I'm still here.
Chapter 17
Robin
The shower is a mistake.
I'm trying to keep my bandaged hand out of the spray while washing blood off my skin with one arm, and the hot water is making me dizzy. Or maybe that's the pain. Or the fact that I haven't eaten since 3:30 AM.
I lean against the tile and breathe through the throbbing. Seven stitches. Seven tiny knots holding my palm together. Every heartbeat makes it pulse.
It takes three tries to wrap the towel around my waist with one hand. I stumble out of the bathroom, dripping, shaking, the bandage mostly dry through some miracle, and—
Ash is sitting on my bed.
"Jesus, you scared me."
"Good." His voice is that deadly calm that's worse than screaming. "Sit down before you fall down."
I sit. The mattress dips under me and the movement jars my hand and I have to close my eyes and breathe through it.
"You fucked up today," Ash says.
"I know."
"Not by getting hurt. Not by losing your job. You fucked up by shutting out every person downstairs who wanted to help you."
"Ash—"
"There is a man in my house right now who's been sitting on my couch for forty minutes waiting for you. He hasn't moved. He hasn't spoken. He's just sitting there, waiting, because you told him to give you space and he's respecting that even though it's killing him." Ash's voice doesn't waver. "That's not a man who thinks you're a bother, Robin. That's a man who loves you."
The word. There it is.
"He doesn't—"
"He does. And you know he does. So tell me why you went to the hospital alone instead of calling him."
I'm cold. The towel is damp and my hair is dripping and my hand is on fire and Ash is looking at me with the expression he had when I was fourteen and I told him I didn't need him to stay home because I could take care of myself.
"Because what do I actually bring to this?" The words come out cracked and ugly. "I'm a disaster, Ash. I bring sex and desserts. That's my whole contribution. Eventually he'll get bored of the sex and I'll probably give him diabetes and then he'll just be left with me. The real me. The mess underneath all the performing. And that's—" My voice breaks. "That's not enough."
"Robin—"
"I got fired today." The tears start and I can't stop them. "My boss screamed about the ganache while I was bleeding all over his kitchen and he fired me. Seven years at that place. Seven years of 4 AM starts and thrown pans and being told my work was 'amateur hour' and 'vanity projects' and scraping perfect fondant into the trash because he said so. Seven years, and he threw me out while I needed medical attention."
"He's an asshole."
"Yeah. But I stayed. For seven years, I stayed. I let him scream at me and throw things at me and take credit for my work and I saidit's the industrylike that meant something. Like that made it okay." I'm shaking now, not from cold. "Vaughn said it was abuse and I got so angry because — because if it's abuse, then I'm the person who let it happen. I'm the person who stayed in something bad for seven years and told myself it was normal."
Ash doesn't speak. He reaches out, pushes my wet hair off my forehead. His fingers are gentle despite the set of his jaw.
"I don't know how to be in a relationship," I say, and the words come out raw and small, stripped of every performance I've ever wrapped around them. "I don't know how to ask for help. I don't know how to need someone without feeling like I'm going to lose them. Every time Vaughn is good to me — every time he shows up and stays and holds me — part of me is waiting for the part where he stops. Where he gets tired. Where he realizes I'm too much work and not enough reward. Because that's what Dad did. That's what Mom did. That's what Gordon did. Everyone eventually decides I'm not worth the effort."
I'm crying openly now. Not the pretty, controlled tears I shed during sex with Vaughn — the ugly kind, the snot-and-hiccup kind, the kind I haven't cried since I was fourteen and Ash deployed for the first time and I stood in his empty bedroom and realized I was alone.
"And I'm so fucking scared," I whisper, "that one day I'll wake up and Vaughn's side of the bed will be cold and he'll have figured out what everyone else figured out — that the real me isn't worth staying for."
Ash lies down. Pulls me with him, face to face on the bed, my wet towel and his dry clothes and all. His arms wrap around me and I let them because I don't have the energy to pretend I don't need this.