Her Game--The Glass Test

Chapter Six: A Guest from the Past

London · Bloomsbury

January 18, 2025 — 18:30

Eva was slicing an onion.

It was only the second time in her life she had ever attempted such a task. The first had been the previous week, when she tried to cook a meal for Liam and ended up slicing her finger instead. When he came home, she was standing in the middle of the kitchen with a bleeding fingertip raised in the air, looking like a child who had done something terribly wrong.

He had said nothing.

He simply took her hand, rinsed the cut beneath running water, placed a bandage over it, and gently ushered her out of the kitchen. Twenty minutes later, he returned with two plates of pasta.

“Just sit and wait to eat,” he had told her.

From that moment on, sitting and waiting for dinner became her sole responsibility.

But today she had insisted on helping. He had glanced at her for a moment, then handed her an onion and a knife.

“Chop it for me.”

Now she stood at the counter, the sharp scent of onion stinging her eyes. She blinked, though she did not cry. In the past six years, she had wept in front of only one person—and that person was standing behind her now, placing marinated chicken wings into the oven.

“A friend is coming over,” he said, closing the oven door. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Eva’s hand paused mid-motion.

“What friend?”

“Leo. Classmate，and one of my partners.” He stepped behind her and gently took the knife from her hand. “You’re cutting far too slowly. Go wash your face. I’ll finish it.”

Eva stepped aside and turned on the tap.

Leo.

She had never seen the name before. But the word partner summoned another name in her mind—Chris. The married man whose wife suspected him of infidelity, the very man she had once been hired to test.

“Just him?” she asked.

“Mm.” Liam lowered his head, slicing the onion with swift, practiced precision. “He just broke up with someone. He’s not in the best mood, so I thought I’d bring him over for a proper meal.”

Eva dried her face and leaned against the counter, watching him.

“How did it end?”

“I’m not sure. He didn’t go into detail.” He paused briefly. “All I know is that his girlfriend was the one who ended it. It came out of nowhere—three months ago they were still discussing an engagement.”

The tap continued to drip. Eva reached out and tightened it.

Three months ago.

How many assignments had she taken three months ago? Six? Seven? One of them had been a designer—around thirty, handsome enough. On the third day of the assignment he had already been holding a ring, asking her—

“Have you ever thought about stopping?”

She had laughed at the time. “Stopping for what?”

“With me.”

Eva closed her eyes.

The water in the sink had long since drained away, leaving only the last few reluctant drops, each one falling after an uncomfortably long pause.

“What’s his name?” she asked.

“Leo.” Liam glanced back at her. “Leo White. Why?”

“Nothing,” she said lightly. “It’s a pleasant name.”

The doorbell rang.

He stood at the doorway holding a bottle of red wine, wearing a worn leather jacket. His brown hair was slightly disheveled, as though tousled by the wind—or perhaps arranged that way on purpose.

“Ten minutes late,” Liam said, taking the wine. “Traffic?”

“Forgot to buy the wine and had to turn back.” Leo slipped off his shoes and lifted his head. “That thing you—”

Then he saw Eva.

She stood in the middle of the living room, having just stepped out of the kitchen, droplets of water still clinging to her hands.

His movement stopped.

Only for a second.

But Eva noticed.

Within that single second, his eyes shifted—from confusion, to recognition, and then to something else entirely. It happened too quickly for her to decipher whether it was surprise, anger, or something far more dangerous she dared not name.

“This is Eva,” Liam said. “My girlfriend.”

Leo looked at her.

“Eva,” he repeated.

Eva extended her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

He lowered his gaze to her hand and took it.

His hand was cold—the chill of a London winter's night gathered in his palm.

Leo did not release her hand. Instead, he lifted it and brushed a kiss across the back of it. The tenderness in his gaze, however, felt strangely excessive, almost oily in its sentimentality. Then, very slowly, he said, “You look remarkably like…”

Eva’s heart seemed poised to leap from her chest. She withdrew her hand, a faint mixture of embarrassment and allure touching her expression.

“Don’t tell me I resemble your ex-girlfriend.”

He laughed. “You’re overthinking it. You remind me of a celebrity—a stunning beauty. What was her name again…?”

“This is Leo,” Liam interjected. “My best friend. We’ve known each other for twenty years.”

“Twenty years,” she echoed. “Then you must know each other very well.”

“Well enough to know every secret the other has,” Leo said, setting the wine bottle on the dining table. His eyes did not return to her. “Except perhaps those from the past few months.”

Liam headed into the kitchen to fetch the wine glasses.

Only the two of them remained in the living room.

Leo turned slightly, positioning his back toward the kitchen, and looked directly at her.

His voice dropped to a whisper so quiet that only she could hear it.

“Long time no see.”

Eva did not move.

“Three months ago, at a bar called ‘The Blind Pig’,” he continued softly. “You were wearing a dark green dress. You ordered a gin and tonic. You told me your name was Ella, that you were an illustrator who had just moved to London from Brighton.”

Eva remembered the dress. The gin and tonic. The name Ella.

And she remembered him.

Not because of his face—after more than a hundred assignments, the faces blurred together.

But because of something he had said that night.

On the third day of the assignment, he had held out a ring and asked her, “Have you ever thought about stopping?”

And she had told him no.

Then he smiled and said, “Then I can wait.”

Now he stood before her, and there was no trace of laughter in his eyes.

“Don’t tell him,” Eva said.

Leo looked at her.

“Why?”

“Because—”

“Because what?” A faint smile touched his lips, soundless and thin. “Because this time you’re real? Are you?”

Eva did not answer. She knew that if Liam ever discovered that his closest friend had nearly slept with her—had spoken of loving her with apparent sincerity, and in the process lost the woman he had once intended to marry—he would inevitably see her as a bad woman. Even though Liam already knew her past was far from spotless, such a thing happening between him and his best friend would create a peculiar, painful discomfort no explanation could soothe.

Footsteps sounded from the kitchen.

Leo stepped back, his expression settling once more into the weary look of a man who had just endured a breakup—the same expression he had worn when he first entered.

“Good wine,” he said loudly. “Where did you buy it?”

—

Dinner lasted two hours.

Leo sat across from Eva, speaking mostly with Liam. Work, architecture, a troublesome client, a project that had gone disastrously wrong—the ordinary topics of conversation between friends, so ordinary that nothing about them betrayed the slightest fracture.

And yet, each time Eva lifted her head, she found him looking at her.

Not staring—looking. As though confirming something.

“How did you two meet?” Leo asked suddenly.

Liam turned the chicken wings over. “At a construction site.”

“Which one?”

“The old warehouse on the South Bank.”

Leo smiled. Eva recognized that smile—the silent understanding exchanged between men, the unspoken message meaning you got lucky.

But the words he spoke carried a different meaning entirely.

“That’s good,” he said. “Better than knowing someone for three years only to part ways.”

Liam’s movement paused.

Eva noticed his fingers tighten slightly around the stem of his wine glass.

“Leo,” he said.

“It’s fine.” Leo rose from his chair, picking up his empty glass. “I’ll get some water.”

He walked into the kitchen.

Eva watched his back. The leather jacket was gone; he wore only a gray sweatshirt, the faded outline of a deer printed across it.

She remembered that night—he had been wearing the same sweatshirt. Outside the back door of the bar, he had run after her and asked, “Are you really leaving?”

She had said yes.

He had said, “At least tell me your name.”

She had said, “Ella.”

“That’s not your real name.”

“Then pretend it is.”

Then she had climbed into a taxi and never looked back.

And now he stood in her boyfriend’s kitchen, pouring her a glass of water.

—

When Leo finally left, it was nearly eleven.

Liam walked him to the door. The two men lingered outside for a while, their voices too quiet for Eva to make out. She sat on the sofa, pretending to watch television.

The door closed.

Liam returned and sat beside her, resting an arm across her shoulders.

“He likes you,” he said.

Eva’s heart lurched violently. She fixed her gaze on Liam’s eyes.

“What?”

“Leo. The way he looks at you—it’s not quite right.”

Eva parted her lips, uncertain what she could possibly say.

Liam smiled faintly and squeezed her shoulder. “I’m joking. That’s just the way he looks at everyone. Don’t mind it.”

Eva leaned into his embrace.

“I won’t.”

His heartbeat sounded beside her ear—steady, even, one quiet rhythm after another.

She remembered what Leo had said while seeing her to the door. Liam had been putting on his coat in the hallway; Leo had taken the opportunity to lean close to her, just for a second, his voice so low it was almost inaudible.

“I’m not exposing you—not because I’m afraid it would hurt him.”

She had said nothing.

He had continued, “It’s because I don’t want him to go through it again.”

Then he straightened, smiling as he bid Liam goodbye before disappearing into the winter night of London.

Now she lay in another man’s arms, listening to the measured cadence of his heart, thinking about those words.

Go through it again.

Again—what?

Another test?

Another deception?

Or—another loss?

She closed her eyes.

Outside, the rain had begun again. London’s winter rain—so fine it was almost mist, so cold it seemed to seep into the bone.

Her phone vibrated once inside her bag.

She did not look.

But she knew who it was.

—

2:17 a.m.

Eva woke.

Beside her, Liam slept soundly, his breathing slow and steady.

Gently she lifted his arm from her waist, rose from the bed, and walked into the living room.

Her phone screen was glowing.

One message. An unfamiliar number.

“I won’t tell him. But you owe me an explanation.”

—L

Eva stared at the solitary “L.”

Three seconds later, she replied:

“What exactly do you want explained?”

Sent.

She silenced the phone and slipped it back into her bag.

Then she returned to bed and lay down.

Liam’s arm settled across her again—instinctively, naturally, as though it had done so a hundred times before.

By the time dawn arrived, there was still no reply.

She knew the game was not over.

Only the rules had changed.