Biddies Pub, late Friday evening. The karaoke machine was wheezing its way through pop classics, the pub lights were low and golden, and the whole town seemed to be inside.

Patrick leaned against the booth, pretending he wasn’t three sips past his limit and four heartbeats from doing something stupid. Across the table, she was laughing — not at his joke, not at something Hughie said — but at something he said. Her new boyfriend. One of the rugby lads. Big shoulders, slick smile, no idea what he had in his hands.

Joey was sprawled on a stool beside him, already buzzed and arguing with Claire over the difference between a good pint and a watered-down one. Gibsie was shouting over the music. Shannon was filming something. And Patrick?

Patrick was watching her. Her smile. Her hand resting on someone else's knee. Her eyes that used to only look for his.

Hughie bumped his shoulder. “You alright?”

“Peachy,” Patrick muttered.

“Liar.”

“Don’t.”

But Hughie already stood, dragging Patrick up by the arm. “Come on. It’s our turn.”

Patrick didn’t argue. He never really could with Hughie. They reached the stage, microphones passed like lifelines. Hughie gave him a grin — small, knowing — and pointed at the screen as the song loaded.

“Undressed” by Sombr.

Patrick exhaled hard. “You did not.”

Hughie only smirked. “Let it out, man.”

The first chords hit like a bruise. Hughie took the opening lines, voice quiet, raw in the way he only got when it mattered.

Then it was Patrick’s turn.

“I don't want the children of another man to have the eyes of the girl I won’t forget…”

He didn’t look at the screen. He didn’t have to.

His eyes found her instantly, across the crowded bar.

She froze.

Glass halfway to her lips, boyfriend still talking beside her, and she wasn’t hearing a single word. Because Patrick was looking at her like he meant every syllable. Like he'd carried those words around in his chest for months. Like he'd bled them into every moment she didn’t see.

She blinked fast. Her jaw clenched. She looked away.

But not before Patrick saw the way her eyes shimmered.

He finished the verse with his heart in his throat, handed off the mic without fanfare, and stepped down.

As he walked back past her booth, her fingers twitched against the table — like she almost reached for him.

Almost.

But she didn’t.

And neither did he.