Page 158 of Joker

Laughter breaks through at that.

And then, together, the whole room finishes it with the kind of rough, affectionate enthusiasm that feels stitched into the bones of this place: “A cold pint and another one!”

The room erupts.

Cheers. Laughter. Clinking glass. Somebody, probably Blaze, whooping loud enough to make me jump.

And I’m standing in the middle of it with Joker’s arm around me and tears burning behind my eyes like the world has suddenly become too beautiful and too dangerous all at once.

He looks down at me when he feels me go quiet.

And because he is apparently committed to making my emotional stability everyone’s problem tonight, he brushes his knuckles once over my jaw in front of God and everybody like he doesn’t care who sees.

“You good?” he asks quietly.

I nod too fast. Then immediately shake my head because that’s a lie.

His mouth twitches. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “Thought so.”

Then he kisses my temple, casual as breathing, and the entire room immediately starts making enough noise that I consider faking my own death.

Emma laughs. Mac grins. Kya shakes her head into her drink. Brooke, somewhere near Carter, looks delighted. Even Shaina, leaned against Shadow with a beer in hand and skepticism in her blood, looks almost fond.

And the terrifying thing is, I love this.I love all of it.

The noise. The teasing. The way nobody is pretending not to see what’s happening between me and Joker because around here, once something’s real, it gets named and celebrated and folded into the structure instead of hidden.

That should feel overwhelming.

Instead, it feels like being let in.

The rest of the night unfolds in the kind of warm, rowdy, lived-in way that makes this place feel less like a clubhouse and more like a heartbeat.

The brothers take over one side of the room, arguing over cards and sports and who rides like an idiot. The women claim the couches and part of the bar, drifting in and out of conversations that bounce from teasing to real life to pure chaos in under thirty seconds. The kids, for as long as they’re still awake, run in messy little packs through the edges of it all, safe and loud and completely unbothered by the fact that half the room looks like they could start a riot.

Lexi, of course, eventually ends up in Joker’s lap.

Not because I put her there. Because she decides that’s where she belongs and climbs up like it’s obvious.

He doesn’t even hesitate. Just shifts his beer to the other hand and settles her against his chest while she tells him some long, winding story about Amy’s stickers and how Jason “doesn’t share right” and why Bunny needed a blanket too because apparently stuffed animals have bedtime preferences now.

I’m sitting beside him on the couch when it happens. Close enough that my knee is tucked against his thigh, one of his big hands absently resting over my leg like it ended up there by instinct and stayed.

I watch him while Lexi talks.

Watch the way he listens. The way he answers seriously even when she’s making absolutely no sense. The way his fingers stroke lightly down her back whenever she shifts.

He catches me looking eventually. His eyes meet mine over the top of Lexi’s dark little head. And just like that, the noise around us fades again.

The room is still full. Still laughing. Still alive. But for one second it’s just this.

Me Him. My daughter tucked safe in his arms.

A whole future sitting there in plain sight, breathing.

Joker’s expression changes slightly when he reads whatever is on my face. Softens. Warms. Then he reaches his free hand over and hooks a finger in the belt loop of my jeans like he needs some physical point of contact with me too.

The simple intimacy of that nearly undoes me.