Chapter 29 #2
That thought sits in my chest all through breakfast. And apparently I’m not the only one noticing.
Because when Emma walks into the kitchen with Jason on one hip and Amy trailing behind her in a cloud of ten-year-old energy and attitude, she takes one look at the scene in front of her and immediately smirks. “Well,” she says lightly, “this is disgustingly domestic.”
I nearly choke on my coffee.
Joker doesn’t even blink. “Morning to you too.”
Emma grins wider and sets Jason down so he can toddle immediately toward the fruit bowl like a tiny drunk man with a mission.
Amy, for her part, just plants both hands on her hips and squints at Joker. “You made her coffee again.”
I blink.
Joker blinks.
Lexi shovels cereal into her mouth like none of this concerns her.
Amy points at the mug in my hand like she’s presenting evidence in court. “That’s serious.”
Emma actually laughs out loud.
I feel heat flood my face so fast I’m surprised steam doesn’t start coming off my skin.
Joker, the absolute menace, just looks at Amy and says, “You got homework or something?”
“School’s out for summer,” she says with the smug confidence of a child who knows she’s untouchable.
“Then go bother your father.”
Amy grins. “Already did.”
Of course she did.
Emma is still smiling when she catches my eye over Jason’s head, but there’s something gentler under the amusement too.
Something knowing. Something kind. Not pity. Never that. Just warmth. Like she sees exactly what’s happening and, instead of warning me away from it, is quietly telling me I’m safe to let it happen.
That should be terrifying. Instead, it feels like one more tiny place to rest.
***
By lunch, the whole clubhouse seems to know. Not in some dramatic announcement kind of way. Just in the way places like this always know things before they’re formally said out loud.
There are looks.
Smirks.
A little too much amusement in the brothers’ faces every time Joker passes by and I happen to be somewhere in his line of sight.
And the women?
The women are even worse.
Mac catches me in the laundry room and, after handing me a folded towel I definitely did not ask for, says casually, “You know he was glaring at Blaze from across the lot because you were laughing at something he said, right?”
I stare at her. “That’s psychotic.”
She grins. “It’s kind of adorable, actually.”
I choke on my own disbelief. “No. No, it is not.”
Mac just shrugs, dark hair pulled up off her neck and mischief written all over her face. “Agree to disagree.”
Then she leaves me standing there with a basket of towels and a heartbeat that feels suspiciously like it’s trying to climb out of my chest.
Kya is no help either. When I run into her later in the common room while Casey and Gio are arguing over crayons like it’s life or death, she glances toward the porch where Joker is fixing something on one of the kid bikes while Lexi hovers close enough to be practically attached to his leg and says, “You’re in trouble. ”
I look at her warily. “Why?”
She arches a brow. “Because that man would probably set a city block on fire if you looked mildly unhappy.”
My mouth opens. Then closes.
Because honestly?
That feels less like a joke every day.
Kya sees the exact moment that thought lands and grins into her drink. “Yeah,” she says. “Exactly.”
I hate all of them.
Mostly because they’re right.
***
The thing with Lexi deepens so quietly I almost miss it until it’s already everywhere.
At first it’s little. Tiny things.
She wants Joker to open her juice box even if I’m standing right there and fully capable of doing it myself.
She wants Joker to carry her to the bathroom because apparently walking is a burden she can no longer be expected to bear.
She wants Joker to look at every sticker, every coloring page, every random rock she finds outside and decides is a treasure.
And then somehow, without either of us noticing the exact moment it happens, it becomes more than that. It becomes preference.
Attachment.
The kind that sneaks up on you until suddenly it’s just part of the structure.
She wants Joker at bedtime. Not instead of me. Never instead of me. But with me.
If I’m tucking her in and he walks by the doorway, she’ll immediately sit up and say, “Joker, come too.”
If she’s upset because Bunny got left in the common room or somebody accidentally knocked over the tower she built with Jason, she wants me first and then, two breaths later, “Where’s Joker?”
If she’s eating a snack and he’s not in the room, she asks where he is before she finishes the first bite. And every time it happens, my chest does the same awful, beautiful thing.
Because it is sweet. God, it’s sweet. But it is also so emotionally dangerous I can barely look at it directly without feeling like I might shatter.
Because Lexi doesn’t attach lightly.
Not after Cal. Not after the fear. Not after all the instability of the last year.
And Joker…
Joker acts like it’s nothing.
Like it’s no big deal when she drags Bunny down the hall and asks him to “come too.” Like it doesn’t matter when she climbs into his lap without asking and curls there like she belongs.
Like it’s completely normal for a little girl who once watched the world too carefully for her age to now seek him out with the blind confidence of a child who has decided this person is safe.
But I see it.
The way his whole body changes around her.
The way he always catches her, always reaches back, always answers.
The way his hand automatically settles on her back or the top of her head like he’s making sure she’s still there without even realizing he’s doing it.
The way he watches her. The way he counts her without thinking.
The way his whole expression shifts if she laughs too hard or gets too close to the stairs or vanishes around a corner longer than he likes.
He’s attached too.
Deeply. Quietly. Irrevocably.
And because I’m me and my brain is apparently a haunted house built entirely of fear and hope, that realization makes me want to both cry and run screaming into the woods.
Instead, I stand in the kitchen doorway one evening and watch him crouched on the floor helping Lexi reattach the leg back onto some poor stuffed dinosaur that did not survive her affection.
She’s talking a mile a minute, Bunny tucked under one arm, and Joker is listening with the kind of complete focus most grown adults don’t bother giving children.
He glances up when he feels me there.
Our eyes meet.
And in that one tiny, quiet moment, something inside me tips fully over. Because there is no universe where this man is pretending. No version of this where he is halfway in. He doesn’t know how to do halfway. He never did.
That should probably scare me more.
Instead, all I can think is:
Oh God.
I’m in real trouble.
***
The party starts at sunset.
I don’t know it’s happening until Mac and Emma and Kya basically corner me after dinner and tell me to “go put on something cute but not stress out,” which is both wildly unhelpful and immediately suspicious.
“What is happening?” I ask, already being steered toward my room.
Emma grins. “Tradition.”
“That is not an explanation.”
“No,” Mac says cheerfully. “But it is all you’re getting until you’re dressed.”
Kya, who at least has the decency to look only mildly amused by my confusion, adds, “Relax. It’s a good thing.”
That somehow does not help either.
Still, twenty minutes later I’m in jeans and a black tank with my hair loose down my back, staring at myself in the mirror like maybe my reflection will explain what the hell is going on.
It doesn’t.
It just looks suspiciously like a woman who is starting to feel too much for a man she maybe should’ve already accepted she’s not surviving unscathed.
By the time I make it downstairs, the clubhouse is fuller than usual.
Music is up. Drinks are flowing. The brothers are mostly gathered in the main room and around the bar, cuts on, laughter bouncing off the walls. The women are spread through the space like they own it, which, in a way, they absolutely do.
And Joker—
Joker is leaning against the bar in dark jeans and his cut, one hand around a beer, the other hooked in his pocket, looking like every bad decision I’ve ever made and every good one I might want to start making immediately.
The second he sees me, he straightens.
Not dramatically. Just enough. Enough that my stomach flips like it’s trying to embarrass me in public.
His eyes move over me once, slow and deliberate enough to make heat climb my throat. Then he pushes off the bar and comes straight toward me.
No hesitation. No pretending. No caring who sees.
The room fades around the edges the second he gets close enough to slide one hand low around my waist and bend his mouth near my ear. “You look pretty, angel.”
That should not hit me as hard as it does. It really does.
I swallow and manage, “You clean up okay too.”
His mouth curves. “Liar.”
Before I can answer, Logan’s voice cuts across the room. “Alright, assholes.”
The volume of the clubhouse drops just enough to turn everyone’s attention toward the bar.
Logan stands there with Mac tucked under one arm, a beer lifted in his free hand, looking every bit like a president used to owning a room.
The grin on his face as his eyes settle on Joker and I tells me he’s enjoying this entirely too much.
And then I realize.
Oh no.
Absolutely not.
I turn my head slowly toward Joker. He does not look even remotely apologetic.
“You knew,” I accuse under my breath.
He doesn’t deny it. “Maybe.”
I narrow my eyes.
His hand tightens at my waist once, like he knows I’m one second away from either blushing or bolting and he’s prepared to physically keep me from doing either.
The traitor.
Logan glances around the room, waits until everyone’s settled enough to listen, then says, “Tonight, we’re doing what this club’s always done when one of our brothers finally gets his shit together enough to claim what’s his.”