Chapter 21
It happens at night.
Everything dangerous always seems to find me after the world quiets down just enough for me to feel it.
The clubhouse has settled into that late-hour rhythm I’m still learning, where most of the noise has dulled but never fully disappears.
The kids are asleep. Lexi went down easier tonight, her body finally trusting the pattern of this place enough to give in without a fight.
Bunny is tucked under her arm, her breathing deep and steady, her face soft in a way that still catches me off guard every time I see it.
I should be sleeping. I’m not. I tried. I lay there long enough to know it wasn’t going to happen, my body restless in that quiet, familiar way where exhaustion and alertness fight for control and neither fully wins.
So I got up.
Now I’m standing on the back porch, barefoot again, wrapped in the night air and the soft hum of the clubhouse behind me. The wood is cool under my feet. The sky is dark and open above the tree line, stars scattered in a way that feels almost unreal compared to the closed-in life I’ve been living.
I lean against the railing and breathe.
In. Out. Slow.
Trying to let the quiet settle somewhere deeper than just the surface. It almost works. Until the door opens behind me.
I don’t turn right away. I don’t have to. I know who it is.
The shift in the air is immediate. Familiar now. Recognizable in a way that should concern me more than it does.
Joker steps out onto the porch, the door closing softly behind him. I can feel him there before I see him, the space tightening in that subtle, charged way that’s been building between us over the last few days.
He doesn’t say anything at first.
Neither do I.
We stand there in silence, the distance between us small enough to feel, large enough to still be respected. It doesn’t feel awkward.
It feels…loaded.
“You sleep?” he asks after a minute.
I let out a quiet breath. “Tried.”
“Didn’t take?”
“No.”
He moves closer, not crowding, just enough that I’m aware of him at my side now instead of behind me.
Close enough that I can feel the heat of him without touching.
Close enough that every inch of space between us starts to matter in a way that’s becoming harder to ignore. “You’ll get there,” he says.
I glance at him. “That sounds like experience.”
He shrugs one shoulder. “Something like that.”
There’s more there. I can hear it. Feel it.
But he doesn’t offer it freely, and I don’t push.
Not yet.
I look back out at the dark yard, the faint outline of bikes parked near the front, the quiet stretch of land that surrounds this place like a barrier. “It’s strange,” I admit.
“What is?”
“This,” I say, gesturing lightly around us. “It’s loud. There’s always people. Always something happening. And somehow it’s still…calmer than anywhere I’ve been in a long time.”
He doesn’t answer right away.
When I glance at him again, his eyes are on me, steady in a way that makes my pulse shift.
“Because nobody here is pretending,” he says finally. “What you see is what you get.”
That lands. Harder than I expect.
I nod slowly. “Yeah.” Another pause. Then, quieter, “I’m still getting used to that.”
His gaze doesn’t leave my face. “Yeah.”
Something about the way he says it makes it feel like he understands more than I’ve said out loud.
That makes me uneasy. Not because I don’t want to be understood. Because I’m not used to it happening without effort.
“You grew up in this?” I ask, partly to shift the focus, partly because I want to understand him in the same way he seems to be understanding me without trying.
He huffs a quiet breath. “No.”
“No?”
“Not like them,” he says, jerking his chin toward the clubhouse behind us. “Most of the guys here were born into it. Raised around it. Knew what this life was before they ever had to choose it.”
“And you didn’t.”
“No.” There’s something in his voice now. Not sharp. Not defensive. Just…edged.
“Where did you come from?” I ask carefully.
His jaw tightens slightly.
For a second, I think he’s going to shut the conversation down.
Then he says, “Foster care.”
The words are simple. Flat. But they carry weight.
I don’t ask anything else. I don’t need to.
He gives me more anyway. “Me, Shadow, Blaze,” he says. “Same group home. Same system. Same shitty odds.”
I glance at him. There’s no self-pity in it. No softness. Just fact. I nod. I don’t know what to say to that.
There isn’t a right answer. So I don’t try to give one.
“Ended up with the Savage Knights first,” he continues, voice still even, like he’s talking about something practical instead of something that clearly shaped him. “We met Cobra and Hammer there. Seemed like the right move at the time.”
“And it wasn’t?”
A humorless smile flickers at the corner of his mouth. “Not even close.”
“What happened?”
He exhales slowly, looking out over the yard now instead of at me. “Things changed,” he says. “Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe we just saw them clearer the longer we stayed.” His fingers tap once against the railing. “Club wasn’t what we signed up for. Lines got crossed. Then crossed again.”
There’s a quiet intensity in his voice now. Controlled. But there.
“So you left.”
“Yeah.”
“That doesn’t sound simple.”
“It wasn’t.”
I study him for a second. The set of his shoulders. The tension that’s settled into him without him seeming to notice.
“Most people don’t walk away from something like that easily,” I say.
“They don’t.”
“But you did.”
His gaze shifts back to me. “Because we had somewhere to go,” he says.
“Here?”
“Yeah.”
The word lands heavier than it should. Because I hear what he’s not saying. That this place wasn’t just another club. It was…something else.
Something earned. Something chosen.
“Logan took you in,” I say.
He nods once. “Gave us a shot.”
“And the others?”
“Shadow and Blaze,” he says, like that explains everything. “They’re as close to blood as I’ll ever get.”
Something in my chest tightens at that. Not because of the words. Because of the way he says them.
Like it’s enough. Like it has to be.
“And Cobra and Hammer?” I ask.
“Same,” he says. “Just took them a little longer to land in the right place.”
I nod slowly, absorbing it. The weight of it. The quiet loyalty threaded through everything he’s said.
“You found your family here,” I say.
His eyes hold mine for a second longer than usual. “Something like that.”
There’s more in that answer.
I don’t push. Not when he’s already given me more than I expected. Not when I can feel the shift between us, the conversation moving from surface-level to something deeper without either of us quite acknowledging it out loud. The air feels different now.
Thicker.
He steps closer. Not intentionally, I don’t think. Just…naturally. Like the space between us keeps shrinking without either of us making a conscious decision to close it.
I feel it. Every inch. The heat of him. The steady presence. The way my body reacts before my brain can catch up.
It’s becoming impossible to ignore.
“You watch everything,” he says suddenly.
I blink. “What?”
“Doors,” he says. “Windows. Who’s coming and going. Where the exits are.”
My pulse stutters. I didn’t realize he noticed that. “Habit,” I say carefully.
“Not just habit.”
The way he says it makes my chest tighten. He’s not guessing. He knows. Too much.
“It’s…hard to unlearn,” I admit.
His gaze softens just enough to make it worse. “You don’t have to do it here,” he says.
That does something to me. Something sharp. Something dangerously close to breaking. Because he’s not telling me I’m overreacting. He’s not telling me to relax. He’s not telling me I’m safe in that careless, dismissive way people do when they don’t understand what safety actually costs.
He’s telling me I can keep the parts of myself that survived. That I don’t have to let them go to deserve being here.
I look away first. Because I can’t hold his gaze through that. Not when it feels like he just reached into something I’ve been holding tight and named it without asking.
“That’s…not something most people say,” I manage.
“I’m not most people.”
No.
He isn’t. That’s the problem. The realization settles heavy and undeniable in my chest. Because this, whatever this is between us, is no longer subtle. It’s not something I can brush off or pretend is just proximity or circumstance.
It’s real.
And it’s building. And I don’t have the space in my life for something like this.
Not now. Maybe not ever.
The door behind us opens again. The moment breaks. Voices spill out onto the porch, laughter and movement and the return of the world we just stepped outside of.
Joker steps back. Not far. Just enough. But the shift is immediate.
Not gone.
Just…contained again.
A woman I vaguely recognize from earlier, one of the club girls, moves past me like I’m not there and goes straight to him.
Too close. Too familiar.
Her hand slides up his arm, fingernails dragging lightly over the leather of his cut like she’s done it a hundred times before.
“Where you been hiding?” she asks, voice low, suggestive.
My stomach turns. I don’t know why. I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t feel anything at all.
Joker doesn’t react much. Doesn’t lean into it. Doesn’t push her away either. Just stands there, eyes flicking to me for half a second before settling back on her.
That’s enough. More than enough.
I turn before I can think better of it. Step past them. Back into the clubhouse. Back into noise and light and people and everything that feels easier than standing there watching another woman touch him like she has a right to it.
I don’t stop moving until I’m back in the hallway. Until I’m back in my room. Until the door is shut and the quiet closes around me again.
My heart is beating too fast. My skin feels too warm. And no matter how many times I tell myself I don’t care, the image is still there.
Her hand on his arm. Too close. Too easy.
I sit on the edge of the bed and press my hands into my thighs, grounding myself. This is exactly why this is a bad idea. Exactly why I can’t let this become something more than it already is.
Because men like him don’t come without complications. Because attraction like this doesn’t come without consequences. Because I don’t get to want something just because it feels good in the moment.
I lie down beside Lexi, pulling the blanket up and staring at the ceiling.
And even as I close my eyes, I can still feel it. The heat of him standing too close.
The weight of his voice when he said I didn’t have to unlearn the parts of myself that kept me alive. The way he looked at me like he saw more than I’ve said out loud.
And worse than all of that…
The way I wanted to stay there on that porch with him.
That’s the part that scares me the most.