Page 133 of Joker

“How’d you call?” Joker asks.

“When Cal was at work.”

That word still feels ridiculous coming out of my mouth.

Work.

As if men like him ever really leave the thing they are behind when they walk out the door.

“I took Lexi to the park because I knew I couldn’t chance it at home with the cameras.” I laugh once, low and ugly.

Joker’s mouth hardens at that.

I keep going anyway. “I called my dad. He answered on the second ring.”

That one nearly breaks me all over again. Because I can still hear it.

The silence on the line after he said my name.

The way he knew instantly something was wrong before I even got the words out.

The way his voice changed when I finally started crying hard enough that I couldn’t hide it anymore.

“He didn’t waste time asking a bunch of questions,” I say, and my voice softens despite myself. “He just told me to listen carefully. Told me exactly what to pack, exactly what not to touch, exactly how long I had, and that if I changed my mind halfway through, I needed to keep going anyway.”

Joker studies me for a beat before asking, “He got you out the next day?”

I nod.

“He had Morgan pick me up in a car Cal wouldn’t recognize. Cal was at work. Lexi knew we were going to see Pop-Pop.” I look down again, throat burning. “I think that’s the only reason I kept moving. Because she was excited. And if my three-year-old could walk out the front door smiling, I didn’t have an excuse to freeze.”

The room goes quiet around us.

I can hear the low thrum of the clubhouse outside the bedroom walls. Voices somewhere down the hall. A laugh in the distance. Someone dragging something heavy across the concrete floor downstairs. All of it feels very far away.

“Your dad kept you in Louisiana for a week,” Joker says after a second.

It’s not a question.

I nod again. “He didn’t want to move me too fast until he knew what Cal had figured out and what he hadn’t. I stayed in one of the back rooms near the private offices. Lexi got restless. We couldn’t even go outside. I…” I let out a breath. “I hated it.”

“Because you were hiding.”

“Because I felt like a problem.” The words are out before I can stop them. I hate them immediately.

Hate how small they sound. How honest.

Joker’s expression changes in a way that makes my stomach dip. Not soft. Never soft in a way that would make me feel handled. Just sharper. More focused.

“Angel,” he says, voice low enough to scrape, “you need to kill that thought before I do it for you.”

I blink at him.

He steps closer this time. Close enough that I can feel the heat of him, but still not crowding. Still giving me the choice to lean in or back off. “You are not a problem,” he says. “You were in danger. There’s a difference.”

My throat goes tight all over again. Because no one has ever said it to me that plainly. No one has ever looked at me like my fear is a circumstance and not a flaw.

I stare at him, and for one dangerous second I want to cry just because he makes simple things feel impossible to survive.