Chapter 27 #3
The way her whole face changed when she took in the shape of me. Not just that I was thinner. Or quieter. But that something was wrong.
“She knew better than to make a scene,” I say. “She just came over like it was nothing. Asked about Lexi. Asked how I was doing.” I let out a brittle little laugh. “I lied to her. Badly.”
Joker’s expression doesn’t shift, but I can feel how closely he’s following every word.
“She waited until I turned the cart to leave, then she slipped her burner phone into the basket under the groceries and told me if I needed help, I had one chance to use it right.”
My throat tightens at the memory.
At the simple, impossible gift of that tiny little phone tucked under a bag of apples and crackers like it was nothing.
Like it wasn’t the first real opening I’d had in years.
“I didn’t even know if I’d be able to keep it,” I admit. “Cal checked everything. My purse. The car. My phone. Sometimes even the diaper bag when Lexi was younger. He was…” I stop and swallow. “Obsessive.”
Joker’s eyes go colder somehow. Still, he doesn’t interrupt.
“I hid it inside the lining of one of Lexi’s old overnight bags,” I say. “One he never touched because he thought it was just full of extra clothes and toddler junk.”
That gets the smallest nod from him. Approval, maybe. Or just acknowledgment that I did what I had to.
“I waited two days before I used it,” I continue. “I was scared he’d somehow know. Or that he’d hear me. Or that if I actually called my dad and nothing came of it, I’d just make everything worse.”
That part still makes my stomach turn. How many times fear dressed itself up as strategy and kept me in place.
“How’d you call?” Joker asks.
“When Cal was at work.”
That word still feels ridiculous coming out of my mouth.
Work.
As if men like him ever really leave the thing they are behind when they walk out the door.
“I took Lexi to the park because I knew I couldn’t chance it at home with the cameras.” I laugh once, low and ugly.
Joker’s mouth hardens at that.
I keep going anyway. “I called my dad. He answered on the second ring.”
That one nearly breaks me all over again. Because I can still hear it.
The silence on the line after he said my name.
The way he knew instantly something was wrong before I even got the words out.
The way his voice changed when I finally started crying hard enough that I couldn’t hide it anymore.
“He didn’t waste time asking a bunch of questions,” I say, and my voice softens despite myself. “He just told me to listen carefully. Told me exactly what to pack, exactly what not to touch, exactly how long I had, and that if I changed my mind halfway through, I needed to keep going anyway.”
Joker studies me for a beat before asking, “He got you out the next day?”
I nod.
“He had Morgan pick me up in a car Cal wouldn’t recognize.
Cal was at work. Lexi knew we were going to see Pop-Pop.
” I look down again, throat burning. “I think that’s the only reason I kept moving.
Because she was excited. And if my three-year-old could walk out the front door smiling, I didn’t have an excuse to freeze. ”
The room goes quiet around us.
I can hear the low thrum of the clubhouse outside the bedroom walls. Voices somewhere down the hall. A laugh in the distance. Someone dragging something heavy across the concrete floor downstairs. All of it feels very far away.
“Your dad kept you in Louisiana for a week,” Joker says after a second.
It’s not a question.
I nod again. “He didn’t want to move me too fast until he knew what Cal had figured out and what he hadn’t. I stayed in one of the back rooms near the private offices. Lexi got restless. We couldn’t even go outside. I…” I let out a breath. “I hated it.”
“Because you were hiding.”
“Because I felt like a problem.” The words are out before I can stop them. I hate them immediately.
Hate how small they sound. How honest.
Joker’s expression changes in a way that makes my stomach dip. Not soft. Never soft in a way that would make me feel handled. Just sharper. More focused.
“Angel,” he says, voice low enough to scrape, “you need to kill that thought before I do it for you.”
I blink at him.
He steps closer this time. Close enough that I can feel the heat of him, but still not crowding. Still giving me the choice to lean in or back off. “You are not a problem,” he says. “You were in danger. There’s a difference.”
My throat goes tight all over again. Because no one has ever said it to me that plainly. No one has ever looked at me like my fear is a circumstance and not a flaw.
I stare at him, and for one dangerous second I want to cry just because he makes simple things feel impossible to survive.
Instead, I take a shaky breath and ask the question that’s been sitting low in my chest ever since he told me in the storage of his expression that something had shifted. “What’s that look for?”
Joker’s jaw shifts. Not enough to miss.
“What?”
He exhales slowly through his nose. “I told your dad about us.”
The words hit me so fast I actually flinch. Not physically. Internally.
My whole chest locks up at once. My first reaction is immediate and ugly and automatic. Panic. Not because of him. Because of the shape of the sentence.
Because I told your dad about us sounds dangerously close to someone else made a decision about me and my nervous system doesn’t always wait around for context before it starts preparing for war.
Joker sees it happen. Of course he does. His eyes narrow just slightly and he steps even closer before I can get too far into my own head. “Hey.”
That one word cuts through the panic enough to make me look at him.
His expression is hard, but not at me. At the reaction. At whatever in me just recoiled hard enough to make my breathing go uneven.
“I’m not him,” he says.
The room goes still.
I can’t look away.
Joker holds my gaze like he’s not going to let me disappear into myself if he can help it. “You hear me?” he asks, voice lower now. “I’m not Cal.”
I swallow hard. “I know that.”
“Do you?” There’s no cruelty in it. Just intensity. “Because your body just reacted like I told you I signed your name on some ownership paper.”
Heat floods my face. Because he isn’t wrong. And I hate that he can read me this clearly already.
Joker’s voice stays rough and grounded. “I told your dad because I’m not hiding what you are to me. Not from him. Not from anybody.”
My chest tightens. Dangerously.
“What I mean when I say I claimed you?” he continues, eyes locked on mine. “It’s not that you’re my property.”
That word alone makes something ugly shift under my skin.
He sees that too. His jaw hardens. “It means I’m standing on it. Means I’m telling the world where I’m planted. Means if anybody wants to come for you, they come through me first.”
I can’t breathe for a second. Not properly. Not with the weight of that landing exactly where it does.
Joker’s voice drops even lower. “You are not something I own, angel.” And then, quieter somehow, rougher in a way that feels like it scraped itself on the way out. “You’re my world.”
That does it. That’s the hit. Not dramatic. Not loud.
Just final.
Because there are some things your body knows before your brain can even form a defense, and mine knows immediately that no one has ever said anything to me more dangerous than that.
Not because it feels like a threat. Because it feels like truth.
I stare at him, absolutely wrecked by the simplicity of it.
Joker watches my face like he’s tracking the impact in real time. Then, because apparently he’s decided I haven’t had enough emotional damage for one evening, he adds, “Your dad wants you to call him.”
That one catches me completely off guard. My eyes widen. “What?”
“He wants to hear your voice, hear you’re okay.”
The words hit somewhere soft enough to hurt. Immediately. Because of course he does. Because of course all the distance and silence and damage Cal built between us didn’t actually erase the fact that my father still wants to know I’m okay.
That he still worries. That he still loves me. And somehow, after everything else I’ve already survived in this room tonight, that is what nearly brings me apart.
I look away fast, blinking hard.
Joker doesn’t say anything about it. Just waits. That seems to be his answer to everything that matters. He gives me enough space to step into it on my own.
My voice is smaller when I finally say, “I don’t know if I can do that by myself.”
Joker doesn’t hesitate. “I’ll stay.”
I look back at him.
He means it exactly the way he says it. Not taking over. Not hovering.
Just there. Steady.
If I need him. And because I’m apparently past the point of pretending his presence doesn’t settle something in me I don’t know how to explain, I nod. “Okay.”
He reaches for the burner on his dresser without another word and hands it to me. The little phone looks absurdly small in my palm.
Cheap. Light. Harmless. Like it isn’t the thing that got me out alive.
My fingers shake when I type in the number.
Joker notices. He doesn’t say anything. He just sits down on the edge of the bed beside me, close enough that our thighs almost touch, far enough that I still have room to breathe.
The phone rings once.
Twice.
Then—
“Raven?”
My breath catches so hard it hurts.
I close my eyes immediately because hearing my dad’s voice after all this time without a middleman, without secrecy, without panic already breathing down my neck, is somehow too much. “Hey, Daddy.”
The silence on the other end lasts all of half a second before it cracks. “Baby girl.”
That does it. Tears burn instantly. I press my free hand over my mouth and bow my head, trying and failing to keep my breathing even.
Beside me, Joker goes very still. Not uncomfortable. Not awkward.
Just present.
Solid enough that I can lean into the edge of him without meaning to, and he lets me.
“Hey,” my dad says softly through the phone. “Hey, don’t do that. You’re alright. I got you.”