Page 97 of Joker

That’s the only word for it.

Everything in Joker changes in an instant. His shoulders lock. His jaw goes hard. His whole body turns into a line drawn between me and the rest of the room. “Move,” he says.

Not loud. Doesn’t need to be.

The drunk guy blinks at him, startled and confused. “Man, I didn’t—”

“I said move.”

The room is changing around us now. Brothers looking over. Voices dropping. The music still playing like nothing’s wrong, which somehow makes it all worse. I can see Emma moving toward me from the corner of my vision, Mac right behind her, but Joker gets there first in every way that matters.

His hand finds my elbow. Careful. Firm. Nothing like the push he used on the other man.

“Raven.”

My name in his voice cuts through the panic just enough to hurt.

I can’t answer. I’m trying. I can’t.

His eyes hit my face, and whatever he sees there makes something in his expression turn colder.

Not toward me. Toward everything else.

He doesn’t waste another second. “Come on.”

I don’t remember deciding to move. I just know suddenly I am.

Joker’s body is in front of mine, then beside it, then angled around me like he’s blocking every line of sight he can while guiding me through the room. Emma says something sharp behind us. Blaze answers. Someone kills the music halfway through the next verse. The whole thing blurs into noise I can’t sort.

Joker gets me through it anyway. Fast. Efficient. Like he’s done this before. Like he knows exactly what to do with a woman on the edge of a panic spiral and doesn’t need me to explain a single thing.

We’re out the side door before most of the room even fully understands what happened.

The night air hits my face hard enough to sting. Cold compared to the heat inside.

Joker keeps moving, not far, just enough to get distance between me and the noise, leading me around the side of the building where the shadows are quieter and the sounds from inside drop to a manageable hum.

Then he stops. Turns. And all at once there’s nothing between us but night air and the fact that I can’t seem to get enough of it into my lungs.

“Breathe,” he says.

I shake my head once. I am breathing. It just doesn’t feel like it’s working.

He steps closer. Not crowding. Close enough to anchor. “Look at me.”

I do. Because there is nowhere else to look.

His face is hard from whatever he left behind inside, but his hands are steady where one is still on my elbow and the other hovers near my shoulder like he’s not sure if touching me more will help or hurt.

“Breathe with me,” he says.

I try. The first one catches. The second too. By the third, I get enough air in to stop the room from tilting quite so violently.

My hands are shaking. I hate that. I hate all of it.

I can feel the shame rising now that the worst of the spiral has crested. The embarrassment. The horror of knowing people saw. Of knowing I let myself slip enough for any of this to happen in the first place.

Joker must see some of that too. Because his voice goes lower when he says, “Don’t.”