Chapter 37 #3
And standing there in his arms while our daughter chatters between us and the fire starts crackling louder in the pit and the whole clubhouse glows gold in the falling dark, I understand something with a certainty so complete it almost feels holy.
I am not surviving anymore.
I am finally, fully living.
I step away from the noise with my phone in my hand. I’ve been holding onto this all day.
Maybe longer.
Joker watches me go. Of course he does. His eyes track me the way they always do now, steady, aware, giving me space without ever really letting me feel alone in it. When I glance back, he gives me a small nod, like he already knows what I’m about to do.
Maybe he does.
I step out past the edge of the light, where the sound of the fire softens and the night wraps around me in something cooler, calmer. My fingers hover over the screen for a second longer than they need to before I finally hit the number.
It rings once.
Twice.
Then, “Raven.”
My chest tightens at the sound of my father’s voice. Not because I’m afraid. Not because I’m bracing. Because I’m not.
“I’m okay,” I say before anything else, my voice steadier than I expect it to be. “We’re okay.”
There’s a pause on the other end. Not long. Just enough for him to take that in.
“Is it done?” he asks.
I close my eyes for a second, leaning back against the side of the building, feeling the solid wood at my back and the absence of fear in my chest.
“It’s done,” I tell him.
No shaking. No second guessing. No part of me waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Just truth.
Another pause, heavier this time, and I can hear the shift in him even through the line. The release. The weight easing in a way I don’t think either of us fully believed would ever happen. “You’re safe?” he asks quietly.
I open my eyes and look back toward the yard.
At Lexi asleep in Emma’s lap. At the women gathered close, talking low. At the brothers around the fire. At Joker watching me, even from a distance, like he always will.
“I’m home,” I say.
The words hit different than “safe.” Stronger. Truer.
My dad exhales slowly. “Good,” he says. “That’s… good, baby.”
There’s a lot more that could be said. A lifetime of things, really. But we’ve never been the kind of people who need to fill silence just to prove something matters.
“I’ll bring her to visit,” I add after a second. “When things settle more. Lexi misses you.”
“I’ll be here,” he says.
I believe that too.
When I hang up, I don’t feel like something ended. I feel like something finally closed. Not slammed shut. Not buried.
Just…finished.
When I step back into the light, Joker’s already moving toward me. He doesn’t ask what was said. Doesn’t push. Doesn’t need details to understand the shape of it.
He just reaches for me. And when I go into his arms, it’s not because I need to be held together anymore.
It’s because I get to be.
***
There are nights when I still catch myself looking at her like she might disappear if I blink wrong.
Not because I think she will. Not anymore.
That’s the part that still catches me off guard.
For the longest time, even after Cal was dead, even after the dust settled and the blood dried and the club stopped moving like every shadow might have teeth, some part of me still stayed braced for impact.
I’d watch Raven laugh with the women or carry Lexi across the yard or fall asleep with one hand on my chest like she needed the proof of me there, and there’d still be this low, ugly instinct under everything, waiting for the world to try and take it back.
That part’s quieter now. Not gone. I’m not sure men like me ever go fully soft around the edges after the lives we’ve lived.
But quieter. And that’s because of her.
Because I’ve watched the change happen slow and steady, one ordinary day at a time, until one morning I wake up and realize the woman in my bed no longer opens her eyes like she’s waiting to hear a key in the lock.
She moves different now. Breathes different. Lives different.
She laughs easier. Sleeps harder. She doesn’t flinch every time somebody steps into a room behind her anymore, and when she does get caught by some old memory or some bad second that sneaks up on her, she comes back faster.
She doesn’t spend every waking moment braced for the worst thing that could happen next.
She doesn’t watch Lexi like the kid might vanish if she looks away for one second.
She lets other people hold her. Lets the women help.
Lets the brothers make Lexi laugh. Lets me do all the little things I started doing for them so long ago I don’t know how to separate habit from devotion anymore.
Most nights, she falls asleep curled into me like there’s no safer place on earth. Most mornings, I wake up with her leg tangled through mine and her hair in my mouth because she fights like a wildcat in her sleep and steals all the blankets like she pays rent.
I’ve never been happier in my whole goddamn life. That truth still feels dangerous some days. Not because it isn’t real. Because it is.
Because it’s so real I can feel it in my bones when I step out onto the porch and see her standing in the yard with Lexi beside her and the whole clubhouse alive around them like they were always meant to be part of this place.
Tonight the yard’s full again.
Bonfire going. Music low. Beer cold. Kids all over the damn place. The usual chaos. Exactly the kind I never knew I’d end up craving.
I’m standing by the fire with Logan, Cain, Carter, Shadow, and Dom, half listening to Blaze run his mouth about something stupid and definitely made up when Raven looks over from where she’s talking to Emma and Brooke and gives me a smile that immediately makes me suspicious. Not soft. Not just warm. Sly.
I narrow my eyes at her from across the yard.
She lifts one brow, like she knows exactly what she just did and intends to make it my problem. That smile lands low in my gut and sharp in my chest at the same time, because I know my woman well enough now to recognize when she’s keeping a secret.
A good one. One she thinks is going to knock me on my ass. She holds my gaze another second, then tips her head toward the side of the clubhouse, away from the fire and the tables and the noise.
I don’t hesitate.
I hand my beer to Shadow without looking at him. “Hold that.”
He glances down at the bottle, then back at me. “You trusting me with alcohol now? Big growth.”
“Drop it and I’ll bury you.”
“Love you too.”
I ignore him and head around the side of the building where Raven’s already waiting in the shade near the back steps, arms folded loosely over her chest, dark hair spilling over one shoulder, mouth still curved like she knows something I don’t.
That smile alone is enough to make me want to drag her into my room and lock the door for the rest of the night.
I stop in front of her and look her over once, slowly. “You got that look.”
Her eyes gleam. “What look?”
“The one that says I’m about to either be very happy or very pissed off.”
She laughs under her breath, soft and real and so fucking familiar now it still does something to me every time. “Definitely not pissed.”
I take one step closer. “Then what is it?”
She bites her lip. That alone is enough to make my blood heat. Then she says, “I have something to show you.”
Well. That’s not helping. Not when she says it in that voice. Not when she’s standing there in fitted jeans and one of my old black shirts that hangs off one shoulder just enough to remind me I’m a man with priorities and very little patience.
I glance past her automatically toward the yard to make sure Lexi’s still with the kids and Amy and Casey and approximately ten adults. She is. Good.
Then I look back at Raven. “Show me.”
That slow smile comes back.
She turns just enough to lean one hip against the wall, then hooks her fingers into the waistband of her jeans and tugs the denim down on one side.
Not far. Just enough. And then my brain stops working.
For one dead second, I actually think I imagined it. Because there, inked into the curve of her hip, dark and clean and permanent in a way that hits me right in the fucking throat, is a property patch.
Mine.
My name worked into it.
Joker.
On her. On her skin. On the body I’ve kissed and held and loved and woken up beside so many nights now that I still haven’t fully adjusted to the fact that I get to keep doing it.
For a second, I don’t move. I don’t think I breathe. I just stare at it, my whole body going absolutely still in the kind of way that means something hit too deep for immediate reaction.
Raven’s smile softens the tiniest bit. “I got it earlier,” she says quietly. “The girls took me.”
I drag my eyes up to hers.
She looks almost nervous now, which makes no sense because she should know by now there’s nothing she could do short of stabbing me that I wouldn’t eventually find a way to forgive if she looked at me with those eyes.
Still, I understand it. Because this isn’t small.
This isn’t just ink. This is a claim. A choice. A declaration. A promise cut into skin and offered up like something sacred.
That’s my patch. My woman. My name on her body because she wanted it there, because she chose it, because some part of her wanted the whole damn world to know exactly where she stands when it comes to me. My chest gets so tight it actually hurts.
“Travis?” she asks softly.
That’s what breaks the freeze. The sound of my real name in her mouth, out here but still somehow private because it’s her and because she says it low enough that the whole moment stays ours.
I move. Fast. One second she’s leaning against the wall watching me like she’s not sure if I’m stunned or furious or about to combust, and the next I’m in front of her with both hands on her face and my mouth on hers hard enough to make her little gasp disappear between us.
Every emotion I’ve got slams into me at once. Pride. Want. Love. Possession. Gratitude so brutal it almost feels like grief for all the years I didn’t know this kind of happiness existed.