Chapter 12
Vaughn
Two weeks in. I'm starting to learn Robin's patterns.
Tuesday Robin arrives at the bar buzzing — electric, fizzing with energy, draping himself over the counter and stealing Jason's fries and telling a story about a soufflé so animated that even Silas looks up from his book.
Tuesday means the event went well. Gordon either wasn't there or was in a decent mood.
Tuesday Robin is the closest to the real Robin — bright but grounded, performing less, laughing more.
Wednesday Robin is brittle. He arrives smiling but the smile is structural — load-bearing, keeping the rest of his face from collapsing.
He flirts too hard, laughs too loud, drinks his first beer too fast. Wednesday means Gordon was bad.
I don't know the specifics because Robin won't tell me, but I can read the pattern the way I read an engine that's been stressed — the micro-tremor in his hands when he picks up his glass, the way his shoulders sit an inch too high, the flinch when his phone buzzes.
I've started tracking it. Not on paper — I'm not that obsessive — but in my head, filing away the data points. The days Robin shows up tired. The days he can't stop performing. The days the light in him is on versus the days it's out.
Friday is neutral ground. Good days and bad days in equal measure.
Thursday is almost always good — story hour with the kids resets something in him, brings back the real brightness instead of the performed kind.
Today is a Friday, and Robin is curled on the couch in the bar's back room, reading a book.
Not a cookbook. A business book — The E-Myth Revisited, dog-eared and underlined, the spine cracked from rereading.
I've noticed them stacking up in his room at Ash's house.
Business plans, small enterprise management, something called Setting the Table by a restaurant guy.
He reads them the way Silas reads fantasy novels — hungrily, quietly, like they're describing a world he wants to live in.
"What's that one about?" I ask, settling into the other end of the couch. Not touching, but close enough that he shifts his feet into my lap. An automatic gesture, comfortable, the kind of casual intimacy that Robin does with everyone but that means something different when he does it with me.
"How most small businesses fail because the owner is good at the technical work but bad at being a business owner." He doesn't look up. "Like, a great baker doesn't automatically know how to run a bakery. You have to learn the systems."
"Sounds practical."
"It's terrifying is what it is." He turns a page. "Did you know most restaurants fail in the first year? Like seventy percent. And the ones that survive the first year, half of those fail in the second."
"You thinking about opening something?"
He looks up then. Something crosses his face — want, so raw and naked it's almost painful to see, followed immediately by the shutters coming down. "Just reading. It's interesting."
I let it go. File it away.
Robin closes the book and puts it on the shelf behind the couch — I notice he's built a small collection there, his business books mixed in among Silas's fantasy novels and Jason's cookbooks. Nesting. Building a presence in this bar that looks temporary but keeps getting more permanent.
"Dinner?" he says, swinging his legs off my lap. "I'm starving and Jason's making some kind of pasta situation."
We eat with the pack. Knox and Toby, Jason and Ash, Silas reading between bites, Ezra doing something on his phone that he won't explain. Robin is Friday Robin — somewhere between Tuesday and Wednesday, present but watchful, laughing at the right moments.
His phone rings during dessert.
I watch his face. The caller ID makes his expression go flat — not scared, not angry, just... empty. He stands, smiles at the table. "Just work. Be right back."
He takes the call in the parking lot. Through the window I can see him pacing, one hand in his hair, nodding. His body language screams deference — shoulders curved inward, head down, making himself smaller. I've never seen Robin make himself smaller for anyone.
He comes back smiling. "Gordon needs me to come in early tomorrow. Big event."
"How early?" Ash asks.
"Three thirty."
"Three thirty in the morning?" Jason looks appalled.
"Corporate breakfast. Three hundred people. The prep cook called in sick, so." Robin shrugs. "It's the job."
The table accepts this because Robin's selling it, and Robin is very, very good at selling things. He pivots to a joke about setting four alarms, steals the last piece of garlic bread, touches my hand under the table.
I let him perform for the table. Wait until later, when it's just us, Robin in my jacket again because the night is cold and he keeps "forgetting" to bring one.
"Your boss treats you like shit," I say.
Robin goes rigid. Not the performative stiffness of someone acting offended — the real thing, every muscle locking at once. His hand drops from my arm.
"Excuse me?"
"Gordon. He calls you at night. Changes your schedule with no notice. Screams at you — yeah, I can tell which days he screams, your shoulders sit different. Throws your work away." I keep my voice level. Diagnostic. "He treats you like shit, Robin."
"It's the industry." The words come out automatic, rehearsed, the way someone recites a prayer they stopped believing years ago. "You don't understand how professional kitchens work."
"I understand how people work. And a boss who makes you flinch when your phone rings isn't normal."
"I don't flinch."
"You flinch every time. You check the caller ID and your whole body changes. You go from you to someone else — someone smaller. I've watched it happen a dozen times."
"So you've been watching me." His voice goes cold. "Cataloguing my body language. Diagnosing me like one of your engines."
That lands. He meant it to.
"Yeah," I say. "I have. Because I care about you and something is wrong and you won't talk about it."
"There's nothing to talk about. Gordon's demanding. All chefs are demanding. It's a high-pressure industry and you don't get to have an opinion about my job just because we're sleeping together."
The words hit exactly where he aimed them. Just because we're sleeping together. Reducing us to sex. Performing distance.
"We're not just sleeping together," I say.
"Aren't we?"
We stare at each other. The night is cold and Robin's chin is up and his eyes are bright with something that could be anger or could be fear and I can't tell the difference because with Robin they're the same thing.
My lion is growling. Not at Robin — at whatever lives in Gordon's kitchen that makes Robin look like this. That makes him defend the thing that's hurting him. That taught him to stand in front of a man who cares about him and say it's just the industry like a shield.
I want to push. I want to name what I see — the pattern, the escalation, the way Robin's bad days are getting closer together and his good days are getting shorter. I want to say this is not normal and you deserve better and if you'd let me I would fix this.
But I'm not Knox. I don't command. And Robin isn't the kind of person you can fix by taking over — he'd resent it, resist it, perform his way out of it. Robin has to see it himself.
"Okay," I say.
He blinks. "Okay?"
"Okay. I won't push."
"Good."
"But I'm not going to stop watching." I hold his gaze. "And I'm not going to pretend I don't see it. When you're ready to talk about it, I'm here."
Something cracks in his expression. Just for a second — the anger fading to something raw and exhausted underneath. Then the mask clicks back.
"I should go to bed," he says. "Three thirty alarm."
"Yeah."
He doesn't invite me to go with him. I don't ask.
I go home with his scent still on my jacket and his words still in my head.
Just because we're sleeping together. He didn't mean it.
I know he didn't mean it. But he said it because pushing me away is safer than letting me in, and that instinct is older than me and deeper than anything a few weeks of sleeping together can fix.
In my apartment, I sit on my bed and text him: I'm here when you're ready. Not going anywhere.
Three dots appear. Disappear. Long silence.
Then: I know. I'm sorry for what I said.
Don't be sorry. Just be honest with me when you can.
Another long pause.
I'm trying. It's harder than it sounds.
I know. Goodnight, Robin.
Goodnight, Vaughn.
I set my phone down. My lion paces, restless, unhappy.
Something is wrong in that kitchen. Something worse than a demanding boss. And Robin can't see it because he's spent years telling himself it's normal.
I can wait. I'm good at waiting.
But my patience has an expiration date, and it's getting closer.