But I'm not watching the room today. I'm watching Robin.
He's different here. The flirting is gone. The performance is gone. He's just — present. Patient in a way I've never seen him in any other context. A boy asks for help and Robin sits cross-legged on the floor, eye level, and gives the kid his complete attention. A girl shows him her decorated cookie and Robin examines it with genuine admiration, turning it in his hands like it's a piece in a gallery. "This is stunning. Look at that detail. You're an artist."
The girl glows. Robin glows too, and it's nothing like the brightness he wears at the bar. That's performance brightness — high-wattage, deliberate, the kind you can see across a room. This is different. Quieter.
This is what Robin looks like when he's not pretending to be anything.
My lion makes a sound low in my chest. Not a growl — something softer, something I don't have a word for. The closest thing I can think of is recognition. Like my lion has been watching Robin perform for months and has been waiting for this — the real thing underneath.
"You're staring," Knox says quietly, appearing at my elbow.
"I'm monitoring."
"You're staring at Robin."
"I'm monitoring Robin."
Knox's mouth twitches. "He's good with kids."
He is. He's remarkable with kids. He doesn't talk down to them or perform for them or try to be entertaining — he just meets them where they are and treats them like their opinions matter. The boy who wanted help is now showing Robin his own cookie design, some elaborate thing with wings and a tail, and Robin is listening like this kid just pitched him a business plan.
"Yeah," I say. "He is."
Knox gives me a look I pretend not to see and goes back to Toby.
After story hour, the kids scatter and parents collect their sugar-smeared offspring. Robin's cleaning up, stacking trays, sweeping sprinkles off the table with practiced efficiency. His phone buzzes on the table. He glances at it, and his whole body changes.
It's subtle. If I wasn't watching I'd miss it. His shoulders tighten. His jaw sets. The warmth drains out of his expression like someone flipped a switch, replaced by something flat and closed.
He picks up the phone, reads the text, puts it back down. Keeps cleaning. But the light is out. The brightness is gone. Whatever was on that screen put the mask back on faster than anything I've ever seen.
I don't ask. Robin doesn't want to be asked — I've learned that much. He wants to be seen but not examined, noticed but not questioned. It's a contradiction that would drive me crazy if I let it.
Instead I cross the room and start stacking chairs. Robin glances at me, startled — I don't usually help with cleanup, that's Jason's territory — but doesn't comment. We work in silence, folding tables and stacking chairs and sweeping the floor, and somewhere in the quiet rhythm of it Robin's shoulders drop half an inch.
Not all the way. But enough.
"Thanks," he says when we're done, and his voice is smaller than usual.
"Mm."
"You don't have to help clean up."
"I know."
He looks at me like he wants to say something else. Something real, something without armor. His mouth opens, closes. Then his phone buzzes again and whatever it was retreats behind the wall.
"I should go," he says. "Early morning tomorrow. Gordon wants me in by four."
Four AM. For a man who regularly screams at Robin for things that aren't wrong.
"Robin."
"Yeah?"
I want to say a hundred things. I want to ask who texted him and why it made the light go out. I want to tell him that the cookies he made were beautiful and the way he talked to that girl was beautiful and the version of himself he is when he's not performing is the one I can't stop thinking about. I want to saythat I know his boss is hurting him and I want to help and I don't know how because he won't let me in.
"Drive safe," I say.