Page 54 of Joker

“You were.”

“I was just…surprised.”

“By cereal?”

“By you.” The answer is so honest it almost knocks me off balance.

I turn my head and find her watching me over the rim of her mug, Lexi warm and sleepy in her lap, morning light just starting to brighten the edges of the kitchen around her.

Dangerous setup. Very dangerous.

I take another swallow of coffee and make myself look away first. “Try not to be,” I say.

“Noted.”

That should be the end of it. It isn’t.

Because now I’m aware of too many things all at once. The sound of Lexi’s spoon tapping the bowl. The way Raven tucks her hair behind one ear with the same hand she used to grip her purse in the truck. The soft scrape of the chair when she shifts to settle Lexi more comfortably. The fact that she takes her coffee with one sugar and two small pours of creamer. The fact that Lexi apparently only eats cereal if it comes from the purple box and Bunny has to be positioned nearby but not too close to the milk.

This is not useful information. My brain stores it anyway.

Boots hit the hallway a few seconds before Shadow and Blaze appear in the doorway like the world’s least subtle pair of assholes. They both stop short when they clock the scene in front of them.

Raven at the table in her shirt from last night, hair loose, coffee in hand. Lexi in her lap, eating cereal out of the purple box. Me at the counter, already caffeinated enough to notice exactly what this looks like.

Blaze’s grin starts instantly.

Shadow, being Shadow, doesn’t smile much. He just looks between us once and says, “Well, this is domestic as hell.”

I don’t even turn around fully. “Go away.”

Blaze steps into the kitchen anyway. “Morning to you too. Hey, sweetheart.”

That last line is directed at Lexi, who pauses with her spoon halfway to her mouth and blinks at him. Then she slowly leans harder into Raven and picks Bunny up again.

Blaze presses a hand to his chest like he’s been wounded. “Wow. Harsh.”

“She’s got instincts,” I tell him.

Raven chokes on a laugh and covers it with her mug.

Shadow leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, gaze too knowing for this hour. “You didn’t come down for breakfast when I called. Now I see why.”

I look at him flatly. “Did you have a point?”

“Just taking in the scenery.”

“You do that somewhere else, I don’t break your neck before noon.”

Blaze, ignoring every obvious survival instinct he should have developed by now, saunters toward the coffee pot. “So this is what you brought back from Louisiana. Logan really undersold it.”

Raven goes still. Not visibly enough for anybody but me to notice.

But I see it. The way her shoulders tighten half an inch. The way her hand stills on Lexi’s back. The way she goes quiet inside herself for a second, like she’s not sure how much of this attention is safe.

My patience snaps thin fast. “Blaze.”

He glances over, finally catching something in my tone that isn’t a joke.