Chapter 37 #2
I watch him bend down so she can whisper something into his ear and then straighten with the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth like whatever she said was ridiculous and beloved at the same time.
Then his gaze lifts and catches mine again.
He doesn’t stop moving. Doesn’t break stride.
Just watches me across the yard for one long second and gives me that look. Warm. Dark. Certain.
Home.
That’s what it is now.
For the longest time, home was a thing I thought had been taken from me permanently. First by leaving. Then by surviving. Then by learning how easily walls can become traps if the wrong man is standing inside them with you.
I thought maybe I’d never get it back. Or maybe I’d get some version of safe but never the kind that settles into your bones and makes your body unclench without needing permission.
I was wrong.
Home isn’t the absence of danger. It’s the presence of people who would burn danger down before they let it touch you again.
It’s Lexi asleep hard enough to drool on Joker’s chest because she climbed into his lap mid-movie and stayed there.
It’s Emma knocking once before walking in with a bowl of soup when I had the flu and acting like it was no big thing.
It’s Mac calling me out when I’m getting too deep in my own head and Kya sitting down beside me without asking questions when I need company more than conversation.
It’s Brooke showing up with little barrettes she thought Lexi would like and Shaina pretending she isn’t fond of any of us while absolutely watching all the kids like a hawk from across the room.
It’s Logan calling me family without fanfare, like the truth of it was obvious from the second Joker claimed me and I just needed time to catch up.
It’s this. This yard. This firepit. This noise. This life.
The life we fought for.
The one Cal would’ve destroyed if Joker and the club hadn’t ended it before he got the chance. That thought doesn’t bring the same cold terror anymore. Not because I forgot. Because I didn’t.
I never will.
There are still nights when I wake up and reach for Joker before I’m fully conscious, needing to feel the warmth of him there before my body remembers what year it is.
There are still moments when being watched too closely, even lovingly, can make my skin prickle wrong before my mind catches up and tells me I’m safe.
There are still scars I don’t let myself look at too long.
But the difference now is that those things are part of my life. They are not my whole life. That’s the payoff. That’s the miracle.
I’m no longer living like I’m waiting for impact.
I’m just living.
Someone shouts for plates. Someone else shouts back. Jason starts crying because he tripped over nothing and offended himself, and Cain scoops him up with the long-suffering ease of a father who’s already seen all three acts of the drama before it even fully unfolds.
Joker comes back toward me a minute later with a hotdog in one hand, Lexi on his hip, and that same look in his eye that says he’s already decided I haven’t eaten enough and intends to make it my problem.
“Told her no,” he says by way of greeting, handing me the plate.
I take it automatically. “Told who no?”
He jerks his chin toward Lexi. “She wanted ketchup on the bun and the plate and probably my boots.”
Lexi looks at me with complete confidence. “It’s yummy.”
I glance between them. “You’re both impossible.”
“I’m offended,” Joker says.
Lexi nods solemnly. “I’m little impossible.”
I laugh so hard I almost drop the plate.
Joker’s mouth twitches. That’s all. Just that. But I know him. I know exactly how much pleasure he takes in making me laugh when I don’t see it coming.
Lexi twists in his arms to show me something sticky in her other hand.
A flower. Crushed. Probably stolen from somewhere near the fence. “It for you.”
My chest tightens instantly. “Oh, baby.”
I set the plate down on the porch rail and take the wilted little thing from her like it’s worth diamonds. “Thank you.”
She beams. Then, because she’s still four and apparently made entirely of impulse, she shoves Bunny at Joker and demands, “Hold him.”
Joker takes the rabbit without comment. That image alone is enough to emotionally ruin me for the rest of my life.
A dangerous biker with cuts and ink and blood on his hands I’ve seen more than once, standing in the middle of the clubhouse yard holding a hotdog in one hand and a stuffed rabbit in the other while my daughter chatters at him like he’s always been hers.
And maybe he has. Maybe not from the beginning. But from somewhere close enough to it that the distinction doesn’t matter anymore.
Lexi squirms to get down, and the second her feet hit the grass, she’s off again, headed for Amy and Casey with the urgent seriousness of a little girl who clearly has important things to do.
Joker watches her go until she’s safely in range of three different adults and two older girls who’d probably maul anyone dumb enough to try something anyway.
Then he finally looks down at me. Up close, he still has that same edge.
That same roughness. That same dangerous stillness in the shoulders that says the world should approach carefully if it knows what’s good for it.
But there’s a looseness in him too now. A peace I didn’t think men like him got to have for long.
Maybe they don’t. Maybe he took it. Maybe that’s what all of us did.
He reaches out and hooks two fingers in the waistband loop of my shorts, tugging me the last inch into him. “What are you thinking so hard about?”
I look up at him.
At the man I call Joker in the yard and Travis in our room.
At the father Lexi chose for herself long before anybody sat down and named what he’d become to her.
At the one person on this earth who could pull every rough, violent, impossible part of himself together into something that feels like safety when he turns it toward us.
“Nothing,” I lie.
He lifts a brow. “Liar.”
“I was having a nice moment.”
“You can do that without looking like you’re about to cry.”
That one actually gets me. I laugh, and yeah, maybe my eyes sting a little anyway. “Shut up.”
His mouth curves. “Make me.”
Normal. Flirtatious. Easy. Us. The kind of banter I never thought I’d be lucky enough to have, not after everything that came before him.
I tip my head and study him for a second. Then I say what’s actually true. “I was looking at you.”
His hand tightens at my hip. “And?”
I let my gaze drift past him for a second, out over the yard.
At Lexi now sitting in the grass with Jason and Gio, bossing them all through some game she made up and absolutely intends to win. At the women laughing by the tables. At the brothers around the grill and the firepit and the bikes. At the whole messy, loud, stubborn, loyal life of this place.
Then I look back at him. “And I was thinking this isn’t temporary.”
Something in his face shifts. Deepens. He looks over my shoulder once toward Lexi, then back down at me. “No,” he says quietly. “It’s not.”
That simple answer hits me harder than if he’d made a speech.
Because that’s him. No wasted words. No overexplaining. Just truth.
I step into him fully then, close enough that the solid heat of him wraps around me and the noise of the yard fades at the edges.
His hand leaves my hip long enough to take the flower from my fingers and tuck it behind my ear with a gentleness so at odds with the rest of him it makes my heart turn over.
Then he slides his arm around my waist and pulls me flush against him. Not hidden. Not private. Not for anyone else.
Just his.
My hands settle against his chest like they’ve always belonged there. Maybe they have.
Somewhere behind us, Lexi yells, “Joker! Look at me!”
He doesn’t move his eyes from mine. “What’s she doing?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Always.”
That earns me a quiet snort. Then he finally turns his head enough to call back, “I’m looking, bug.”
Apparently that’s enough for her, because she goes right back to whatever game is currently running the yard.
I stay where I am, pressed into him, feeling the slow, steady beat of his heart under my palm. And it hits me all at once. Not in some dramatic revelation. Not in a way that knocks me sideways.
In a quieter way. A deeper one. Like truth settling exactly where it was always supposed to live.
This is home. This is family. This is the life we fought for.
Not the polished version. Not the easy version. Not the kind without scars or rough edges or ghosts.
Ours.
Messy and loud and defended with teeth if it has to be. Built out of survival and devotion and a kind of love I used to think only belonged to other people.
I tip my face up and find him already watching me again.
Always watching. Always checking. Always there.
And this time, instead of fear or disbelief or grief with gratitude tangled through it, what fills me is something simpler.
Peace. Real peace.
The kind that doesn’t ask me to stay braced. The kind that lets my body rest. The kind that feels like I can finally put down the parts of myself that only existed to survive and trust that the rest of me will still be enough.
Joker’s hand slides lower along my back. “You alright, angel?”
I smile. And this time, the answer comes easy. “Yeah,” I say softly. “I’m more than alright.”
His gaze stays on mine for one long second. Then he leans down and kisses my forehead in the middle of the yard with smoke in the air and children shouting nearby and half the club absolutely noticing and not one part of either of us caring.
When he pulls back, Lexi comes running toward us again, grass-stained and glowing and entirely too proud of whatever she just accomplished.
Joker scoops her up one-handed before she even reaches full speed, settling her against his side while she launches into an explanation that makes no sense and apparently requires urgent input from both of us.