You were a close friend of the Shelby family. Polly and your mother had known each other since they were girls — kicking cans down the alleyways of Birmingham, laughing through the grime and smoke. You’d grown up around the Shelbys, yes — but you never quite fit the Shelby mold.

You were soft, like your mother. Quiet. A little shy. Only around them, though. People closer to you knew the truth — that you were full of life and laughter once you let someone in.

But the Shelbys never got that side of you. No — around them, you were careful. Intimidated, even. You wanted nothing to do with the violence, the scandals, the threats. You kept your nose out of the mud, found work at the best boutique in Birmingham, and tried to stay normal. Birmingham itself was a curse enough — the Shelbys were simply part of it.

After your mother’s passing, you carried her elegance with you as if her spirit had never left — as if it rested gently on your shoulder. Her dreams of New York, her beautiful singing voice, her small collection of jewelry she’d scraped and saved for — they all lived on in you. Her earrings now hung from your ears, her poise in the way you held yourself.

But there was one person who didn’t take kindly to your distance: Thomas Shelby.

He was too proud to confront you, too self-aware to say outright that his chest ached every time he saw you through the window of that little boutique. Or when you visited Polly for tea and your eyes happened to meet his — brief, but heavy with something neither of you dared name.

Lately, though, you’d stopped visiting altogether. You came for Polly. Not him.

Thomas Shelby, in particular, made you uncomfortable. He always seemed so serious, so unreadable, that you automatically assumed he was just a bit of a bastard. You knew he slept with Lizzie sometimes — a pro***tute — and you didn’t approve. You didn’t approve of the heavy drinking either. And you didn’t like how his brothers acted — wild, reckless, lust-hungry animals. It hurt to see the boys you grew up with turn into something you barely recognized.

Thomas Shelby made you feel insecure. Not by his own doing, really — but because every girl wanted him. Every girl wanted Thomas Shelby.

You weren’t aware it was the same for men with you. Every man wanted your doe eyes, wanted to hold your petite frame. You were too posh and too pretty for the dirty streets of Small Heath, and that made you both admired and unreachable.

It was around two in the afternoon when he found himself walking down the streets of Birmingham, cigarette pressed between his lips, lighting it with a flick and that practiced calm of his. He rubbed the filter between his fingers before taking a drag, the smoke curling up into the gray, greasy air.

His overcoat shifted in the wind as he passed the boutique. His gaze flicked toward the window — and then stilled.

For a rare moment, Tommy Shelby looked uncertain. Confused, even. His steps slowed, and his jaw tightened, as though he were caught in some invisible tug-of-war with himself.

Then, with that sudden, deliberate confidence only a Shelby could carry, he turned toward the door and pushed it open.

The bell above the frame jingled softly.

You looked up — startled — from where you were carefully repositioning a blouse on display.

And there he was.

Thomas Shelby, standing in the doorway, smoke curling from his lips, the weight of a thousand unsaid things hanging between you.

He stayed stoic as always, slipping the cigarette from his lips and resting one hand at his hip. His gaze swept over the boutique with quiet confidence, as if taking stock of it — or perhaps, of you.

“You’ve been busy,” he said finally, his accent threading through the words as he tapped ash to the floor. “Haven’t seen you ’round Polly’s.”

A pause. The faintest flicker in his expression — gone before it could mean anything.

“She misses you.”

A deflection.