Chapter 17
Robin
The shower is a mistake.
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 said it's the industry like 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.
"Listen to me." His voice is quiet and fierce.
"You are not Mom and Dad. You're not the person who stays and screams and cheats and calls it love.
You're the person who survived growing up in that house.
There's a difference. They stayed because they didn't know anything else and they were too stubborn and too cruel to let each other go.
You stayed at Gordon's because you didn't know it was an option to leave.
Because no one ever showed you what a healthy workplace looks like, just like no one ever showed you what a healthy relationship looks like. "
"That doesn't—"
"It's not an excuse. It's context. And Robin?
" He tilts my chin up so I have to look at him.
"The man downstairs has seen all of it. The performing, the deflecting, the fights, the bruise, the bullshit.
He's seen you at your worst — pushing him away, lying about Gordon, telling him it's just sex — and he's still sitting on my couch.
He didn't leave. He's not going to leave. "
"You can't promise that."
"No. But I can tell you what I see. I see a man who came back when you didn't ask him to.
Who held you all night when you couldn't hold him back.
Who tracked your bad days and never pushed but never stopped watching.
Who stood on my lawn today and the only thing he wanted in the world was to take care of you, and you told him to go away, and he didn't. He's still here, Robin. After everything. He's still here."
I bury my face in Ash's chest and cry harder. He holds me — solid, warm, the brother who came home so I wouldn't be alone, who bought a house so I'd have somewhere to land, who is lying on my bed getting soaked by my wet hair because that's what family does.
"We're so fucked up," I sob. "Our parents ruined us."
"Maybe. But we're trying. You're trying with Vaughn. I'm trying with Jason. That counts."
"Does it?"
"Yeah. It does. You know how I know?" He pulls back.
Looks at me. "Because you're lying here crying about wanting to be better instead of getting drunk and pretending everything's fine.
Because you let me in this room even though you wanted to be alone.
Because the fact that you couldn't call Vaughn from the hospital is breaking your heart, and that means you wanted to.
You wanted to call him, Robin. That's the whole thing. "
I wanted to call him. I sat in that waiting room with his text on my screen and I wanted to call him so badly my chest ached. I wanted to hear his voice say I'm on my way. I wanted him in the plastic chair beside me, holding my good hand, being steady and present and Vaughn.
"I don't know how to go down there," I whisper.
"You put on clothes. You walk downstairs. You let him see you like this — no mask, no performance, no smile. Just you."
"Just me is a mess."
"Just you is the man he chose." Ash sits up. Pulls me up with him. "Get dressed. I'll bring you water and painkillers and I need to open your antibiotic bottle because you can't do it one-handed."
"And my cloud blanket?"
"And your cloud blanket." He pauses at the door. "You know what you bring to this relationship? To this pride? To every person downstairs who dropped everything and drove here because they couldn't reach you?"
I shake my head.
"Everything, Robin. You bring everything. You just can't see it because no one ever told you it was enough."
He leaves. I sit on the edge of my bed in a towel, one hand throbbing, eyes swollen, and I think about what Toby said in the kitchen full of cupcakes. You bake because it IS love. It's the language you found when the one your parents taught you turned out to be garbage.
I think about the story hour cookies. The cupcakes for the bar. The fondant rose with individual petals that Gordon called fussy. The seven batches of vanilla bean and brown butter that I baked because my hands didn't know how to say what my mouth couldn't.
I bring everything.
I put on sweatpants and an old t-shirt. I don't fix my hair. I don't wash my face. I don't build a single layer of performance between me and the world.
I walk downstairs.
The kitchen is full of lions. Knox and Toby in the armchair, Toby curled against Knox's chest. Jason standing by the coffee maker, fidgeting. Silas at the table with a closed book. Ezra by the window. And Vaughn.
Vaughn on the couch. Hands on his knees. Still as stone. His face is — I've never seen his face like this. Open. Raw. The control stripped away, the steadiness shaking, everything he usually holds behind that gruff exterior cracked wide.
He sees me.
I stand in the doorway in sweatpants and a t-shirt with my hair wet and my face destroyed and a bandage on my hand and no mask. Nothing between me and him except ten feet of Ash's floor.
He doesn't rush me. Doesn't cross the room. Doesn't take over.
He opens his arms.
I cross the room. I walk into his arms and press my face against his chest and his hands come up around me — careful, gentle, one palm flat between my shoulder blades, the other cupping the back of my head — and I hold on.
I hold on like I should have held on the first night. Like I should have held on every night. Like I should have held on in the ER.
"I'm sorry," I say into his chest. "I'm sorry I didn't call you. I'm sorry I turned off my phone. I'm sorry I said I didn't need rescuing when the truth is I didn't know how to ask."
His arms tighten around me. His chin rests on the top of my head. He's shaking — barely, just a tremor, the only sign that the last hour hurt him too.
"I know," he says. "I know."
Behind me, the room empties. Quietly, one by one, the way a pride moves when they know two of their own need space. The front door opens and closes. Footsteps on the porch. The sound of Knox's bike starting.
And then it's just us. Me and Vaughn. In Ash's house. Holding on.