Page 140 of Joker

And the part that hits hardest, the part I can’t quite look at too directly without feeling like it might split me open somewhere inconvenient, is that she trusted me with it.

Not Logan. Not the women. Not the club as a whole.

Me.

She brought the ugliest parts of her life into my room and put them in my hands. That means more than I want to examine too closely. Because if I really let myself look at what that does to me, I’m gonna end up admitting things I’m not sure I’m ready to say out loud yet like…

I’m already all in.

If she asked me to, I’d tear down half the fucking state.

There’s not a version of this where I could watch her leave when it’s over.

That one’s dangerous. So I shove it aside and focus on what matters.

Survival first. The rest later.

Raven shifts in her sleep sometime around four in the morning, her fingers tightening briefly in my shirt before she settles again.

I glance down at her in the dark and brush my knuckles lightly over her hairline before I can stop myself.

She doesn’t wake.

Good.

She needs sleep more than she needs whatever ugly thoughts are currently trying to take up permanent residence in my skull.

I lie there for another ten minutes after that. Then I make a decision.

By sunrise, I’m done lying in bed with my anger and pretending it counts as a plan.

***

The clubhouse is quiet when I slide out from under Raven and pull on jeans, boots, a black T-shirt, and my cut.

She makes a small sound when I leave the bed, not fully waking, just reacting to the absence of heat.

I look back at her.

The blanket’s pooled around her waist. My pillow is tucked halfway under her arm. My room still smells faintly like her shampoo and sex and the kind of comfort I’ve never trusted enough to keep.

That thought lands harder than I expect. I kill it before it can grow teeth.

Then I step into the hall and shut the door softly behind me.

The downstairs corridor is still mostly dark, just a stripe of weak early light creeping in through the narrow windows by the back exit. The clubhouse always has this strange, almost holy kind of quiet before the day really starts. Like the building itself is breathing slow before everybody inside it remembers who they are again.

I head for the kitchen first. Coffee. Then war.

In that order.

By the time the first pot finishes, Logan’s already walking in, hair still damp from a shower, cut over a gray T-shirt, expression sharp enough to tell me he clocked my mood from halfway down the hall. He doesn’t say good morning.

Smart man.

He grabs a mug, pours himself coffee, and leans one hip against the counter while he studies me over the rim. “What happened?”

No preamble. No bullshit. That’s why he’s president.