Chapter 29 #3
The room immediately erupts in hoots, whistles, and enough laughter that I feel my face catch fire.
Joker, unbelievably, just looks amused.
Shadow yells, “About fucking time.”
Blaze adds, “We all suffered through the pining long enough.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Joker says flatly.
The room laughs harder.
I should probably die where I stand. Instead, I stay right where I am because Joker’s arm is still around me and, embarrassingly enough, that’s enough to keep me standing.
Logan lifts his beer a little higher and looks directly at me then. And whatever teasing was in the room softens. Not completely. Just enough that what he says next lands where it matters.
“Raven,” he says, voice steady and warm all at once, “Joker claimed you, which means this family’s yours now too.”
My throat tightens instantly. Hard enough to hurt.
The room stays quiet. Listening. Present.
And for one brief, dizzying second, I can feel all of them there.
Not just a crowd. A family. A unit. A structure.
Something bigger than blood and certainly bigger than paperwork. Something chosen. Something defended.
Logan raises his glass.
“To Raven.”
The room follows immediately. Every glass. Every bottle. Every can.
Joker’s arm tightens around my waist.
And then, with the whole room gathered around us and the music low and the lights warm and my heart beating too hard to be safe, Logan gives the toast. “Here’s to a long life and a happy one,” he says.
The room echoes it back.
“A quick death and an easy one.”
More voices. Louder now.
“A good girl and an honest one.”
Laughter breaks through at that.
And then, together, the whole room finishes it with the kind of rough, affectionate enthusiasm that feels stitched into the bones of this place: “A cold pint and another one!”
The room erupts.
Cheers. Laughter. Clinking glass. Somebody, probably Blaze, whooping loud enough to make me jump.
And I’m standing in the middle of it with Joker’s arm around me and tears burning behind my eyes like the world has suddenly become too beautiful and too dangerous all at once.
He looks down at me when he feels me go quiet.
And because he is apparently committed to making my emotional stability everyone’s problem tonight, he brushes his knuckles once over my jaw in front of God and everybody like he doesn’t care who sees.
“You good?” he asks quietly.
I nod too fast. Then immediately shake my head because that’s a lie.
His mouth twitches. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “Thought so.”
Then he kisses my temple, casual as breathing, and the entire room immediately starts making enough noise that I consider faking my own death.
Emma laughs. Mac grins. Kya shakes her head into her drink. Brooke, somewhere near Carter, looks delighted. Even Shaina, leaned against Shadow with a beer in hand and skepticism in her blood, looks almost fond.
And the terrifying thing is, I love this.I love all of it.
The noise. The teasing. The way nobody is pretending not to see what’s happening between me and Joker because around here, once something’s real, it gets named and celebrated and folded into the structure instead of hidden.
That should feel overwhelming.
Instead, it feels like being let in.
The rest of the night unfolds in the kind of warm, rowdy, lived-in way that makes this place feel less like a clubhouse and more like a heartbeat.
The brothers take over one side of the room, arguing over cards and sports and who rides like an idiot.
The women claim the couches and part of the bar, drifting in and out of conversations that bounce from teasing to real life to pure chaos in under thirty seconds.
The kids, for as long as they’re still awake, run in messy little packs through the edges of it all, safe and loud and completely unbothered by the fact that half the room looks like they could start a riot.
Lexi, of course, eventually ends up in Joker’s lap.
Not because I put her there. Because she decides that’s where she belongs and climbs up like it’s obvious.
He doesn’t even hesitate. Just shifts his beer to the other hand and settles her against his chest while she tells him some long, winding story about Amy’s stickers and how Jason “doesn’t share right” and why Bunny needed a blanket too because apparently stuffed animals have bedtime preferences now.
I’m sitting beside him on the couch when it happens. Close enough that my knee is tucked against his thigh, one of his big hands absently resting over my leg like it ended up there by instinct and stayed.
I watch him while Lexi talks.
Watch the way he listens. The way he answers seriously even when she’s making absolutely no sense. The way his fingers stroke lightly down her back whenever she shifts.
He catches me looking eventually. His eyes meet mine over the top of Lexi’s dark little head. And just like that, the noise around us fades again.
The room is still full. Still laughing. Still alive. But for one second it’s just this.
Me Him. My daughter tucked safe in his arms.
A whole future sitting there in plain sight, breathing.
Joker’s expression changes slightly when he reads whatever is on my face. Softens. Warms. Then he reaches his free hand over and hooks a finger in the belt loop of my jeans like he needs some physical point of contact with me too.
The simple intimacy of that nearly undoes me.
Later, after Lexi finally crashes hard enough that her little body goes boneless with sleep in his lap, he doesn’t even wait for me to ask.
He just stands, shifts her carefully into his arms, and says, “C’mon, angel.”
Of course he’s taking her to bed. Of course I’m following. Of course this is what family looks like.
And God help me, by the time we tuck her in together, Bunny under one arm and the blanket tucked under her chin just the way she likes it, I am so far gone there’s probably no saving me.
Not that I think I’d want it if there was.
***
When we finally make it back to his room later that night, the clubhouse is quieter. Not silent. Never silent. But softer.
Settling.
The kind of late-night peace that only comes after a house full of people has spent hours laughing and loving each other loudly enough to wear itself out.
Joker shuts the door behind us and turns the lock without thinking. Not because he’s worried. Because habit is habit. Because safety is built in layers.
I watch him move through the room, peeling off his cut and tossing it over the chair, then turning back toward me with that same look he’s been giving me all night.
Steady. Dark. Knowing.
I lean back against the dresser and let him come to me.
He always does. And somehow that still hasn’t stopped affecting me like a direct hit to the chest. When he gets close enough, his hands settle low on my waist and his forehead tips lightly to mine.
Neither of us says anything for a second. We don’t need to.
The whole night is still hanging between us anyway.
The toast. The laughter. Lexi in his lap. The room full of people who looked at me like I belonged there and meant it.
It’s all still alive in my chest, bright and aching and a little too much.
Joker’s thumbs brush slow over my sides. “You’re thinking too loud,” he murmurs.
A soft laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “That’s not a real thing.”
“It is when I know your face.”
I look up at him then.Really look.
At the man in front of me. At the steadiness in him. At the way he holds me like I am both something precious and something he would absolutely destroy the world to keep.
And before I can stop myself, before my brain has time to throw up all its usual walls and warning signs, one impossible, beautiful, terrifying thought slips free and settles right in the center of me.
Forever.
Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not while I’m here. Not until this is over.
Forever.
What would that look like?
Waking up in his bed every morning and never having to pretend it’s temporary.
Lexi with her own room and stickers on the walls and Bunny permanently losing one ear under the violence of being loved too hard.
Coffee already made before I’m fully awake.
His boots in the hall. His laugh when Lexi asks him something ridiculous.
A place that’s ours. A life that’s real. A home that doesn’t have fear baked into the foundation.
The thought is so beautiful it almost steals my breath. And so terrifying it nearly gives it right back. Because wanting forever means there is something to lose. Wanting forever means this is no longer just survival.
It’s hope. And hope is the scariest thing I’ve held in a very long time.
Joker’s hand slides up to the side of my neck, grounding me back into the room. “What is it?” he asks quietly.
I could lie. I probably should.
Instead, because this man has somehow become the safest place I know to put the truth, I let out a shaky breath and whisper, “I was just thinking.”
His mouth brushes mine once. “Dangerous.”
I huff a laugh. Then, because apparently I’m determined to make this worse for myself, I say the rest. “I was thinking about what forever with you would look like.”
The room goes very still.
Joker doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t breathe for one long, loaded second. Then his eyes lock on mine with a heat and certainty so deep it almost buckles my knees.
And when he finally speaks, his voice is low enough to scrape. “Yeah?”
That one word is enough to send my heart into complete chaos.
I nod once. Barely.
His thumb brushes over my pulse point. Slow. Intentional. And then he says the most dangerous thing of all. “Keep thinking about it.”
My breath catches.
His mouth curves, but there’s nothing teasing in it. Nothing casual. Only certainty. Only promise. Only the kind of quiet, unshakable confidence that says he has already started building that future in his own head too and isn’t the least bit sorry about it.
And just like that, I know two things at once.
The first is that forever with him would be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever been brave enough to want.
The second is that wanting it this badly means if something takes it away it will destroy me.