Page 134 of Joker

Instead, I take a shaky breath and ask the question that’s been sitting low in my chest ever since he told me in the storage of his expression that something had shifted. “What’s that look for?”

Joker’s jaw shifts. Not enough to miss.

“What?”

He exhales slowly through his nose. “I told your dad about us.”

The words hit me so fast I actually flinch. Not physically. Internally.

My whole chest locks up at once. My first reaction is immediate and ugly and automatic. Panic. Not because of him. Because of the shape of the sentence.

BecauseI told your dad about ussounds dangerously close tosomeone else made a decision about meand my nervous system doesn’t always wait around for context before it starts preparing for war.

Joker sees it happen. Of course he does. His eyes narrow just slightly and he steps even closer before I can get too far into my own head. “Hey.”

That one word cuts through the panic enough to make me look at him.

His expression is hard, but not at me. At the reaction. At whatever in me just recoiled hard enough to make my breathing go uneven.

“I’m not him,” he says.

The room goes still.

I can’t look away.

Joker holds my gaze like he’s not going to let me disappear into myself if he can help it. “You hear me?” he asks, voice lower now. “I’m not Cal.”

I swallow hard. “I know that.”

“Do you?” There’s no cruelty in it. Just intensity. “Because your body just reacted like I told you I signed your name on some ownership paper.”

Heat floods my face. Because he isn’t wrong. And I hate that he can read me this clearly already.

Joker’s voice stays rough and grounded. “I told your dad because I’m not hiding what you are to me. Not from him. Not from anybody.”

My chest tightens. Dangerously.

“What I mean when I say I claimed you?” he continues, eyes locked on mine. “It’s not that you’re my property.”

That word alone makes something ugly shift under my skin.

He sees that too. His jaw hardens. “It means I’m standing on it. Means I’m telling the world where I’m planted. Means if anybody wants to come for you, they come through me first.”

I can’t breathe for a second. Not properly. Not with the weight of that landing exactly where it does.

Joker’s voice drops even lower. “You are not something I own, angel.” And then, quieter somehow, rougher in a way that feels like it scraped itself on the way out. “You’re my world.”

That does it. That’s the hit. Not dramatic. Not loud.

Just final.

Because there are some things your body knows before your brain can even form a defense, and mine knows immediately that no one has ever said anything to me more dangerous than that.

Not because it feels like a threat. Because it feels like truth.

I stare at him, absolutely wrecked by the simplicity of it.

Joker watches my face like he’s tracking the impact in real time. Then, because apparently he’s decided I haven’t had enough emotional damage for one evening, he adds, “Your dad wants you to call him.”