Page 169 of Joker

This is Cal.

And that truth is somehow worse. Because bad luck can be planned around. A man like him has to be stopped.

Raven nods once, but I can see the crack in her now. The one under the control. The one she’s trying like hell to keep hidden. She swallows hard and asks the question I knew was coming the second I saw the picture. “Are you going to tell Lexi?”

There it is. The fault line.

I keep my voice even. “No.”

Her whole body goes rigid anyway. “She can’t know.”

“I know.”

“She can’t feel this.”

I take another step. “Raven—”

“No.” Her voice breaks sharp and fast this time, and suddenly the composure she was white-knuckling a second ago starts slipping in real time. “She just started sleeping through the night. She just stopped asking if we’re hiding. She just…” Her breath catches hard enough she has to stop and press a hand to her chest. “She just started being little again.”

That one nearly takes my knees out from under me. Because she’s right. And because the only thing worse than a scared woman is a scared mother who thinks she failed her child by not being able to outrun the danger fast enough.

Raven’s eyes are bright now. Not full tears yet. Just that awful, glassy kind of panic where somebody is still holding it together by sheer force and one more wrong word will tip the whole thing.

“I can handle it,” she says, and I hate the way her voice shakes around the lie. “I can. I just…” Her mouth trembles once. Then she looks at me like she’s trying not to completely come apart. “Not her.”

And that’s where she breaks. Not loudly. Not dramatically.

Just all at once. One breath too sharp. One blink too slow. One hand coming up over her mouth like she can physically hold the fear back if she covers it fast enough.

I’m across the room before she can take another shaky step.

She doesn’t even fight me.

The second I get my hands on her, one at the back of her neck and one around her waist, she folds straight into me like she was already halfway there and just needed somewhere to land.

I hold her. Not too tight. Not so loose she feels like she could fall through it. Just enough. Enough to keep her upright. Enough to let her breathe into my chest and shake without feeling like she’s doing it alone.

“Hey,” I murmur, mouth against her hair. “Hey. I got you.”

Her fingers fist in the front of my shirt so hard it almost hurts.

Let it.

I’d rather she hold on hard than try to survive this standing three feet away from me like she’s got to earn the right to be scared.

She doesn’t. Not with me. Not ever.

“She’s okay,” I say quietly, because right now she needs the simplest truth, not the full tactical breakdown. “She’s here. She’s safe. Nobody got to her.”

Raven shakes her head against my chest, breath hitching. “He could be in town.”

“I know.”

“He’s getting closer.”

“I know.”

That one’s rougher. Because it’s true. Because I can’t lie to her and tell her he’s not when he clearly is.