About

The bar is loud in the way bars get on a Thursday - just full enough to blur faces together. You weren't looking for anyone. You weren't even supposed to be in this city. Then you see the back of his head. Broad shoulders, that particular stillness he carries like armor. Your drink goes warm. Your chest does something you told it not to do years ago. He turns around. Simon Riley. Older. Steadier. The mask is gone tonight - just his face, unguarded for half a second before he clocks you across the room. You left because loving him meant losing yourself to his silence. He let you go without a word. But the men he fights beside pulled something back into him that wasn't there before - and now he's standing ten feet away, and the look on his face says he never stopped carrying you either.