Page 113 of Joker

Not the same kind as last night. This one’s quieter. Meaner. The kind that turns inward and starts cutting her up before anybody else gets a chance.

“You can breathe,” I tell her.

She glances at me, defensive on instinct. “I am.”

“You’re not doing it right.”

That gets a look out of her.

Good. Anything that drags her out of her own head for a second is useful.

She stares at me like she’s trying to decide whether I’m being annoying on purpose.

I am. And she knows it.

“You’re doing that thing again,” I say.

“What thing?”

“Trying to think yourself into a corner.”

Her mouth presses into a thin line, and I know I hit it dead on. She looks away.

I let the silence sit for a beat before I ask the only thing that actually matters. “You regret it?”

Her head turns back immediately. “No.”

Too quick to be fake. Too honest to miss. Something in my chest settles.

“Then stop acting like you need to apologize for it.”

That lands harder than I mean for it to, judging by the flicker in her face. But I’m not taking it back. Because I know that look. Know the instinct behind it.

She’s used to smoothing things over before they become a problem. Used to getting ahead of fallout before it lands.

I’m not letting her do that here. Not with me.

She looks down at her hands and says quietly, “I just didn’t expect it to feel like that.”

That one gets me. Because same.

I shift up onto one elbow and study her for a second before asking, “Like what?”

She lets out a short breath. “Big.”

A laugh almost gets out of me. Not because it’s funny. Because it’s true enough to hurt.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “It was.”

That finally gets a small laugh out of her, surprised and unwilling, and the sound of it loosens something in the room that was starting to pull too tight.

I sit up after that and reach for my sweats, tugging them on while she tries not to visibly look at me and fails just enough to make me want to pin her back into the mattress and remind her exactly how last night ended. But she’s still shaky around the edges, and I’m not an asshole.

Mostly.

So instead, I look toward the door and ask, “You want coffee?”

She blinks at me like I’ve spoken another language. “What?”