"I don't know. His phone's off, he's been fired, and no one's heard from him in hours." Ash is already moving. Jacket, boots, helmet — the economy of motion of a man who's run extractions. "If he's hurt, he'll go to my house. That's where we're going."
"I'm coming," I say.
"We all are," Knox says. Not asking. Telling.
The ride is fourteen minutes and it feels like an hour. Five bikes tearing through traffic, Ash in the lead because he knows the fastest route to his own house and because none of us arestupid enough to get between Ash Martinez and his brother right now.
We pull up to Ash's house. The whole pride.
An Uber is pulling away from the curb.
And Robin is walking up the driveway.
He's wearing his chef's jacket. The white fabric is covered in blood — dried now, stiff and brown, concentrated on the left side where his hand is cradled against his chest. His left hand is bandaged, white gauze wrapped thick around his palm. His face is gray with exhaustion, eyes swollen, mouth set in a line that's trying very hard to be composed.
He sees us — all of us, standing on his lawn — and something in his expression shutters. Not surprise. Something worse. Resignation. The face of a man who wanted to get through the door before anyone saw.
"Hi," he says.
Every word I've prepared — the careful, patient, measured response — evaporates.
"Where the hell have you been?" It comes out harder than I mean. Sharper. The fear talking.
"Hospital."
"Hospital?" Toby rushes forward. "Robin, what happened? Is that blood?"
"Cut myself at work. Needed stitches. It's fine."
The wordfinehits me like a thrown pan.
"It's fine?" I can hear myself and I can't modulate it. "You've been at the hospital for hours and your phone's been off and you think it's fine?"
"It's seven stitches. I handled it."
"You handled it." I hear it again — the wordbotherforming somewhere ahead of us in this conversation, inevitable, approaching like a train. "Alone."
"My phone was dying. I needed it for the Uber."
"They have phones at the hospital. They have chargers too, I'm sure."
His jaw tightens. The mask is cracking — I can see the exhaustion underneath, the pain, the shame — but he holds it. "I didn't think it was necessary to bother everyone."
There it is.Bother.
Ash steps forward. "You didn't think getting injured and going to the ER was worth mentioning?"
"I'm an adult. I can handle getting stitches by myself."
"Robin—" Toby starts.
"Also got fired." Robin says it flat, matter-of-fact, like he's reporting the weather. "So that's been my day. How was yours?"
The lawn is silent. All of us standing in the afternoon sun, and Robin in his bloody jacket looking at us like we're the problem.
"Why didn't you call me?" I ask.
The mask cracks. Just for a second — guilt and frustration and something desperate underneath, something that wants to saybecause I was scaredbut can't find the words.
