Page 45 of Joker

I shove one hand through my hair and look away first because if I don’t, I’m going to say something even dumber and there are only so many humiliations a man should endure in one night.

“You should get some rest,” I mutter.

She nods. “You too.”

Then Emma says something from inside the room, Raven turns back toward the doorway, and just like that the moment is over.

She disappears inside.

The door closes softly. And I stand there for another full five seconds staring at the wood like a complete idiot before finally dragging myself into my own room.

I shower.

Doesn’t help.

I lie down.

Definitely doesn’t help.

Because the second the lights are off and the room goes quiet, all I can think about is the fact that Raven is on the other side of the wall.

Right there. Separated from me by drywall and bad timing and the kind of temporary arrangement that shouldn’t matter half as much as it suddenly does.

I stare at the ceiling. Listen to the pipes knock once somewhere in the building. Listen to muffled footsteps in the hallway fade. Listen for absolutely no reason at all to the faintest possible sounds from the room next door, though I can’t hear much of anything.

And then I spend half the goddamn night wide awake, pissed off, overthinking, and fully aware that this whole situation is already getting under my skin in ways I absolutely did not sign up for.

Lexi falls asleep almost immediately once we’re inside the room.

I don’t know whether to be grateful for that or devastated by it. Probably both.

She barely stirs when I ease Bunny more securely into her arms and tug the blanket up over her little body. Her lashes rest against her cheeks, dark and soft, her breathing deep and even in that way only children seem capable of after they’ve run straight through the edge of exhaustion and dropped off anyway. One of her curls is stuck awkwardly against her forehead from the truck ride, and I smooth it back with careful fingers, lingering longer than I need to because touching her is grounding and because if I keep moving, I don’t have to think too hard yet.

Emma helped me get her settled without making me feel incompetent, which is some kind of miracle I didn’t realize I needed tonight.

Mac found me an extra pillow, a clean washcloth, and a tiny travel toothbrush from somewhere like she’d been expecting a woman and a kid to appear in the middle of the night, which somehow feels exactly like the kind of thing a place like this would prepare for. They didn’t ask for details. Theydidn’t tiptoe around me like I might shatter. They just…handled it. Quietly. Kindly. Efficiently.

It should make me emotional.

Instead, right now, it mostly makes me feel untethered. Like I’ve been running so long I don’t know what to do with people stepping in without strings attached.

The room itself is simple. A bed big enough for me and Lexi, a dresser with two empty drawers, a chair in the corner, a lamp on the nightstand, a small attached bathroom with clean towels folded on the shelf and a little basket of travel toiletries someone must keep stocked for guests or emergencies or women like me who arrive here with their lives crammed into one duffel bag and a child.

There’s nothing fancy about it. No expensive art. No polished furniture. No curated softness trying too hard to feel comforting.

And yet.

It’s warm. Clean. Safe.

There’s a difference between a room being nice and a room feeling like nothing bad has happened in it for a while. This one feels like the second.

I stand at the edge of the bed for a long moment, staring at Lexi’s sleeping face while the silence settles around me in a way that should probably feel eerie after everything else.

Instead, it feels…unfamiliar.

Not empty. Not dead. Just quiet enough for my own thoughts to finally start catching up.

That is dangerous territory.