No, what are you doing avoiding the bar? You're never too busy for Sunday night.
Maybe tonight I was.
That's bullshit and you know it.
Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. Gone. This cycle repeats four times over two minutes and each cycle takes a year off my life.
Finally:Goodnight Vaughn.
I set my phone on the bar and stare at it. Goodnight Vaughn. Two words that mean "I'm closing this door" in Robin's language, which I've apparently become fluent in against my will.
He's avoiding me. Not the bar — me. Because last night on the overlook he was real, and being real with someone is the most terrifying thing Robin Martinez knows how to do. He showed me the person underneath the performance and now he's panicking.
I know this because I'm doing the same thing. Standing in an empty bar at midnight replaying the way his body felt against mine in the grass, and instead of telling him — instead of driving to Ash's house and sayingit meant something, it meant everything, please stop pretending it didn't— I'm staring at my phone waiting for a text that isn't coming.
We're both idiots. Different kinds of idiots, but idiots nonetheless. Robin hides behind performance. I hide behind patience. Both of us waiting for the other person to go first.
I lock up. Climb the stairs to my apartment. The hallway is quiet — Knox and Toby's room silent for once, Ezra's light off, Silas probably already asleep with his book on his chest. I can hear the building settle around me, the familiar creaks and sighs of a place I've lived for years.
I brush my teeth. Change into sweats. Lie on my bed in the dark.
My lion is restless. Not angry — he doesn't get angry often, that's more Knox's territory — but unsettled, pacing the edges of my awareness the way he does when something isn't right. He wants to go to Robin. Wants to shift and run to Ash'shouse and curl around him again and keep him warm until he stops being afraid.
I can still smell him. Vanilla and sugar and something sharper underneath — adrenaline, fear, the acrid edge of a bad night. And below all of that, the real scent. The one I only caught at the overlook, when Robin stopped performing and just breathed. Warm and clean and specific. His.
My phone sits dark on the nightstand.
I should text him again. Say something. Anything. Tell him the overlook meant something. Tell him I've been watching him for months and I know the difference between his performance laugh and his real one and his real one does things to me that I don't have vocabulary for.
But Robin ran. Robin is scared. And pushing a scared person into a corner is the fastest way to lose them.
So I do what I do. What I always do.
I wait.
My lion disagrees with this strategy. My lion thinks I should break down Ash's front door and carry Robin back to the overlook and refuse to leave until he admits the cheek kiss meant something.
My lion is not known for his subtlety.
I close my eyes. Sleep doesn't come for a long time.
When it does, I dream about stars.
Chapter 7
Robin
Monday. I've been baking for six hours and Ash's kitchen looks like a pastry bomb went off.
There are cupcakes on every surface. The counter, the table, the top of the microwave. Three different frostings in piping bags lined up like ammunition. A sheet of brown butter blondies cooling on a rack. A batch of snickerdoodles that I over-spiced because my hands were shaking and I dumped in too much cinnamon, so now they're sitting on a plate labeled DO NOT EAT — CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY.
I'm halfway through batch number seven — vanilla bean cupcakes with brown butter frosting — when I realize what flavor I've been making for six hours.
Vaughn's favorite. Vanilla and brown butter. Every single batch.
I turn off the mixer and stand there with my hands braced on the counter, staring at the batter like it betrayed me.
"I'm spiraling," I inform the empty kitchen. "This is a spiral. I'm aware that I'm spiraling."