Page 41 of Joker

I lean one forearm against the door frame and look at her flatly. “You look like if you sneeze too hard, you’re going face-first into the gravel.”

That gets me a glare. A weak one, but still. “I’m not dropping her,” she says.

“No,” I agree. “You’ll end up dropping both of you.”

Her mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.

I keep going before she can find the energy to argue harder. “You can either let me carry the kid and keep enough balance not to eat shit in the parking lot, or you can fight me about it and lose because I’m not watching you break your face after six hours in a truck.”

For one second she just stares at me. Then something in her expression shifts, the fight draining out under the weight of pure exhaustion.

Not surrender. Just practicality finally winning again. It’s becoming a theme.

She exhales and mutters, “You’re kind of an asshole.”

“Yeah,” I say, already reaching in for Lexi. “But I’m useful.”

That, apparently, she can’t argue with.

Lexi stirs when I slide one arm under her knees and the other behind her back, but she doesn’t wake fully. She only makes a sleepy little sound and curls tighter around Bunny, cheek pressing against my shoulder for half a second before she settles again.

I go still. Not outwardly.

Outwardly, I keep moving like this is normal and not weird as hell.

But internally? That little trusting shift of her body lands harder than it should.

She smells like shampoo and sleep and whatever sticky-sweet kid snack she had earlier. She’s warm and heavier than she looks in that boneless sleeping-child way that makes you realize real fast why parents always look like they need ibuprofen.

I adjust her automatically so her head doesn’t knock against my shoulder.

Raven sees it. I can feel her noticing.

That awareness hums weirdly between us for half a second before I break it by nodding toward the building. “Grab her bag.”

She reaches into the back for Lexi’s little backpack while I snag the duffel with my free hand. The whole thing takes maybe ten seconds, but by the time we turn toward the clubhouse, there are already more eyes on us than I’d like.

Too bad for them.

The front door swings open before we even make it up the side path, and Logan steps out with Mac right behind him,Emma on her heels, both women moving fast enough to tell me Shadow did exactly what I told him to.

Good.

Very good, actually.

Because if there is one thing this place can do when it wants to, it’s absorb chaos like it was built for it.

Emma’s eyes go straight to Raven first, then to Lexi in my arms, and whatever questions she has get buried immediately under the kind of soft, efficient concern only women who’ve seen too much know how to wield.

“Hey, sweetheart,” she says to Raven in a voice that somehow manages to be gentle without sounding pitying. “Come on inside.”

Mac steps in beside her, dark hair pulled up, expression alert but warm. “We’ve got you.”

Simple words.

But I watch the way Raven reacts to them anyway. She doesn’t melt. Doesn’t visibly sag or cry or do anything dramatic.

Still, I see the tiny hitch in her breathing. See the way her shoulders drop just a fraction. See the way her eyes flick between Emma and Mac like she doesn’t quite know what to do with women stepping in without demanding anything from her first.