Page 224 of Joker

For one beat, the whole fire goes dead quiet.

Then Blaze lets out a yell loud enough to wake the dead.

Cain starts laughing.

Emma’s already grinning.

Brooke’s face lights up.

Kya throws her hands up and says, “I knew it.”

Mac flips half the circle off while smiling too hard for it to have any bite.

I glance at Raven instinctively and find her already looking at me, eyes bright and soft and way too aware of the fact that the thought hit both of us in the same second.

Kids. More kids. Future. The kind of life that keeps stretching forward instead of ending where the fear told us it had to.

Then I notice something else.

Carter’s gone still. So has Dom.

Not bad-still. Not violent-still.

Just…caught.

I shift slightly in my chair and look from one to the other. Then to Brooke. Then to Kya.

And the second I see Brooke’s face, the way she’s trying and failing not to smile too knowingly at Carter, it clicks.

I sit up straighter.

No way.

Kya sees me see it and immediately points her water bottle at me like that’s somehow gonna stop the obvious.

“Don’t,” she says.

I grin.

“Oh, no. Absolutely not.”

Dom mutters, “For fuck’s sake.”

That’s all the confirmation I need.

I look around the fire and start laughing. Real, helpless laughter this time. Because apparently the universe has decided the Deathstalkers MC deserves absolutely no peace.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” I say.

Nobody answers. Not one goddamn person.

Carter scrubs a hand over his face. Brooke’s smiling into her shoulder.

Dom glares into his beer. Kya looks like she’s debating homicide.

And then Raven, sitting warm and solid beside me, leans in just enough to whisper, “Oh my God.”

I laugh harder.