Page 56 of Joker

Because temporary doesn’t explain why I clocked her coffee order after one morning. It doesn’t explain why I knew to grab the napkins before she asked. It doesn’t explain why Lexi’s cereal preference now lives in my head like that information might one day matter in a life-or-death situation. And it definitely doesn’t explain why the sight of Raven half awake in the kitchen with her daughter in her lap hit me somewhere hard enough that I’m still feeling the bruise of it.

Shadow drains the last of his coffee and pushes off the doorway. “You done playing house, or are we canceling the day’s schedule?”

I look at him. “You’re real close to losing teeth.”

He grins without humor. “There he is.”

Blaze coughs into his mug to hide a laugh.

Raven, to my complete surprise, smiles into her coffee again.

Tiny. Tired. Still enough to trip something in my chest that I absolutely don’t have time for.

I set my mug in the sink before I do something stupid like keep standing here. “Finish breakfast,” I say to Raven, like the problem in this room is the cereal and not me. “If you need anything, Emma’s probably up.”

She nods once. “Okay.”

Lexi looks up from Bunny and says, “Bye, Joker.”

I freeze for half a beat. Then I look at the kid.

She’s watching me with sleepy eyes and cereal milk dried near the corner of her mouth, Bunny clutched to her chest, like saying goodbye to me in the kitchen is already normal.

That lands worse than anything else this morning.

I clear my throat. “Yeah. Later, kid.”

She nods like that answer satisfies her completely.

I head for the door because staying here one minute longer is a bad fucking idea.

As I pass Shadow, he leans in just enough to murmur, “Temporary, huh?”

I don’t break stride. “Shut up.”

Blaze falls in behind us laughing under his breath, and I ignore both of them while my mind does a real shit job of not replaying the kitchen in humiliating detail.

Raven at the table in the morning light. Lexi in her lap.

Coffee. Cereal. Napkins.

The accidental brush of her hand.

The look on her face when I handed the kid the juice box like it was nothing.

Temporary, I tell myself again as we step out into the yard.

My body already knows I’m full of shit.

The first morning settles into something I don’t recognize.

Not because it’s quiet.

The clubhouse is never quiet. There’s always something moving, something humming beneath the surface. Doors opening and closing. Voices drifting from one room to another. Boots hitting floors, chairs scraping, the low rumble of conversation that never fully disappears no matter the hour. It’s alive in a way that should feel overwhelming.

Instead, it feels…steady.

That’s the word that keeps coming back to me.