Chapter 29
If someone had told me a month ago that peace could feel this dangerous, I would’ve thought they were insane.
Now I understand exactly what they would’ve meant. Because peace, real peace, doesn’t arrive with fanfare. It doesn’t come in some grand cinematic moment where the world stops and all the broken pieces of your life suddenly click into place.
It comes quietly.
It comes in coffee already made before you’ve fully opened your eyes.
It comes in a heavy pair of boots outside a bedroom door you’ve started recognizing by sound alone.
It comes in a little girl laughing in the next room instead of asking in a whisper if they need to hide.
It comes in a man who never asks for credit when he shows up, because showing up has become so natural to him he doesn’t even seem to notice he’s doing it anymore.
That’s the dangerous part.
Not the obvious things. Not the heat between me and Joker or the way my body has started reaching for him without permission every time he gets too close.
No.
The dangerous part is how easy this has become. How natural. How much it already feels like a life.
I realize it before I even fully wake up.
Not because of where I am. That part doesn’t even register as strange anymore.
I wake up in Joker’s bed, tucked warm against his side with one of his arms heavy around my waist and the other bent under the pillow, and instead of panicking or freezing or mentally cataloging where I am and how fast I can move if I need to, my first coherent thought is:
I need coffee.
That alone should probably concern me. It doesn’t. Because the second thought is worse.
He’s gonna make it before I even get up.
And, of course, I’m right.
I know I’m right before he even moves, because sometime in the last week, maybe longer, I’ve learned the rhythm of him.
The way he wakes. The way he lies still for a minute like he’s orienting himself before the day starts.
The way his breathing changes right before he moves.
The way his hand always tightens slightly at my waist before he lets go, like some instinct in him resents the distance even when he’s the one creating it.
This morning is no different.
His hand flexes once against my stomach. Then his chest rises in a deeper breath and he mutters, rough with sleep, “Go back to sleep.”
My mouth curves before I can stop it. “You’re awake.”
“Unfortunately.”
I shift enough to tip my face up and look at him.
His hair is a mess. His jaw is shadowed dark and rough. There’s a crease from the pillow across one cheek and a sleepy, dangerous kind of irritation still hanging around his eyes like he hasn’t fully remembered how to be a functioning human yet.
It should not be this attractive. It really, really is.
“Good morning to you too,” I murmur.
He squints at me like I’ve offended him personally by being awake and talking before coffee. Then, without opening his eyes all the way, he bends his head and presses a slow, warm kiss to my forehead.
That’s it.
Just my forehead.
Nothing heated. Nothing demanding. And somehow it hits me harder than if he’d dragged me under him and wrecked me before breakfast.
Because it’s so soft. So casual. So ours.
My chest squeezes hard enough to hurt.
Joker doesn’t seem to notice the minor emotional devastation he’s just caused. Or maybe he does and just doesn’t care. Either one is possible.
He pushes up a second later, stretching enough to make his T-shirt pull tight across his shoulders and chest before he swings his legs off the bed and reaches for his jeans.
I lie there watching him like I’m not.
He absolutely notices. He doesn’t call me on it.
Instead, he drags his cut off the chair, shrugs into it, then glances over his shoulder at me. “You want your coffee in bed or you planning to act like a civilized person today?”
I snort into the pillow. “That depends. Are those my only options?”
“Yeah.”
I pretend to think about it for a second. “Civilized person.”
“Shocking.” He heads for the door, then pauses with his hand on the knob and looks back at me again, dark eyes softer than they should be this early in the morning. “Check on Lex first,” he says. “Then come steal my coffee if yours isn’t made right.”
And just like that, he’s gone.
Leaving me staring at the closed door with something too warm and too dangerous settling low in my chest. That’s what I mean.
This.
This ridiculous, domestic, entirely-too-intimate little rhythm we’ve somehow slipped into like we didn’t even mean to.
Like it didn’t happen one tiny habit at a time until suddenly I’m waking up in his bed and smiling into his pillow because I know exactly how he takes his coffee and exactly which footsteps in the hall mean he’s on his way back.
That kind of thing should come with warning labels.
It doesn’t.
It just sneaks up on you and changes the shape of your whole life while you’re busy trying to survive it.
I get dressed and then head out into the hallway. Lexi is already awake when I peek into her room.
She’s sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed with Bunny in her lap and her hair sticking up in ten different directions, looking like a tiny woodland creature who lost a fight with a blanket.
The second she sees me, her face lights up. “Mommy!”
My heart squeezes on instinct. “Morning, bug.”
She holds her arms up immediately, and I cross the room to scoop her into my arms, breathing in that warm, sleepy little-kid smell that always feels like comfort and chaos at the same time.
She tucks herself into my shoulder for exactly two seconds before pulling back to ask, “Is Joker awake?”
And there it is. Again. The thing that is both incredibly sweet and emotionally catastrophic.
I should probably be more prepared for it by now. I’m not.
“Yes,” I tell her, brushing hair out of her face. “He’s in the kitchen.”
That’s all she needs.
She perks up instantly and wiggles hard enough that I have to set her down before she launches herself out of my arms like a tiny missile. “Joker!” she yells as she tears down the hall barefoot, Bunny trailing behind her by one ear.
I should probably stop her from screaming through the clubhouse at eight in the morning.
I don’t.
Because I’m too busy watching what happens when she barrels into the kitchen and launches herself at a man who once looked like he’d rather chew through his own arm than let a toddler jump on him first thing in the morning.
Joker catches her without even looking surprised. Just bends one arm, lifts her onto his hip like she belongs there, and keeps pouring coffee with the other hand.
Like this is normal. Like this is something he’s always known how to do. Like the sight of my daughter half-asleep and clinging to his shoulder while he mutters, “You’re loud as shit before breakfast,” doesn’t do something to my entire nervous system that should honestly require medical attention.
Lexi ignores the insult entirely and tucks her face into his neck. “I was looking for you.”
Joker sets the coffee pot down and presses a hand to the back of her little head without even seeming to think about it. “I’m devastatingly easy to find, bug.”
She lifts her face just enough to frown at him. “What’s devsa… devs…”
“Don’t start,” he mutters.
I laugh before I can stop myself.
He glances over at me then, and the look in his eyes when he catches me smiling at them is enough to make my pulse trip hard in my throat.
There’s something in that look. Something quiet and warm and too much. Something that says he knows exactly what this is doing to me and isn’t the least bit sorry about it.
Dangerous man. Very dangerous man.
“Coffee’s on the counter,” he says.
I blink once, dragging myself back into the room. “Mine?”
He arches a brow. “Who else would I be making one for?”
That answer lands so softly and so hard at the exact same time that I have to look away before my face gives me away.
I reach for the mug on the counter and wrap both hands around it, breathing in the warmth and the familiar smell of coffee and his cologne and toast already in the toaster and Lexi’s shampoo and all the strange, ordinary pieces of life that have started layering themselves together in ways I can’t seem to stop wanting.
Lexi pulls back enough to look at Joker’s face critically. “I need cereal.”
“Tragic,” he says again, deadpan.
“I need it.”
“Sounds serious.”
“It is.”
I press my lips together to hide a smile into the rim of my mug.
Joker looks at me over Lexi’s shoulder, completely expressionless. “She’s dramatic.”
“She gets that from you.” I say with a smile.
He stares at me for a second. Then, with Lexi still balanced on one arm, he reaches into the cabinet, grabs the cereal, and starts getting breakfast together like he hasn’t just been accused of sharing personality traits with a three-year-old.
That’s the thing about him.
He never makes a production out of the things that matter. He just does them.He shows up. He remembers. He adjusts. And every time he does, I feel myself leaning a little more.
Not physically. Not just that, anyway. Emotionally. Instinctively. In the kind of ways you don’t always notice until you catch yourself already relying on someone and realize it happened while you weren’t looking.
I lean on him when Lexi gets fussy and I’m running on too little sleep.
I lean on him when the fear creeps in around the edges and I need something solid enough to interrupt it.
I lean on him in little ways too, stupid ways, quiet ways, like asking if he’s heading into town because I need shampoo or reaching automatically for his hand when we’re walking across the lot and it’s dark outside.
I don’t think I’ve fully realized how much of my weight I’ve already started putting in his hands. Not until moments like this.
Moments where he’s standing in the kitchen with my daughter on his hip and my coffee made exactly the way I like it and there is no version of this that feels temporary anymore no matter how hard I try to remind myself it should.