Page 51 of Joker

My room still feels wrong with Raven on the other side of that wall.

I hate that too.

I shove the blanket back, swing my legs over the side of the bed, and sit there for a second rubbing a hand over my face while my brain catches up with the fact that sleep is over whether I want it to be or not. I’m tired, irritable, and just grounded enough to know exactly who to blame for it.

Myself. Logan too, a little. Mostly myself.

I stand, drag on jeans, pull a black T-shirt over my head, and jam my feet into boots without bothering to lace them yet. I slip my cut on over my shoulders, the feeling of responsibility that comes with it is heavier this morning. The room is still dark enough that I don’t bother turning on the lamp. Doesn’t matter. I know every inch of it. Bed. Dresser. Chair in the corner. Gun where I left it. Knife where it belongs.

I splash water on my face in the bathroom, stare at myself in the mirror, and decide I look exactly how I feel.

Rough. Annoyed. Too awake for this hour.

Perfect.

By the time I step into the hallway, the place is just starting to shift from dead quiet to early movement. Enough life in the walls to feel the day getting ready to start, not enough to call it busy. I hook one thumb in my pocket and head for the kitchen because coffee is currently the only thing standing between me and homicide.

The smell hits me before I even get there. Fresh pot.

Thank Christ.

I turn the corner into the kitchen and stop short.

Raven is already there.

She’s standing barefoot at the counter in yesterday’s clothes minus my sweatshirt. Her hair is still loose, dark and wild from sleep, falling over the front of a plain fitted T-shirt that definitely isn’t the oversized one from the drive. She’s in soft gray sleep shorts that skim high enough over her thighs to be a problem I absolutely did not ask for before coffee.

Her back is to me, and for one full second I get the strange, jarring impression of something domestic.

A woman in a kitchen in the early morning light, moving quietly so she doesn’t wake a sleeping child. Nothing about that should hit me. It does anyway.

Then she turns, catches sight of me in the doorway, and stills with a mug halfway to the coffee pot.

For a second neither of us says anything. She looks as surprised to see me as I feel to find her here. Not alarmed. Just caught off guard. Her eyes are still a little sleepy, her face softer than it was last night without all the fear and travel ground into it, and that alone almost makes me turn around and walk back out on principle.

Because I was not prepared for early-morning Raven. I’m not prepared for regular Raven either, but this version feels especially unfair.

“Morning,” she says finally, voice rough with sleep.

There is absolutely nothing sexual about a sleepy woman saying one word in a kitchen. That doesn’t stop my body from acting like there is.

“Yeah,” I say, which is apparently the full extent of my personality until caffeine.

Helpful.

Her mouth twitches just slightly, like she notices I’m not firing on all cylinders yet. “I hope you don’t mind. I couldn’t sleep, so I came looking for coffee.”

The fact that she thinks she needs my permission to stand in a kitchen in a clubhouse where she is currently living for her own safety irritates me more than it should. “Why would I mind?”

Her fingers tighten around the mug handle for a second. “I don’t know. It’s your…” She trails off, probably realizing halfway through the sentence that none of this is actually mine in any meaningful way beyond the fact that I live here.

“It’s a kitchen,” I say. “You’re allowed to use it.”

She nods once, like that answer matters more than it should. Maybe it does.

I move farther in, grab a mug from the cabinet without needing to think about it, and pour coffee black enough to strip paint. Raven shifts a step to the side automatically to make room for me, and the movement brings us close enough that I catch the faint scent of her shampoo under the coffee and dawn air. Something clean, something light, something completely at odds with the rough edges in the rest of my life.

My shoulders tighten for no useful reason.