Page 127 of Joker
Not the abstract, floating kind of knowing that lets you push a hard thing off until later. Not the version where you tell yourself you’ll handle it tomorrow, or next week, or when the timing is better and your nerves aren’t already stretched thin and your life doesn’t feel like it’s balanced on a blade.
No.
This lands lower than that. Harder. Sharper.
It sits in my chest all afternoon while Lexi plays with Amy and Casey in the common room and Gio grumbles his way through another game he’s absolutely losing on purpose but will deny to his grave. It stays with me while Emma folds laundry at the kitchen table and Mac argues with Logan about something so ridiculous I lose the thread before I even bother following it. It’s there when Joker passes through the room and his hand skims low over my back, casual enough not to draw attention, deliberate enough that my whole body lights up anyway.
It’s there because every time I look at him now, every time I catch the shape of him watching the room like he’s alreadymeasuring how fast he can break somebody if they move wrong near us, the same thought keeps rising.
Not telling him is becoming more dangerous than telling him. That should probably terrify me more than it does.
Because telling him means making it real in a way I haven’t let it be before. It means saying the ugliest parts out loud. It means taking things I have kept locked down inside myself and laying them in front of a man who already looks at me like he’s halfway to violence just from what little he knows now.
And if I tell Joker the full shape of Cal? If I tell him what kind of man my ex-husband really is?
There won’t be any putting that back in the box afterward.
The thought follows me until the sun starts dropping and the clubhouse settles into that late-afternoon stretch where everything feels warm and lived-in and deceptively safe. Lexi is tired but happy, Bunny tucked under her arm while Amy helps her color at one of the tables. Casey is explaining something to Jason with all the grave patience of a tiny dictator, and Gio is pretending not to care while hovering close enough to be clearly invested anyway.
I should be in the room with them. I am in the room with them, technically. But part of me is already moving toward something else.
Toward him.
Joker catches my eye from across the common room like he can feel it. Maybe he can. The look he gives me is brief, but there’s a question in it. Not spoken. Not pressing. Just there.
You alright?
No.
Yes.
I don’t know.
I lift my chin slightly toward the hall.
His gaze sharpens for half a second, then he nods once.
That’s all.
No drama. No asking in front of everybody. No making it bigger than I’m prepared to survive.
He waits until Emma looks up and catches what passes between us. She glances at me once, then at Lexi, then gives the smallest possible nod like she understands exactly what’s happening and is going to make sure my daughter stays occupied without me having to ask.
The ease of that nearly throws me. Everything here still does sometimes. The quiet competence. The way these people move around each other like trust is just part of the structure.
I press my lips together and head for the side hall before I can second-guess myself.
Joker is already there when I turn the corner, leaning one shoulder against the wall outside our rooms, cut on, dark eyes on me in that steady, unreadable way that’s become more familiar than it should. “You alright?” he asks once I’m close enough that nobody else can hear.
I let out a breath that catches halfway out of my chest. “No.”
His expression doesn’t change much. That somehow makes this easier.
He pushes off the wall and opens the door to his room. Maybe that’s why I chose it. Maybe I need the lack of escape. Maybe I’m afraid if I picked somewhere too open, I’d run.
The door shuts quietly behind him. Not locked. Just closed.
He stays near it, giving me space, waiting. I hate him a little for how patient he can be when it matters. Because impatience would be easier to defend against.
