Page 214 of Joker

Mac bumps her shoulder lightly against mine. “Good.”

Then she’s gone again, called away by Emma because apparently the dip situation has become urgent enough to require backup.

I stay where I am. Watching. Feeling. Letting it all settle. The best part of this life, the thing I didn’t understand when I first got here, is that the clubhouse is never still.

It’s always alive. Always moving. Always talking. Always carrying the sound of people who know each other too well to stand on ceremony.

Back then it felt chaotic. Now it feels like rhythm. It feels like a heartbeat. And I’m part of it.

That thought still catches me off guard sometimes. Not because it feels wrong. Because it feels so right I still don’t entirely know what to do with the gratitude that comes with it.

Lexi, apparently done directing traffic from above, starts wriggling on Joker’s shoulders until he catches her ankles tighter and grunts, “Sit still, bug, unless you’re trying to make me commit a crime in front of God and everybody.”

“I wanna down.”

“That sounds suspicious.”

“I want a hotdog.”

“Now we’re getting to the truth.” He lowers her with the kind of easy, practiced motion that tells me he’s done it enough now to stop thinking about it. She hits the ground running, Bunny tucked under one arm even though it’s far too warm for her to still be carrying that stuffed rabbit everywhere. Except she does.

And Joker never once complains when he’s the one asked to keep track of Bunny while she climbs or eats or colors or decides she needs both hands free for some tiny emergency that absolutely cannot wait.

There was a time when the sight of that alone would have hurt in ways I couldn’t survive cleanly. Not because it was bad.Because it was too beautiful. Too much. Too improbable. Too close to something I didn’t think I was allowed to have.

Now, when Lexi tugs on the hem of Joker’s cut and announces, “Come help me,” like it is the most obvious thing in the world that he would, he just looks down at her and sighs like he’s deeply inconvenienced while already following wherever she points.

That should not emotionally wreck me every time. It absolutely does. Because this man was never supposed to be built for softness. Not on the surface.

The world gets Joker. The patch. The darkness. The violence. The mouth on him. The kind of presence that makes strangers move out of his way without being asked.

But with us?

He’s different. Not less dangerous. Not gentler in some unrealistic, softened into someone else way.

Just…more.

More patient. More careful. More openly his in the ways that matter.

He’s still dark-humored and rough around the edges, still terrifying when someone pushes too far, still exactly the kind of man nobody sane would want to meet in a bad alley with a reason to hate them.

But with Lexi in his lap and me in his bed and our life taking shape around him whether he planned for it or not, there’s something else too.

Devotion. It lives in the quiet things.

The coffee he still makes before I’m fully awake. The way he checks the locks at night and doesn’t even realize he’s doing it anymore because it’s become part of the shape of loving us. The way he reaches back automatically when Lexi climbs onto the couch behind him, one hand settling against her leg so she doesn’t tumble off even while he’s in the middle of arguing with Cain about engines. The way he looks for me in every room without making it obvious unless you know him well enough to catch it.

I know him well enough now. I know him better than anyone else does. That still feels like a privilege I don’t fully deserve.

Lexi drags him toward the picnic table with the force of a tiny tyrant, and he goes, letting her lead him by two fingers while she tells him in grave detail that she needs ketchup “but not too yucky much.”

I watch him bend down so she can whisper something into his ear and then straighten with the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth like whatever she said was ridiculous and beloved at the same time. Then his gaze lifts and catches mine again. He doesn’t stop moving. Doesn’t break stride. Just watches me across the yard for one long second and gives me that look. Warm. Dark. Certain.

Home.

That’s what it is now.

For the longest time, home was a thing I thought had been taken from me permanently. First by leaving. Then by surviving. Then by learning how easily walls can become traps if the wrong man is standing inside them with you.