Chapter 37
The first thing I notice is the laughter.
Not because it’s loud. Though it is. Not because it’s unusual. It isn’t anymore.
I notice it because it doesn’t make my shoulders lock.
It doesn’t send my body searching for the nearest exit. It doesn’t make me count doors, windows, shadows, angles, voices. It doesn’t make me wonder what’s coming next or how long I have before something sharp and terrible cuts through the middle of whatever fragile good thing I’m standing in.
It’s just laughter.
Warm and full and woven all through the clubhouse yard like smoke from the grills and the low hum of music drifting out from the open bay doors.
Kids are running in every direction with the kind of wild, careless energy only children and men who think they’re still children can bring to a summer evening.
Somebody has a football out near the far edge of the property.
Somebody else is already yelling because a beer got knocked over and apparently that counts as a personal attack.
The women are gathered in loose clusters near the picnic tables and lawn chairs, plates balanced on knees, drinks in hand, talking over each other and laughing like this is the most natural way in the world to spend a Sunday.
Maybe it is. Maybe that’s the whole point.
It’s late enough in the day that the sun has softened, pouring everything in gold instead of heat, and the clubhouse grounds look less like a place built for protection and more like what they really are now.
A home.
I stand near the back porch steps with a cup of lemonade in one hand and let myself take it in for a second.
Really take it in.
The grill smoking under Logan’s supervision while Mac tells him he’s doing it wrong even though he’s clearly not.
Cain leaning against one of the posts with a beer in hand while Emma talks to Kya and Allison, Jason weaving unsteadily around his father’s boots with all the focus of a tiny, determined menace.
Carter has Casey laughing hard enough she nearly chokes on her own juice box, which means Brooke is shaking her head and smiling even while she pretends to be scandalized by whatever nonsense he just said.
Shaina is half sprawled across one of the chairs with Shadow standing behind her, one hand resting on her shoulder like he doesn’t even realize he’s touching her and would absolutely kill somebody for pointing it out.
And Lexi…my heart squeezes before I can stop it.
Lexi is on Joker’s shoulders.
She’s got both hands in his hair, pink sandals kicking against his chest while she points dramatically toward the football like she’s calling plays for a team she has absolutely no business running.
Joker has one hand wrapped around each of her little ankles, face tilted up in that long-suffering, deadpan expression he always wears when she’s bossing him around like she was born for it.
“You’re steering wrong,” she tells him, loud enough for half the yard to hear.
Joker doesn’t even blink. “That sounds made up.”
“It’s not made up.”
“Feels it.”
She leans forward over the top of his head in utter outrage. “I know directions.”
He glances toward Blaze, who’s watching with the kind of delight that says he plans to be insufferable about this later. “You hear that? I’m being corrected by a four-year-old.”
“She’s probably right,” Blaze calls back.
“Shut the fuck up.”
Lexi pats the top of Joker’s head with all the solemnity of a tiny queen granting mercy to an incompetent subject. “You don’t say bad words by kids.”
I laugh into my lemonade before I can stop myself.
Joker’s gaze cuts toward me immediately. And there it is. That look.
Even now. Even after everything. Even months later, when the bruises are healed and the fear doesn’t live in my throat anymore and the life we built has settled around us so naturally it almost feels like I must have dreamed the years before it.
He still looks at me like that.
Like I’m his favorite thing in any room. Like he doesn’t give a shit who sees it. Like choosing me was never even a choice at all, just a fact he eventually caught up to.
His mouth curves slightly when he catches me smiling, and something warm and certain opens up in my chest.
That happens a lot now. The certainty. It used to be fear first. Then relief. Then disbelief so sharp it hurt.
Now it’s just certainty.
This is mine. He is mine. I am his. Lexi is ours. This life is real.
It takes me a second to fully appreciate the miracle of that. Not because I don’t feel it. Because I do. Because I feel it so often now I’m starting to understand this is what healing actually looks like.
Not forgetting. Not pretending. Not waking up one day magically unscarred.
It’s this.
Standing in the middle of a loud, messy family day at the clubhouse with my daughter on the shoulders of the man I love and realizing I’m not waiting for impact anymore.
I’m just here.
Living.
Mac appears at my side with a bowl of chips balanced against her hip and follows my line of sight. “Gross,” she says affectionately.
I smile without looking away. “You’ve been with Logan for too long to judge anyone.”
“False,” she says, reaching into the bowl. “I’m qualified specifically because I’ve been with Logan too long.”
That actually gets a laugh out of me.
Mac glances over at me, and there’s something soft in her face for a second. Not pity. Never that. Just the quiet, knowing kind of warmth the women here have mastered without making a production out of it. “You good?” she asks.
The question used to hit me like a test. Now it feels like care.
I look out at the yard again. At the bikes lined up beyond the fence. At the brothers talking shit by the firepit they’re already building up for later. At the kids darting in and out of the long shadows of evening like the whole world belongs to them.
And I answer honestly. “Yeah,” I say softly. “I really am.”
Mac bumps her shoulder lightly against mine. “Good.”
Then she’s gone again, called away by Emma because apparently the dip situation has become urgent enough to require backup.
I stay where I am. Watching. Feeling. Letting it all settle. The best part of this life, the thing I didn’t understand when I first got here, is that the clubhouse is never still.
It’s always alive. Always moving. Always talking. Always carrying the sound of people who know each other too well to stand on ceremony.
Back then it felt chaotic. Now it feels like rhythm. It feels like a heartbeat. And I’m part of it.
That thought still catches me off guard sometimes. Not because it feels wrong. Because it feels so right I still don’t entirely know what to do with the gratitude that comes with it.
Lexi, apparently done directing traffic from above, starts wriggling on Joker’s shoulders until he catches her ankles tighter and grunts, “Sit still, bug, unless you’re trying to make me commit a crime in front of God and everybody.”
“I wanna down.”
“That sounds suspicious.”
“I want a hotdog.”
“Now we’re getting to the truth.” He lowers her with the kind of easy, practiced motion that tells me he’s done it enough now to stop thinking about it.
She hits the ground running, Bunny tucked under one arm even though it’s far too warm for her to still be carrying that stuffed rabbit everywhere. Except she does.
And Joker never once complains when he’s the one asked to keep track of Bunny while she climbs or eats or colors or decides she needs both hands free for some tiny emergency that absolutely cannot wait.
There was a time when the sight of that alone would have hurt in ways I couldn’t survive cleanly. Not because it was bad. Because it was too beautiful. Too much. Too improbable. Too close to something I didn’t think I was allowed to have.
Now, when Lexi tugs on the hem of Joker’s cut and announces, “Come help me,” like it is the most obvious thing in the world that he would, he just looks down at her and sighs like he’s deeply inconvenienced while already following wherever she points.
That should not emotionally wreck me every time. It absolutely does. Because this man was never supposed to be built for softness. Not on the surface.
The world gets Joker. The patch. The darkness. The violence. The mouth on him. The kind of presence that makes strangers move out of his way without being asked.
But with us?
He’s different. Not less dangerous. Not gentler in some unrealistic, softened into someone else way.
Just…more.
More patient. More careful. More openly his in the ways that matter.
He’s still dark-humored and rough around the edges, still terrifying when someone pushes too far, still exactly the kind of man nobody sane would want to meet in a bad alley with a reason to hate them.
But with Lexi in his lap and me in his bed and our life taking shape around him whether he planned for it or not, there’s something else too.
Devotion. It lives in the quiet things.
The coffee he still makes before I’m fully awake.
The way he checks the locks at night and doesn’t even realize he’s doing it anymore because it’s become part of the shape of loving us.
The way he reaches back automatically when Lexi climbs onto the couch behind him, one hand settling against her leg so she doesn’t tumble off even while he’s in the middle of arguing with Cain about engines.
The way he looks for me in every room without making it obvious unless you know him well enough to catch it.
I know him well enough now. I know him better than anyone else does. That still feels like a privilege I don’t fully deserve.
Lexi drags him toward the picnic table with the force of a tiny tyrant, and he goes, letting her lead him by two fingers while she tells him in grave detail that she needs ketchup “but not too yucky much.”