“No.” Her face doesn’t change. “Why?” #2
Small fingers. A car window fogging from her breath. The sound of a cartoon song she wouldn’t stop humming. My mother laughing from the front seat.
Then nothing I’m willing to walk into all the way.
I blink hard once and keep moving.
Raven looks up just in time to see Lexi still holding onto me, and the expression on her face changes in a way I’m not prepared for. Not alarm. Not confusion exactly.
Something softer. Something more complicated. Something that makes me feel like I’ve stepped into deeper water without realizing it.
Lexi lets go the second she reaches her mother, because of course she does. The moment passes like it never happened.
Except it did. It absolutely did. And now I can still feel the ghost of that tiny hand around my finger while Raven thanks me for bringing her back from the kitchen like I did something more than walk down a hall.
I shrug it off and say, “She was supervising.”
Lexi nods solemnly. “He almost went the wrong way.”
Emma’s mouth twitches. Raven looks like she’s trying not to smile and failing just enough to make it worse for me.
I leave before the atmosphere gets any stranger than it already is. But the day doesn’t let me off easy.
By evening, the whole clubhouse has settled into the kind of warm chaos that happens when dinner’s over, nobody’s in a rush, and the kids are all starting to burn through the last of their energy before the inevitable crashes.
Raven is on the couch with Lexi tucked against her side, reading one of the picture books somebody unearthed from the toy pile.
The kid is fighting sleep with every ounce of stubbornness in her tiny body.
I tell myself I’m just passing through.
Then Lexi sees me. Her face lights up. “Joker!”
I pause. Because apparently I have learned nothing. “What?”
She holds up the book. “We reading.”
“That sounds like a personal choice.”
She frowns like I’m being difficult on purpose. “Come here.”
Raven makes a soft sound that might’ve been a laugh if she weren’t trying to hide it. “You don’t have to—”
I’m already moving before she finishes the sentence. I stop near the couch. “What’s the emergency?”
Lexi flips the book around and points at a page with three badly drawn farm animals. “This one ugly.”
I look at the pig in question. “Yeah. Real rough.”
“I don’t like him.”
“Understandable.”
That seems to satisfy her. She settles back against Raven and turns the page. I should go. There is no reason for me to still be standing here in the middle of a children’s book review session.
Then Lexi’s head starts to droop. Once. Twice. By the third time she’s fighting it so hard she’s blinking with her whole face, Raven reaches to smooth her hair back. “Come on, baby. Bed.”
Lexi makes a sad little sound of protest and, before either of us can react, reaches one hand toward me instead of her mother. “Carry.”
The word lands somewhere low and mean in my chest.
Raven goes very still.
I do too.
Then Raven, because she’s a better parent than I would be, says gently, “You want Mama?”
Lexi shakes her head once, already half-asleep. “Joker.”
And there it is.
The thing I have been willfully ignoring since the truck.
She’s attaching. Not huge. Not all at once. Just enough.
Enough to ask where I am when I leave a room. Enough to hand me broken toys and sticky drawings and impossible questions. Enough to reach for me when she’s tired. Enough that something in me responds every damn time.
I bend before I can think too hard about it and pick her up off the couch. She folds into me instantly, warm and heavy with sleep, Bunny trapped between us, face tucked against my shoulder.
That gets me again too. The weight of a sleepy child in my arms shouldn’t feel this familiar. Shouldn’t trip over memory this hard.
My little sister used to fall asleep on me in front of the TV if I stayed still long enough. Tiny body, warm cheek, total trust. Like big brothers were walls and the world couldn’t touch her if she was tucked in close enough.
I’d forgotten that until now. Or maybe I never forgot. Maybe I just shoved it somewhere deep enough that it stopped being useful to think about.
I carry Lexi down the hall while Raven walks beside me, quiet enough that I can feel her thinking but not saying any of it. At her room, she opens the door softly and pulls back the blanket. I lower the kid onto the bed carefully, easing Bunny back into her arms before I straighten.
Lexi doesn’t wake. Just sighs once and curls tighter around the stuffed rabbit.
I step back.
Raven tucks the blanket around her and turns toward me with that look again. The one like she doesn’t know what to do with me being useful in all the right places.
“This is becoming a habit,” she says softly.
I glance at the bed. “She’s small. No big deal.”
That gets me a quiet smile I absolutely did not earn.
Then Raven’s expression shifts, something more serious sliding into place beneath the tired softness. “She likes you.”
The words land in the room and stay there.
I don’t answer right away. Because yes, obviously. And because I know exactly why that’s dangerous.
“She’s a kid,” I say finally. “They pick people.”
Raven studies my face for a second too long. “You say that like it doesn’t mean anything.”
I lean one shoulder against the wall just inside the room, arms crossing without much thought. “Means she’s comfortable.”
“She’s not comfortable with everyone.”