Chapter 2
Vaughn
This is pathetic. I'm a grown man. I'm thirty-four years old. I've rebuilt engines in the dead of winter with numb fingers and a busted shop heater, and I didn't think this hard about what I was wearing to crawl under a bike.
But Robin's cooking dinner for the pack tonight and I'm standing in my apartment above the bar staring at a pile of rejected shirts on my bed like a teenager before prom.
The black henley is too tryhard. The grey t-shirt has a grease stain I didn't notice until now.
The blue flannel — I actually liked the blue flannel, but then I spent four minutes wondering if Robin would notice I wore blue and what that would mean and whether he'd make some comment about it bringing out my eyes, and I had to take it off before I drowned in my own stupidity.
I put the black henley back on. Roll the sleeves to the elbow because that's how I always wear them. Run a hand over my hair — still in the bun, still neat, fine — and grab my keys.
Knox's apartment is two doors down from mine.
I can hear him and Toby in there, laughing about something, and the easy domesticity of it makes me walk faster toward the stairs.
Not because I'm jealous. I'm not jealous.
I'm the second of this pride and I've got a garage full of bikes that need me and a crossword I haven't finished and a life that works exactly the way I built it.
The bar is quiet on a Saturday afternoon.
Jukebox off, chairs still up on tables from when I cleaned last night.
I flip on a few lights out of habit, check the locks, run my hand along the bar top.
This place is as much mine as Knox's in some ways — I've been here longer than anyone except him.
Eight years. Knox was building a pride from nothing, needed a mechanic and a second, and I needed somewhere that wasn't home, where my entire family thought I was wasting my life because I'd rather rebuild a transmission than pass the bar exam.
It worked. Still works. The garage keeps my hands busy. The pride keeps my head steady. I don't need more than that.
I head to the garage to kill time before dinner.
There's a Sportster on the lift with a carburetor rebuild half-finished, and my hands find the work without my brain having to participate.
That's the thing about engines — they don't lie.
They don't perform. A fuel line is clogged or it isn't. A timing chain is worn or it isn't. You diagnose, you fix, you move on. No ambiguity. No mixed signals.
Robin is a mixed signal shaped like a person.
The wrench slips and I bark my knuckle against the engine block. Swear under my breath. Wipe the blood on my jeans, because I'm an animal and also because the shop towels are across the garage and I don't feel like walking.
Jason pokes his head in from the bar. "You okay?"
"Fine."
"You've been staring at that carburetor for twenty minutes without doing anything to it."
"I'm assessing."
"You're brooding." He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, wearing that expression he gets when he thinks he's being helpful. "About Robin."
"I'm rebuilding a carburetor."
"You can do both. You're a multitasker."
"Jason."
"Vaughn." He matches my tone perfectly, the little shit.
He's been getting braver since Ash came home — found his spine somewhere between the horror movie dates and the sex, and now he thinks he can mouth off to the pack second like it's casual conversation.
"You changed shirts. I heard you through the wall. "
I'm going to kill him. "The walls are thin."
"They are. Which is how I also know you sighed about fourteen times while getting ready, and one of them was the big dramatic kind that usually means Robin texted you something flirty."
I put the wrench down because I might throw it and give him a dark look.
He grins. "So. Robin. You want to talk about it?"
"No."
"Great. I think you should tell him."
"Tell him what?"
"That you're in love with him."
The garage goes very quiet. Just the tick of the cooling engine and the distant sound of traffic.
"I'm not in love with Robin."
Jason raises an eyebrow. It's devastating. He learned it from Ash, and now this kid is deploying it against me like a weapon.
"I'm not," I repeat, which sounds less convincing the second time.
Jason pushes off the doorframe. "You're wearing the henley."
"What's wrong with the henley?"
"Nothing. It's your date shirt."
"I don't have a date shirt."
"You absolutely do. Black henley, sleeves rolled, the one that makes your arms look—" He makes a gesture that I refuse to interpret. "Robin's going to swallow his tongue."
"I'm going to dinner with the pack."
"Wearing your date shirt."
"Get out of the garage."
He leaves, laughing. I pick the wrench back up and stare at the carburetor some more.
The problem is that Jason's not wrong. Not about the henley — I don't have a date shirt, that's ridiculous — but about the rest of it.
About the way Robin's name lands in my chest like a fist. About the way my lion has been tracking Robin since the first time he walked into this bar smelling like sugar and trouble.
He's been around for months, first as Toby's roommate, then as Ash's brother, then as the guy who shows up at the bar at least three nights a week with baked goods and chaos and a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes when he thinks no one's watching.
I watch. I'm always watching. It's what I do. Knox makes the decisions and I make sure nothing goes wrong. I watch the perimeter, the exits, the threats. And somewhere along the way, Robin stopped being a friendly human in our orbit and became the thing my eyes go to first when I scan a room.
I clean the grease off my hands, close up the garage, and drive to Ash's.
Take the truck, not a bike, because I sat in the parking lot for ten minutes telling myself to get it together and that's easier to do in an enclosed vehicle where no one can see you gripping a steering wheel like it personally wronged you.
Robin opens the door wearing an apron that says KISS THE COOK. It shouldn't be indecent. It's just an apron. He's wearing a perfectly normal shirt underneath and perfectly normal jeans and his hair is doing that thing where it falls across his forehead and he keeps pushing it back.
"Vaughn! Perfect timing. I need someone to taste the sauce."
He grabs my hand — just grabs it, like touching me is nothing, like his fingers lacing through mine for the two seconds it takes to pull me to the kitchen doesn't rewire every nerve ending in my body — and drags me inside.
Silas and Ezra are already at the counter drinking beer. Silas nods at me. Ezra gives me a look that says he noticed I'm wearing the henley, and I give him one back that says I'll end him.
"Here." Robin holds up a wooden spoon. "Tell me if it needs more heat."
He brings it to my mouth. His other hand cups underneath to catch drips, and his eyes are on my lips, and this is the most obscene thing that's ever happened to me in a kitchen and I once walked in on Knox in shifted form eating a raw steak off the counter.
I taste it. Rich, complex, layered — cumin and smoked paprika and something deeper, warmer, that I can't identify. "It's good."
"Just good?" He steps closer. The vanilla-and-cinnamon smell of him hits me underneath the cooking smells, his own scent, the one my lion catalogues and files under important. "I need more feedback than that."
"It's perfect," I say, and step back because I have to.
"Everything Robin makes is perfect," Ezra offers from the counter, and Robin beams at him — turns the full wattage of that smile on Ezra like Ezra hung the moon — and I take a very controlled breath.
Dinner is devastating.
Not the food, though that's incredible too — braised short ribs that fall apart, roasted root vegetables in some glaze that tastes like honey and balsamic, bread that's still warm from the oven.
Robin made all of it, for us, and there's something about watching him serve food that knocks the air out of me.
The care of it. How he remembers Silas doesn't like raw onion and left it off his plate.
How he gave Ezra extra bread because Ezra always wants extra bread.
He does this for everyone. I know that. He stress-bakes when he's worried. He shows love through food, feeds people the way other people say "I care about you," and none of it is specific to me.
"Control freaks," Robin says, shaking his head with a grin. "All of you. Ash alphabetized my spices, Knox organizes the bar like a military operation, and you—" His eyes find mine and hold. "Must be exhausting, being that controlled all the time."
"Some of us like control," I say.
"Some of us like making controlled people lose it."
The table goes still. Silas clears his throat. Ezra hides behind his wine.
I hold Robin's gaze because looking away would mean he won. Something in his expression shifts — surprise, maybe, that I didn't flinch. A flicker of something real underneath the performance.
Then he blinks and the mask snaps back. "Dessert? I need to check the cakes."
He gets up, Ezra following to help, and I watch them laugh together by the oven. Robin touches Ezra's arm while he talks, casual and easy, the way he touches everyone. My lion makes a sound I swallow before it reaches my throat.
"Your knuckles," Silas says quietly.
I look down. White-gripping my wine glass again. I release it, stretch my fingers. "I'm fine."
"He's like that with everyone," Silas says, not unkindly.
"I know."
Robin returns with dessert. Sets a lava cake in front of each of us, but when he leans down to place mine, his breath ghosts across my ear.
"Extra salted caramel," he murmurs. Just for me. "I remembered."
Then he's gone. Serving Silas, laughing at something, spinning back into performance mode like he didn't just reach inside my chest and squeeze.
He remembered. One comment, weeks ago, that I liked salted caramel. And he built it into the dessert like it mattered. Like I mattered.
Then Ash and Jason come through the door, loud and happy, and the moment breaks open into chaos. Toby and Knox might join later, but given how late it is, I assume they're busy, probably wrapped around each other as usual.
Robin flows through the rest of the evening the way he always does. Touching shoulders, refilling glasses, making sure everyone's fed and laughing and comfortable. The perfect host. The perfect performance. He treats all of us exactly the same.
I excuse myself to the bathroom to breathe.
When I come back, he's at the sink alone, everyone else in the living room.
"You don't have to clean."
"I don't mind." He glances over his shoulder, and for a second he's just tired. Not performing, not flirting, just a man doing dishes who worked all day and cooked all night. "You okay? You seemed tense at dinner."
"I'm fine."
"You say that a lot."
"It's true a lot."
He shuts off the water. Turns to face me, leaning against the sink with his arms crossed and his sleeves pushed up and soap suds on his forearm. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No."
"Vaughn." He steps closer. The kitchen is small and he's right there and I can count the freckles on his nose from here. "If I made you uncomfortable with the flirting—"
"You flirt with everyone." It comes out harder than I meant.
"Yeah." His voice goes careful, quiet. "I do."
"So it doesn't mean anything."
He holds my gaze. "Right," he says, and the word has a crack running through it that he almost hides. "It doesn't mean anything."
We stand there. Too close. The kitchen smells like dish soap and the remnants of dinner and him. My lion is pacing tight circles, pressing against my skin, and every instinct I have is screaming to close the distance.
"I should go," I say.
"You should stay." His hand lands on my forearm — light, barely there, his fingers warm and damp from the dishes. "Watch a movie with us."
"Robin—"
"Please?"
I cave. I always cave when he says please, when the performance drops away and there's just Robin underneath, asking for something simple.
We watch some action movie I don't track a single frame of, because Robin curls up between me and Silas on the couch and his head ends up on my shoulder twenty minutes in.
"This okay?" he asks quietly.
"Yeah."
His weight settles against me. Warm and solid and smelling like vanilla and caramel and the wine he had with dinner.
His breathing slows and his body goes loose and relaxed in a way I've never seen him in public — always moving, always on, always performing — and he's still and quiet against my side like my shoulder is the safest place in the room.
It's not nothing. I know it's not nothing. Robin curls up with people, leans on people, touches people — but he doesn't go still like this. He doesn't stop performing.
When the movie ends, he hugs everyone goodbye. Ezra first, quick and warm. Silas, with a squeeze. Then me.
His arms wrap around my waist — not my neck, my waist, his face pressed to my chest. I can feel his heartbeat through his shirt. Fast. Too fast for casual. My arms come up around his shoulders and I hold him, and the hug goes one beat longer than it should. Two beats. Three.
"Thanks for coming," he says against my chest.
"Thanks for dinner."
"Anytime." He pulls back, looks up at me, and his eyes are wide and unguarded in a way I've never seen aimed at me before. "I mean it. Anytime you want to come over. You can."
"Careful. I might take you up on that."
"I hope you do."
Then Silas says something about borrowing a cookbook and the moment dissolves.
I drive home gripping the wheel. The truck smells like Robin — vanilla and cinnamon, clinging to my henley where he pressed his face against my chest.
Robin flirts with everyone.
The dinner wasn't special.
The hug wasn't longer.
If I keep saying it, maybe I'll start believing it.
My lion knows better.
In my apartment, I hang the henley on the back of the door instead of tossing it in the laundry. I'll wash it tomorrow. Or the day after. It doesn't matter.
My phone buzzes.
Robin: Thanks again for coming tonight. Also you left your reading glasses on the kitchen counter like an old man. I'll bring them to the bar tomorrow.
I didn't even realize I'd taken them out of my pocket. Must have been when I was looking at the spice labels Robin was excited about, some high-end vanilla paste he'd ordered from Madagascar.
I type: Thanks.
Then delete it. Too short. Type: Thanks, I appreciate it. Delete that too. Too formal. Who am I, a customer service email?
I send: Don't lose them.
Robin: I would NEVER. They're my favorite thing about you. You look like a sexy librarian.
I turn my phone face down on the nightstand and stare at the ceiling.
Sexy librarian.
My lion purrs.
I'm in so much trouble.