Page 46 of Joker

I know better than to let my mind wander too far once the adrenaline starts wearing off, but there’s no outrunning it now. The drive is over. We made it. The chapter doors closed behind us. My daughter is asleep in a bed that does not belong to a house Cal has ever set foot in.

And I am still standing.

That realization should probably hit harder than it does. Maybe I’m too tired for the full weight of it. Maybe my body is still waiting for the other shoe to drop before it lets me feel anything too deeply. Or maybe there’s only so much terror a person can metabolize in one day before the rest just gets stored for later.

I press my fingers to my eyes for a second, then force myself to move.

Shoes off first. Then the baseball cap, finally. Then the sweatshirt. I pause with my hands curled in the hem of it, my pulse doing something stupid and unnecessary the second I start lifting it over my head.

It is ridiculous how aware I am of the fact that it’s his. Not because I think there’s anything romantic about wearing a man’s sweatshirt after six hours in a truck while hiding from my violent ex-husband.

That would be absurd.

No, it’s just…there.

The awareness. The scent of it still lingering in the fabric, darker now from being against my skin for hours. The weight ofit. The way it made me feel steadier in the passenger seat when I absolutely should not have cared.

I tell myself I’m only noticing because it’s unfamiliar. Because everything tonight is unfamiliar. Because my body is latching onto anything that feels remotely grounding.

That explanation sounds very sane and very mature.

I don’t fully believe it.

Still, I fold the sweatshirt carefully and set it over the back of the chair instead of tossing it into my bag. That decision feels more loaded than it should.

I ignore that too.

The room is quiet enough now that I start noticing the sounds underneath it. Not silence exactly. The clubhouse breathes around me in its own strange way. Somewhere in the distance, I hear men laughing.

Not loud enough to make out words, just the low rise and fall of it, deep voices and easy amusement bleeding through the walls and down the hall. Outside, there’s the occasional rumble of a bike starting up, then fading off into the night. Music drifts faintly from farther inside the building, something old and low and steady enough that it feels more like atmosphere than noise.

It should feel chaotic.

If someone had described this to me before tonight, I would’ve pictured noise and mess and men too loud for the walls to hold. Instead, what I feel standing here in the middle of this unfamiliar room is something much stranger.

The place feels alive.

That’s the only word for it. Not polished. Not orderly. Not sanitized and hushed in the way people like Cal always tried to present control as elegance.

No, this place has weight and noise and movement and people existing in it without apology. It feels lived in. Warm in all the places that matter. Safe in a way that doesn’t come from perfection, but from the sense that there are people here who would wake up fast and angry if the wrong person ever tried the wrong thing.

I don’t think I realized until this moment how long it’s been since a place felt alive without feeling threatening.

I sit carefully on the edge of the bed and stare at the wall across from me. Then I realize something.

Joker’s room is right next door.

The thought lands so suddenly and so fully that I physically still. I replay the hallway in my head. Emma opening my door. The room beside it. The brief glance I caught between Joker and Logan when they realized where I’d been put. The way Joker had gone oddly still for half a second before masking it.

My pulse ticks up for no reason I’m prepared to examine.

He’s right there. On the other side of that wall. Probably showering. Maybe changing. Maybe already in bed. Maybe awake. Maybe just as aware of the fact that our rooms are separated by a few inches of drywall and whatever terrible sense of humor the universe has developed at my expense. That should not matter.

It does.

More than I’m comfortable with.

I don’t know if it’s because he’s the only familiar thing in this entire building right now, which is absurd considering I met him a handful of hours ago and he spent most of that time driving while I tried not to fall apart in his passenger seat.