Chapter 27 #4
The words break something open in me all over again. Because I didn’t know how badly I needed to hear them from him until right now.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, hating how wrecked I sound.
“For what?” he asks immediately, voice sharpening just enough to cut through the shame trying to creep in. “Don’t you dare apologize to me.”
I squeeze my eyes shut tighter. “I should’ve called sooner.”
“No.” His voice is firm now. Unmovable. “You called when you could. That’s all that matters.”
My throat tightens so hard I can barely force the next words out. “I didn’t want you to think less of me.”
The silence on the other end of the line is immediate and heavy.
Then my father says, low and rough enough that I can hear the emotion under it despite how hard he’s trying to hold it together, “Raven, there is not a damn thing that man could’ve done to you that would make me think less of you.”
That one hits so hard I have to turn my face into Joker’s shoulder for a second just to survive it. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just lets me have the space and the contact both at once.
“Do you hear me?” my dad asks.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Say it back.”
I let out a shaky breath. “You don’t think less of me.”
“Never.”
The certainty in that one word makes something inside me finally, finally unclench. Not all the way. Enough. I wipe quickly at my face and try to get my breathing back under control.
My dad, because he knows me better than anybody and always has, doesn’t let the silence stretch too long before he shifts the conversation just enough to help me hold together. “You eating?”
I let out a watery little laugh despite myself. “Yes.”
“Sleeping?”
“More.”
“That’s not an answer.”
I glance sideways at Joker, who’s watching me with that same impossible steadiness, one forearm resting over his thigh, dark eyes tracking every tiny shift in my face like it matters. It shouldn’t comfort me this much.
It does.
“More than before,” I say honestly.
My dad hums low into the phone like he’s filing that away. “And Lexi?”
At that, something softer comes into my chest. “She’s good,” I tell him. “Really good, actually. She likes it here.” There’s a smile in my voice by the time I say the last part, and I know he hears it.
He goes quiet for a beat. Then, more carefully, “And him?”
My face heats instantly.
Joker’s mouth twitches like he knows exactly what question just got asked.
I hate both of them a little.
“He’s…” I glance at Joker again and immediately regret it because the look in his eyes makes my pulse kick hard. “He’s been good to us.”
That is the understatement of the century.
My dad snorts softly through the line like he knows it too. “He better be.”
I actually smile this time. “Daddy.”
“What?” he asks, not sounding sorry at all. “That boy told me you were his old lady like he was announcing weather.”
Joker’s shoulders shake once beside me. The asshole is laughing.
I shoot him a glare through tears.
He has the decency to look only mildly smug about it.
“I panicked,” I admit quietly into the phone. “At first.”
My dad hums again. “And then?”
I look down at my hand where it rests on the comforter between me and Joker. Then, without fully thinking about it, I let my pinky hook around his.
Tiny. Private. Automatic.
His hand turns immediately, curling around mine like he’s been waiting for an excuse.
My chest squeezes so hard it almost hurts. “And then he explained it,” I say softly.
My dad is quiet for a second too long. When he speaks again, his voice is lower. “He treating you right?”
The question should embarrass me. Instead, it makes my eyes burn all over again. Because no one has ever asked me that and meant it in the way he does.
Not is he providing?
Not is he behaving?
Not is he useful?
Treating me right.
As if I’m allowed to want that. As if I deserve it.
I look at Joker’s hand wrapped around mine. At the calluses.
The ink disappearing under his sleeve where his wrist bends.
The sheer steadiness of him.
“Yes,” I whisper.
My father exhales slowly through the phone. Not happy. Not fully. But accepting something he maybe already knew was true before I said it.
“Alright,” he says at last. That one word carries a thousand things inside it.
I hear:
I don’t love this.
I’m still your father.
I’m still watching him.
But I hear you.
And for now, that’s enough.
We talk a little longer after that. Nothing huge. Nothing life-altering. Just enough to stitch something back together between us.
He asks if Lexi’s still carrying Bunny everywhere. I tell him yes, obviously. He says he misses her. I tell him she misses him too. He tells me he’s still working angles, still trying to figure out something more permanent, something safer long-term.
That part makes my stomach tighten again. Because long-term used to feel like a concept.
Now it feels like something with Joker in it. And that changes the shape of everything.
Eventually, the conversation slows. Neither of us wanting to hang up first.
My dad breaks the silence in the end. “I love you, baby girl.”
The words hit me straight in the chest.
Fresh. Tender. Almost unbearable.
“I love you too.”
Another beat.
Then, more quietly, “And Raven?”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t ever have to earn your way back to me. You hear me?”
That one hurts. Because some part of me absolutely thought I did. Still thinks I might.
I swallow hard and force the words out around the ache in my throat. “I hear you.”
“Good.” He hesitates. Then, because apparently no one in my life is interested in preserving my emotional stability tonight, he adds, “Tell that boy if he screws this up, I’ll bury him where no one can find him.”
Joker lets out a low huff of laughter beside me.
I actually laugh too. A real one this time. The sound shakes a little. Still real.
“I’ll pass it along,” I tell him.
“You better.”
And then the line clicks dead.
I sit there for a second after the call ends, staring at the dark little screen in my hand like it might still somehow hold the shape of my father’s voice inside it.
The room is quiet around us. Not empty. Full. Heavy. The kind of silence that comes after something important has shifted and both people in the room know it.
I don’t realize I’m crying again until Joker takes the burner gently from my hand and sets it on the nightstand. Then he turns back toward me.
Not speaking. Not asking. Just looking.
And because I am apparently at the end of every defense I had left tonight, I turn and crawl straight into his lap like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
His hands come to me instantly. One at my back. One low on my hip. Holding without trapping.
Steady. Safe.
I press my face into the side of his neck and let out one shaky breath after another until my chest stops feeling like it’s going to split open.
Joker’s mouth brushes my temple once. Then his cheek rests against my hair.
No pressure. No demand. Just there.
I stay like that until the shaking leaves my hands. Until my breathing evens out. Until the room feels like something I can exist inside again without coming apart.
When I finally pull back enough to look at him, his eyes are already on mine.
Dark. Steady. Certain in a way that should probably scare me by now and somehow never does.
“You alright?” he asks quietly.
I let out a soft, uneven laugh. “No,” I say honestly. “But maybe I will be sometime soon.”
Something in his expression shifts. Barely.
Then he slides one hand up the back of my neck and holds me there for one breath, two, before saying the thing that settles deepest. “You don’t carry this shit by yourself anymore, angel.”
And this time, when I believe him it doesn’t feel reckless.
It feels like relief.