghost of its former self.

Eleanor, Arthur had written. I found this growing wild near the cliffs. It seemed a fitting messenger. Do not forget me. I am coming home soon.

A tear she hadn’t realized was forming fell onto her hand. She quickly wiped it away, her professionalism warring with her emotion. Moisture was the enemy of old paper. She carefully placed the flower and the letter aside, her heart aching for Arthur and Eleanor, for all the love stories that depended on hope and survival. She felt a fierce need for them to have had their happy ending, their cottage in Devon. It felt imperative. If their love could survive a war, then perhaps… perhaps love itself wasn't as fragile as her own story had led her to believe.

The thought was so jarring, so contrary to the narrative she had lived by for two years, that it frightened her. She carefully bundled the letters back together and closed the lid on the box, the silence of the apartment rushing back in, now filled with the whispers of three ghosts instead of one: Liam, Arthur, and Eleanor.

On Monday morning, Clara forced herself back into a routine. Routine was armor. She had run out of a specific type of acid-free, archival-grade tissue paper she needed for reinforcing the brittle pages of the Brontë novel. There was only one place in the city that stocked it, a specialist conservation supplier called "Papyrus & Co.," tucked away on a quiet street in Bloomsbury. It was a place for professionals, academics, and serious archivists—not a place one stumbled into by chance.

The bell above the door chimed softly as she entered. The shop smelled of her workshop, but amplified: a potent, comforting wave of paper, binding glue, and leather. An elderly woman behind the counter gave her a knowledgeable nod of greeting. Clara was a regular.

She was running her fingers along the different weights of Japanese tissue paper, her mind focused on the task, when a familiar voice spoke from beside her.

“A difficult choice. It’s all in the gsm, isn’t it?”

Clara froze, her hand hovering over a roll of paper. It couldn’t be. She turned slowly, her heart beginning a frantic, unwelcome rhythm.

It was Julian.

He stood there, looking just as he had in the market, though today he wore a dark peacoat against the chill. He wasn't smiling this time. His expression was one of quiet curiosity, his blue eyes taking in the rolls of paper, then her, with the same startling intensity.

“What are you doing here?” The question came out sharper than she intended.

He didn't seem offended. “I told you, I work with old things, too,” he said simply. “I’m a historical consultant. I help private collectors and small museums authenticate and preserve documents.” He gestured vaguely around the shop. “This place is my second home.”

It made a terrifying kind of sense. Of course he would be here. It was the logical intersection of their professional worlds. It wasn't a coincidence, not really. It was a probability. And that somehow made it worse. It meant this might happen again.

“I… see,” she said, turning back to the papers, trying to regain her composure.

“Did you buy the letters?” he asked, his voice softer.

She nodded, not looking at him. “I did.”

“And?” he prompted gently. “Was it a good story?”

“They were… very much in love,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. The memory of the forget-me-not, of Arthur’s devotion, made her throat ache.

“I’m glad,” Julian said, and he sounded like he truly meant it. “I was hoping they would end up with you. I saw the way you held that first letter. Like it was a prayer.”

She risked a glance at him. He was watching her, his expression unreadable but not unkind. There was an empathy there that felt dangerous. It invited confidence. It made her want to tell him about Arthur and Eleanor, about the pressed flower, about the way their story had unearthed a feeling in her she thought had been long buried.

“I have to…” she started, her standard escape line.

“Clara,” he cut in, his tone gentle but firm, stopping her retreat. “I’m not trying to intrude. But I am curious. The story in that box… it clearly moved you. And I get the feeling you don’t get moved easily.” He paused, and his next words were careful, deliberate. “I was wondering if you would allow me to buy you a coffee. A proper one this time. One you don’t feel the need to run away from.”

The invitation hung in the air between them, shimmering with possibility and peril. Her mind screamed No. It was a betrayal. It was disrespectful to Liam, to the magnitude of what they’d had. Loving Liam wasn’t just a part of her past; it was her defining characteristic, the very architecture of her identity. To sit down for coffee with another man felt like taking a sledgehammer to that foundation.

But her heart, that traitorous, foolish organ, whispered a hesitant, tired, Yes. It was just coffee. It was a conversation with an intelligent, interesting man with whom she shared a rare professional passion. It meant nothing.

It means everything, the ghost of Liam screamed in her mind.

She looked at Julian, at his patient, waiting eyes. He wasn’t asking for her future. He was asking for twenty minutes of her time. And for the first time, the thought of saying yes didn’t just feel like a betrayal. It felt, terrifyingly, like a choice. Her choice.

“Okay,” she heard herself say, the single word feeling like a monumental leap from a cliff’s edge. “Yes. Coffee.”

A slow, genuine smile transformed Julian’s face, lighting up his eyes. It was a smile of pure, unadulterated pleasure, and it struck her with the force of a physical blow. It was beautiful.

“Good,” he said softly. “There’s a quiet place around the corner. When are you free?”

“Now is fine,” she said, the words coming out before she could second-guess them.

“Perfect.”

After she paid for her supplies, she walked with him out of the shop and down the street. Every step felt unreal, every breath a conscious effort. She was acutely aware of the space between them, of the way his coat brushed against her arm.

When he held the door of the coffee shop open for her, she paused on the threshold, a wave of dizziness washing over her. She reached into her pocket, her fingers closing around her phone. Without looking, she knew what her screen saver was: a picture of her and Liam on that bench in the park, the day he’d proposed. The day he’d promised her forever.

She was about to step into a warm, bright café with Julian, but in her mind, she was still sitting on that cold, lonely bench with a ghost. And she had no idea how to exist in both places at once.

The coffee shop was an oasis of calm. Unlike the bustling, transient energy of The Daily Grind, this place—"The Scriptorium," according to the elegant gold leaf on the window—was hushed and intimate. It was lined with dark wood bookshelves filled with leather-bound classics, the tables were small and secluded, and the air smelled of coffee, old paper, and beeswax. It was a place designed for quiet conversation, a place with no easy escape.

They chose a table in a secluded alcove, next to a window streaked with rain. For a few agonizing moments after their coffees arrived—a black Americano for her, a flat white for him—a heavy silence settled between them. Clara’s hands were wrapped around her warm mug, a defensive posture. Her mind was a frantic cacophony of warring voices. The ghost of Liam sat in the chair beside her, a cold, judgmental presence. Every beat of her heart felt like a betrayal.

Julian seemed entirely unperturbed by her silence. He simply watched her, not with impatience, but with a placid, waiting quality, as if he understood that she was a long-lost ruin and he was an archaeologist willing to wait for the dust to settle.

“So,” he began, his voice a low, gentle rumble that seemed to physically calm the frantic fluttering in her chest. “Tell me about Arthur and Eleanor. You left me on a cliffhanger.”

The letters. It was safe territory. Gratefully, she seized upon it. “They met just before he was stationed in Portsmouth,” she began, finding her voice. “She was a nurse. He was in the Royal Navy. The letters… they’re not grand, poetic declarations. They’re small, intimate. He writes about the terrible food on the base, about a friend who snores. She writes about her patients, about a leaky tap in her flat.”

“The small details are what make a life, aren’t they?” Julian mused, stirring his coffee. “The grand gestures are for show. The real story is in the leaky taps.”

“Exactly,” Clara said, a flicker of genuine enthusiasm breaking through her reserve. “And through all these mundane details, this incredible, resilient love story unfolds. He’s lonely and scared, but he never says it outright. Instead, he tells her he remembers the scent of the soap she uses. She’s exhausted and worried, but she just tells him she’s knitting him a new jumper for when he returns. Their love is in the subtext.”

She found herself describing the pressed forget-me-not, Arthur’s simple, powerful plea for remembrance. As she spoke, she could almost feel the fragile, papery texture of the flower under her own fingertips.

Julian listened with an unnerving stillness, his blue eyes fixed on her. He didn’t interrupt, didn’t offer platitudes. He just… listened. When she finished, he was quiet for a moment, his gaze thoughtful.

“It sounds like their love was an anchor,” he finally said. “Something real to hold onto in a world that had gone mad. It’s a rare thing to find.”

“Yes,” she whispered, the word catching in her throat. An anchor. That’s what Liam had been for her. Her anchor, her compass, her true north. And she was lost at sea.

“It makes you wonder what happened to them,” Julian continued, seemingly oblivious to the storm he had just inadvertently unleashed inside her. “Did he come home? Did they get their cottage in Devon? Did she plant her roses?”

“I don’t know,” Clara admitted. “The letters end in late 1948. There’s nothing after that.” The thought that their story might not have had a happy ending was suddenly unbearable. It had to. For their sake, and for her own.

“Perhaps that’s the beauty of it,” Julian suggested, his voice gentle. “The story isn’t finished. It leaves room for hope. You get to decide what happened next.”

His optimism felt like a foreign language. Hope had not been part of her vocabulary for a very long time. She looked down at her coffee, at the dark, swirling liquid. It felt safer than looking at him.

“What about you, Clara?” he asked, his voice shifting slightly, becoming more personal. “What drew you to this world? Mending broken books seems like a very specific calling.”

The question was about her. Not the grieving shell she had become, but her. Her work. Her passion. The part of her that existed Before.

“I’ve always loved books,” she began, hesitantly at first. “My father was a librarian. I grew up surrounded by them. To me, a book is more than just a story. It’s a physical object with its own life. It gets passed down, it gets worn out, it gets loved until it falls apart.” She looked up, meeting his eyes, a forgotten passion rekindling within her. “To take something broken, something that someone cherished, and make it whole again… it feels like… like honoring a promise. Like saving a life, in a way.”

The moment the words left her mouth, she felt a flush of self-consciousness. It sounded so dramatic, so sentimental.

But Julian wasn’t smiling condescendingly. He was looking at her with an expression of profound understanding. “Saving a life,” he repeated softly. “I think that’s the most beautiful description of a job I’ve ever heard.”

And there it was. A moment. The low hum of the café, the rain on the window, the ghost in the chair beside her—it all faded into a muted background hum. For a single, suspended beat in time, it was just the two of them, connected by a shared reverence for the past and for things worth saving. She saw in his eyes not just intelligence, but a deep, resonant empathy. A flicker of warmth spread through her chest, a feeling so unfamiliar she almost didn’t recognize it. It was a spark. A dangerous, terrifying, wonderful spark.

Then, as quickly as it came, the moment was shattered by the brutal return of reality. Guilt, cold and sharp, pierced through the warmth. Liam’s face materialized in her mind, his eyes full of a love she had promised to cherish forever. What was she doing, sitting here, smiling with a stranger, feeling this… this thing? This was a betrayal on a cellular level.

Her posture stiffened. She pulled her hands back from her mug and placed them in her lap. The emotional drawbridge she had lowered for a moment was yanked back up with a clang.

Julian, ever perceptive, noticed the shift immediately. The warmth in his own expression cooled slightly, replaced by a polite, professional distance. He didn’t push. He respected the wall she had just rebuilt.

“To answer your unspoken question,” he said, smoothly changing the subject back to safer ground, “my own work is less romantic than yours. I’m a researcher. A glorified history detective. Right now, I’m working for a client, tracing the provenance of a collection of 18th-century medical texts. It’s mostly cross-referencing shipping manifests and auction records. Not quite as poetic as saving lives.”

He spoke of his work with a detached professionalism, but she could hear the underlying passion. He was a storyteller, just like her. He just worked with facts instead of fiction.

They finished their coffees in a more subdued atmosphere, the conversation polite and impersonal. When the bill came, he insisted on paying, brushing off her protests with a simple, “My invitation.”

As they stood to leave, a wave of awkwardness descended. What now? A handshake? A polite nod? He had fulfilled his promise of a proper coffee, and she had fulfilled hers by not running away. The transaction felt complete.

Outside, the rain had finally stopped. The air was clean and cold, and the wet pavements reflected the pearly grey sky.

“Thank you for the coffee, Julian,” she said, her voice formal.

“Thank you for the conversation, Clara,” he replied, his gaze serious. He stood there for a moment, as if debating whether to say more. Then, his phone, which had been silent on the table, began to vibrate in his coat pocket.

He pulled it out, his eyes glancing at the screen. A shadow passed over his face, a subtle tightening of his jaw. “Excuse me,” he said, turning away from her slightly to answer it. “I have to take this.”

His voice was low, but in the quiet street, she couldn’t help but overhear.

“Yes?” he said, his tone clipped, all warmth gone. It was the voice of a different person. “What is it? … No, no change. The situation is stable.” He paused, listening. Clara felt a prickle of unease. This was a private call. She should walk away. But she was rooted to the spot.

“Listen to me,” Julian’s voice was a low, urgent command now. “You will do nothing until you hear from me. Nothing. Is that understood? Just keep things quiet.”

He ended the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket. When he turned back to her, his charming, easygoing mask was perfectly back in place, but she had seen the crack. She had heard the steel beneath the velvet.

“Apologies,” he said with a smooth smile. “Work.”

“Of course,” she said, her own voice sounding thin. The phrase ‘no change’ echoed in her mind. The situation is stable. Keep things quiet. It sounded… clinical. Dangerous, even. It didn’t sound like it was about 18th-century medical texts.

“Well,” he said, his eyes holding hers, “I hope I’ll see you again, Clara.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of intent.

Before she could reply, he gave her a final nod, and walked away, his long strides carrying him down the street until he turned a corner and was gone.

Clara stood alone on the wet pavement, her mind reeling. The warmth of their shared moment in the café felt a lifetime away, replaced by a cold, creeping dread. She had sat down for coffee with a man who felt like a kindred spirit, a man who understood the language of loss and memory. But she had walked away from a stranger, a man who spoke in code, a man with secrets far deeper and darker than she could have imagined.

The ghost of Liam felt less like a memory now, and more like a warning.