He smiles. It's the performance one. "Always do, big guy."
He leaves. The library is quiet. Toby's locking up, Knox hovering, Jason and Ash heading out together. Silas is checking out four books at the desk, which is light for him.
I stand in the children's section surrounded by the faint smell of sugar and icing, and I think about Robin on his knees with that little girl, showing her how to hold the piping bag, laughing when the icing went everywhere.
His phone buzzed and the light went out.
I file that away with all the other things I've noticed. The way he looks tired after work. The way he flinches when his phone goes off at certain hours. The way he said "Gordon was Gordon" in the parking lot last week like that explained everything.
I don't know what to do with what I'm collecting. I'm a mechanic, not a therapist. I fix engines, not people.
But my lion knows. My lion has known for a while.
Something is wrong, and Robin won't ask for help, and I don't know how to offer it without breaking the fragile thing that's building between us.
So I do what I do. I watch. I wait. I file it away.
Chapter 5
Robin
I'm going on a date tonight and I'm already regretting it.
Not because of the guy — Brett seems fine on the app. Thirty-one, works in finance, nice jaw, says he likes cooking and hiking and "trying new restaurants." His profile pictures show him at a vineyard, at a hiking trail, with a golden retriever that might be borrowed. He messages in complete sentences and hasn't sent me a dick pic, which puts him in the top five percent of men on this app.
No, I'm regretting it because Toby is on a video call helping me pick an outfit and he has the gentle, probing expression of a man about to say something I don't want to hear.
"The green shirt," Toby says. "It makes your eyes pop."
"Everything makes my eyes pop. I have incredible eyes." I hold up the green shirt, then swap it for a black V-neck. "Black says 'I'm sexy but approachable.' Green says 'I'm trying too hard.'"
"Green says 'I have taste and I care about this date.'"
"Which is trying too hard."
"Robin." Toby's face on the phone screen is doing the thing where his glasses slip down his nose and he looks like a librarian interrogating a late-fee offender. Which is basically what he is. "Why are you going on this date?"
"Because I'm single and hot and Brett has a jaw that could cut marble."
"You've been single and hot for years. You haven't gone on a date in three months. What changed?"
Nothing changed. Everything changed. A man pushed a whiskey across a bar without being asked and I haven't stopped thinking about it for days.
"I'm restless," I say, which isn't a lie. "I need to get out. Meet someone. Have a normal evening with a normal guy who has a normal jaw."
"You keep mentioning his jaw."
"It's a really good jaw, Toby."
"Better than Vaughn's?"
I drop the shirt. "What does Vaughn have to do with anything?"
Toby gives me the look. The one that says he's known me since we were eighteen and I can't bullshit him. "Robin. You've talked about Vaughn six times this week. You made him a special cookie with hazel eyes."
"I made sixty cookies. Some of them had hazel eyes. It's a color."
"You also made him a separate lava cake with extra salted caramel, and according to Jason you fell asleep on his shoulder during a movie."
