Page 32 of Joker

She runs her fingers through her hair once more, then glances back toward Lexi.

The kid hasn’t stirred. Bunny is still clutched to her chest like a tiny witness to the whole damn thing.

Raven’s expression softens when she looks at her daughter. Not all the way, because I’m not sure she remembers how to soften all the way anymore, but enough that I catch another glimpse of whatever life she had before all this.

“Her hair is like mine,” she says quietly, still turned a little toward the backseat. “Dark and impossible.”

I follow her glance in the mirror and see only Lexi’s sleeping face, fine strands, bunny ear, little body folded in on itself. “Impossible, huh?”

Raven looks forward again. “Tangles no matter what I do. She hates when I brush it after bath time.”

“That so?”

“She acts like I’m murdering her every single night.”

“Sounds dramatic.”

“She’s very committed to the performance.”

That gets another laugh out of me, low enough I barely hear it over the engine. “Guess she comes by it honest.”

Raven turns her head. “Are you calling me dramatic?”

“I don’t know you well enough yet.”

The second the words leave my mouth, something sharp shifts in the cab. Because I said yet. And I know I said it.

And she knows I said it.

I keep my eyes on the road and pretend I didn’t just hand over a piece of my own thinking by accident.

Raven is quiet for a beat. Then she says, almost carefully, “That implies you plan to.”

“Plan to what?”

“Know me well enough.”

I don’t answer right away. Could tell her it was a figure of speech. Could brush it off. Could do the smart thing and shut that line of conversation down before it goes somewhere I don’t need it to.

Instead I hear myself say, “I plan to get you where you’re going.”

Not an answer. Not exactly. But not a lie either.

She accepts it with a small nod, and for some reason that bothers me less than it should.

The truck rolls on. The night deepens.

Her hair stays loose over her shoulders, and I become painfully aware of it every damn time I glance her direction, which is far too often for a man who prides himself on control.

I start asking questions just to give my brain somewhere else to go.

Small ones. Safe ones. Whether Lexi likes cartoons or books better. Whether Raven grew up around bikes or just around the chapter. Whether she wants the radio louder or lower.

She answers more easily now, maybe because the wig is off, maybe because the road has stretched long enough that this weird limbo feels almost survivable.

Lexi likes both, but books win if there are animals in them.

Raven grew up around everything from dirt bikes to old Harleys and learned real early not to flinch at engine noise if she wanted the men around her to stop laughing.