Page 50 of Joker

I am not waiting for Cal’s key in the lock tonight. The thought hits me so hard I have to turn my face into the pillow to keep the sound that rises in my throat from waking Lexi. Because that has been the shape of my nights for so long.

Waiting. Always waiting. For the sound of his truck. For the front door. For the key turning. For the shift in the air that meant he was home and I needed to figure out which version of him was walking through the door this time.

Angry. Tired. Quiet. Too affectionate in that way that never felt safe.

Every night was a countdown to impact. Every night was bracing.

And tonight…

Tonight there is no key in the lock. No truck in the driveway I have to listen for. No footsteps I need to interpret before I decide how quickly to stand up or what expression to put on my face.

There is just the soft hum of the clubhouse around me, the distant thread of laughter still drifting somewhere through the walls, the occasional low rumble of a bike outside, and my daughter asleep beside me with her bunny clutched in her arms.

And maybe, if I let myself think about it, the faintest awareness of a man in the room next door who somehow feels less like a threat than the silence ever did in my own home.

That realization is too much.

My eyes burn instantly. I blink hard against it, pressing my face deeper into the pillow because if I start crying now, I’m not sure I’ll stop cleanly. But the tears never fully come.

Not because they aren’t there. Because something else gets there first. Exhaustion. Heavy and total and impossible to outrun any longer. It drags at me all at once, like my body finally believes it can let go just enough to collapse.

I curl one arm around Lexi’s warm little body and let my hand rest lightly over her stomach, grounding myself in the steady rise and fall of her breathing. Then I close my eyes.

And for the first time in a very, very long time, I sleep.

Not lightly. Not in those fractured, miserable little bursts where every creak in the house jerks me back awake with my heart in my throat.

I sleep. Even without the sweatshirt. Which, somehow, makes the fact that I wanted to keep it feel even more dangerous.

I sleep deep enough that I lose whole stretches of time. Long enough that when I finally wake again, it’s not because I’m panicking.

It’s because pale morning light is slipping through the curtains and Lexi is curled closer against me with Bunny smashed between us. I blink up at the ceiling, disoriented for one long second.

Then it hits me.

I slept for more than an hour at a time. And somehow, in this strange room inside a loud clubhouse full of dangerous men and women I barely know, that feels like the first real breath I’ve taken in months.

I wake up before my alarm and know exactly why the second I open my eyes.

For one disorienting second, I stare at the ceiling in the dim gray of early morning and try to figure out what pulled me out of sleep when the clubhouse itself is still mostly quiet. No pounding on the door. No prospect being stupid in the hallway. No bike roaring to life outside my window.

Then I hear it.

Not even a real sound. More the absence of one. No footsteps next door. No soft murmur through the wall. No shift in the hallway outside.

And my brain, being the unhelpful bastard that it is, decides that means I’m awake now.

I roll onto my back and blow out a breath through my nose.

This is exactly the kind of thing I was trying not to think about when I spent half the night staring at the ceiling like an idiot. The fact that I am apparently now aware of whether or not the woman in the room next to mine is moving around before sunrise is not useful information. It is not healthy information.It is definitely not information a man like me should be making space for in his head.

And yet.

I lie there another minute anyway, listening to the muted heartbeat of the clubhouse around me.

Somewhere upstairs, one of the old pipes knocks once in the wall. Farther down the hall, a door opens and shuts softly. Outside, a bike starts, idles for a few seconds, then cuts out again. Somebody laughs somewhere in the common room, low and rough, probably a brother who never went to bed in the first place.

Normal sounds.