Page 213 of Joker

“It’s not made up.”

“Feels it.”

She leans forward over the top of his head in utter outrage. “I know directions.”

He glances toward Blaze, who’s watching with the kind of delight that says he plans to be insufferable about this later. “You hear that? I’m being corrected by a four-year-old.”

“She’s probably right,” Blaze calls back.

“Shut the fuck up.”

Lexi pats the top of Joker’s head with all the solemnity of a tiny queen granting mercy to an incompetent subject. “You don’t say bad words by kids.”

I laugh into my lemonade before I can stop myself.

Joker’s gaze cuts toward me immediately. And there it is. That look.

Even now. Even after everything. Even months later, when the bruises are healed and the fear doesn’t live in my throat anymore and the life we built has settled around us sonaturally it almost feels like I must have dreamed the years before it.

He still looks at me like that.

Like I’m his favorite thing in any room. Like he doesn’t give a shit who sees it. Like choosing me was never even a choice at all, just a fact he eventually caught up to.

His mouth curves slightly when he catches me smiling, and something warm and certain opens up in my chest.

That happens a lot now. The certainty. It used to be fear first. Then relief. Then disbelief so sharp it hurt.

Now it’s just certainty.

This is mine. He is mine. I am his. Lexi is ours. This life is real.

It takes me a second to fully appreciate the miracle of that. Not because I don’t feel it. Because I do. Because I feel it so often now I’m starting to understand this is what healing actually looks like.

Not forgetting. Not pretending. Not waking up one day magically unscarred.

It’s this.

Standing in the middle of a loud, messy family day at the clubhouse with my daughter on the shoulders of the man I love and realizing I’m not waiting for impact anymore.

I’m just here.

Living.

Mac appears at my side with a bowl of chips balanced against her hip and follows my line of sight. “Gross,” she says affectionately.

I smile without looking away. “You’ve been with Logan for too long to judge anyone.”

“False,” she says, reaching into the bowl. “I’m qualified specifically because I’ve been with Logan too long.”

That actually gets a laugh out of me.

Mac glances over at me, and there’s something soft in her face for a second. Not pity. Never that. Just the quiet, knowing kind of warmth the women here have mastered without making a production out of it. “You good?” she asks.

The question used to hit me like a test. Now it feels like care.

I look out at the yard again. At the bikes lined up beyond the fence. At the brothers talking shit by the firepit they’re already building up for later. At the kids darting in and out of the long shadows of evening like the whole world belongs to them.

And I answer honestly. “Yeah,” I say softly. “I really am.”