Page 150 of Joker

“Correct.”

She huffs a quiet laugh and finally pulls away enough to kick off her slippers and crawl under the covers while I shut off the lamp and strip down to my sweats.

When I slide into bed beside her, she turns into me automatically now. No hesitation. No uncertainty. Just warmth and trust and soft skin and the kind of closeness I never thought I’d be stupid enough to need.

I pull her in tighter and settle my hand low at her waist.

She exhales against my chest and melts.

Outside the room, the clubhouse creaks and settles around us. Somewhere down the hall, a pipe knocks once in the wall. A bike starts outside in the lot, then fades into the distance.

Inside this room, though, everything goes still.

Raven’s breathing evens out first. Mine follows slower. And before sleep finally starts dragging at me, I look into the dark over the top of her head and let the truth settle one last time.

No one is taking them.

Not the law. Not Cal. Not fear. Not the past. Not if I have one brutal, bloody thing to say about it.

Because the woman in my arms?

The little girl asleep down the hall?

That future already starting to take shape in my head whether I asked for it or not?

That’s mine to protect now. Mine to build. Mine to keep.

And for the first time in a long damn time, the thought of belonging to something that much doesn’t feel like a weakness.

It feels like a reason.

If someone had told me a month ago that peace could feel this dangerous, I would’ve thought they were insane.

Now I understand exactly what they would’ve meant. Because peace, real peace, doesn’t arrive with fanfare. It doesn’t come in some grand cinematic moment where the world stops and all the broken pieces of your life suddenly click into place.

It comes quietly.

It comes in coffee already made before you’ve fully opened your eyes. It comes in a heavy pair of boots outside a bedroom door you’ve started recognizing by sound alone. It comes in a little girl laughing in the next room instead of asking in a whisper if they need to hide. It comes in a man who never asks for credit when he shows up, because showing up has become so natural to him he doesn’t even seem to notice he’s doing it anymore.

That’s the dangerous part.

Not the obvious things. Not the heat between me and Joker or the way my body has started reaching for him without permission every time he gets too close.

No.

The dangerous part is how easy this has become. How natural. How much it already feels like a life.

I realize it before I even fully wake up.

Not because of where I am. That part doesn’t even register as strange anymore.

I wake up in Joker’s bed, tucked warm against his side with one of his arms heavy around my waist and the other bent under the pillow, and instead of panicking or freezing or mentally cataloging where I am and how fast I can move if I need to, my first coherent thought is:

I need coffee.

That alone should probably concern me. It doesn’t. Because the second thought is worse.

He’s gonna make it before I even get up.