Chapter 5 #2
Vaughn releases Brett's wrist. Holds his gaze for one more second — just long enough to communicate everything that doesn't need words — then turns and walks me out with his hand still on my back.
His bike is parked right out front, angled like he pulled up fast and didn't bother straightening it. He hands me his helmet without a word.
"Where are we going?" he asks once I'm on behind him, my arms locked around his waist, my cheek against his leather jacket.
"Can we just... go?"
"Yeah. Hold on."
We ride for a long time. Out of town, through the winding roads that lead into the hills, the engine thrumming between my thighs and the wind pulling everything tight out of my chest. My arms are around Vaughn's waist — hands laced against his stomach, fingers pressing the warm cotton of his shirt beneath the open jacket — and with each mile the shaking stops a little more.
I don't know where we're going and I don't care. Vaughn drives the way he does everything — controlled, certain, taking the curves with just enough lean that my body has to follow his. I press closer than I need to. He doesn't pull away.
He stops at an overlook above the city. Local kids call it Make Out Point, which I'll never tell him because he'd turn the bike around. Tonight it's empty. Just us and the stars and the distant orange sprawl of the city below.
I slide off the bike and immediately lie down in the grass. The sky is huge up here — dark and dense with stars, the kind of sky you forget exists when you live in a city and work in a kitchen with no windows.
"You okay?" Vaughn stands over me, hands in his jacket pockets.
"Yeah. Just... thanks. For coming."
"He hurt you?"
"No. Wouldn't take no for an answer." I hold up my wrist. In the moonlight, I can just see the faint red marks where Brett's fingers pressed. "This is nothing. I've had worse."
Vaughn crouches beside me. Takes my wrist in both his hands — gently, so gently, like he's handling something fragile — and turns it in the light. His thumb traces the marks. His jaw works.
"Vaughn. It's fine."
"Stop saying that."
"Saying what?"
"That everything's fine. That this is nothing. That you've had worse." His voice is low, rough at the edges. "None of that is fine."
I don't know what to say to that. So I do what I always do when someone gets too close to the truth — I deflect.
"Lie down with me. The stars are incredible up here."
He looks at me for a long moment. Then he takes off his jacket, folds it behind his head, and lies down in the grass next to me. Not touching. Close enough that I can feel his warmth.
We lie there. The stars are thick and bright and the grass smells like autumn and somewhere below us the city hums. It's the quietest I've been in weeks. Maybe months. Maybe ever.
"I'm tired," I say, and I don't mean sleepy.
Vaughn doesn't respond. Just waits.
"Every guy is the same. Not the grabbing — that's not all of them.
But the wanting something from me. The guys on apps want sex.
Gordon wants productivity. The dates want a performance — someone funny and flirty and available who makes their evening interesting.
And I give it to them. Every time. Because it's what I'm good at.
" I press my palms over my eyes. "I'm so good at pretending to be what people want that sometimes I forget what I actually am underneath all of it. "
"And what's that?"
"That's the problem. I don't know. I've been performing for so long that I'm not sure there's anything underneath. Maybe the performance IS me. Maybe there's no real Robin, just a bunch of scripts I run depending on who I'm with."
The grass rustles. Vaughn shifts beside me. "That's bullshit."
I drop my hands. "Excuse me?"
"You're not a performance. You're a person who performs because it's safer than being seen." He says it flatly, like a diagnosis. Like reading a code off an engine scanner. "There's a difference."
"How would you know?"
"Because I see you." He doesn't look at me.
Stares straight up at the stars, voice steady and low.
"I see you when you think no one's watching.
At story hour, when you're with the kids and you forget to be charming.
In the kitchen at Ash's house, when you're cooking for people you actually love and your face goes soft and focused and completely different from the face you wear at the bar. "
I can't breathe.
The silence stretches. The stars wheel slowly overhead, indifferent and beautiful. My chest hurts in a way that has nothing to do with Brett or the restaurant or the marks on my wrist.
"I'm cold," I say, because I am, because my thin V-neck is nothing against the autumn air, and because if I don't change the subject I'm going to say something I can't take back.
Vaughn sits up. Starts pulling off his shirt.
"Not that I don't appreciate the view," I say, because the performance reflex kicks in even now, "but I'm really not up for sex right now."
He huffs — actually huffs at me, like an annoyed cat — and shifts.
The lion is enormous. Tawny and gold and radiating heat like a furnace. He lies down next to me, and I curl into him without thinking — my whole body pressing against warm fur, my face buried in his mane, my fingers gripping the thick ruff of his neck.
He smells like Vaughn — motor oil and soap and something underneath that's just him, warm and clean and steady — and he curls around me until I'm completely enclosed. His heartbeat is slow against my ribs. His breath ruffles my hair.
"This okay?" I whisper.
A low rumble. Yes.
I close my eyes. The shaking is gone. The performance is gone. I'm just a man lying in the grass wrapped around a lion who came for me in eight minutes and told me I'm not a performance.
I think I'm falling asleep when headlights sweep over us.
"Sir? Are you alright?" A cop, flashlight in hand, standing over a scene that probably looks alarming from any angle. "Is the shifter bothering you?"
"Are you serious?" I sit up, indignant. "My evening was perfect until you showed up."
The cop blinks. Looks at Vaughn, who yawns — a full, unhurried, massive yawn displaying every tooth in his head — and settles back down like this is his personal savanna.
"We patrol this area. A lot of kids come up here to—"
"Stargaze," I say firmly. "We were stargazing."
"Right." He clearly doesn't believe me. "Well. It's getting late."
They leave. Vaughn shifts back, grabbing his clothes quickly. I look away — not because I don't want to see, but because I do, and right now that feels too big.
"I should get you home," he says, voice rough from the shift.
"Yeah."
The ride back is different from the ride out.
Slower. My arms around his waist aren't desperate anymore — they're just there, steady, like we've done this a hundred times.
The city comes back into focus, streetlights and traffic and all the normal things that don't know I just had the most intimate experience of my life in a field with a man who turned into a lion.
We pull up to Ash's house. The porch light is on. I swing off the bike and stand there holding Vaughn's helmet, not giving it back.
"Thanks," I say. "For coming to get me. For not killing Brett. For... the stars."
"Anytime."
I lean in and kiss his cheek. Quick and light, barely there, my lips against the rough stubble of his jaw. He goes completely still.
"I mean it," I say. "Thank you."
He touches the spot where I kissed him. Just his fingertips, pressing against the skin like he's confirming it happened.
"Robin—"
"I know." I step back. Give him the helmet. Give him the smile — the real one, not the performance one, even though it feels like handing him a knife. "I flirt with everyone. It doesn't mean anything."
But it comes out like a question. Like I'm asking him to tell me I'm wrong.
He looks at me for a long time. The bike idles between us. The porch light makes his eyes look gold.
"Night, Robin," he says.
"Night, Vaughn."
I go inside. Close the door. Lean against it in the dark hallway and listen to his bike idle for a long moment before he finally drives away.
Upstairs, I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling and press my fingertips against my lips where they touched his jaw.
The real me. The one underneath the performance. The one who curled against a lion in the grass and felt safe for the first time in years.
That Robin kissed Vaughn's cheek and meant it more than every kiss he's ever given anyone else.
I'm in so much trouble.