“This is my place. This is me,” I whispered.
I was where I needed to be for my son.
But also for me.
I had the man I needed to have who loved my son.
But also he was falling in love with me.
Aaron was going to pull out all the stops.
And he was going to ruin everything.
I heard the back door open just as I focused on a sign in the yard at a house across the street.
“Carrie, water’s boiling,” Joker called.
“Can you turn it off?” I called back, my eyes glued to that sign.
Seconds passed.
“Hey,” I heard.
“Hey,” I replied, eyes to that sign.
I felt him get close. I felt his hand light on the small of my back. I felt his heat. I felt his strength.
“Hey,” he said softly, one syllable, one word repeated, but the change in tone said everything.
“The house across the street is for rent,” I told him, staring at that sign.
“Yeah?” he asked gently.
“We should talk to Mrs. Heely. See if she wants to move. Get her out of that place,” I told him.
“Carrie.”
“Yes?”
“Look at me, Butterfly.”
I tore my gaze from the sign and looked up at him.
He also looked at me.
“Fuck, baby, what happened?”
“Aaron is investigating me.”
His jaw clenched.
“He knows you belong to Chaos,” I told him.
“I’m not hidin’ that, nor would I ever hide that,” he told me.
“I know,” I whispered.
He stared at me. He did this for a while, his hand on my back, light, not claiming like he usually touched me.
Just there.
Suddenly he announced, “Fought the underground fight circuit.”
I blinked.
Then I asked, “What?”
“Illegal fights, illegal betting. Did it for years. Never got caught. Made a shit ton of money. All cash. Didn’t pay taxes on it and won’t if I don’t have to.”
I stared.
Joker kept talking.
“Didn’t live a quiet life, but never did anything really stupid and never got caught doin’ the semi-stupid stuff I did do. In other words, I don’t have a rap sheet, Carissa.”
“I… okay,” I replied.
“I’ve done drugs,” he went on, and my head jerked. “Smoked pot. Snorted coke. Nothin’ else. Don’t mind the mellow of a joint but didn’t like the high of blow. But as a fighter, neither did good things for me, so I stopped doin’ that shit a long time ago.”
I was faintly shaking my head as I repeated, “Okay.”
“Chaos has been a clean club for over a decade,” he kept going. “Not a single member has been taken in for anything more than misdemeanors. Drunk and disorderly, that kinda shit. There are boys who got sheets, but nothin’ serious. Not for a long fuckin’ time.”
With that, it started dawning on me, and what was dawning on me also started warming me.
“Okay, Joker,” I whispered.
“And what I didn’t give you a coupla nights ago,” he carried on, “was somethin’ I knew would freak you and somethin’ I knew the Club would have in hand. That bein’ an informant for Chaos, a woman, a former prostitute, was murdered. She was not killed by the guy who has an issue with the Club. She was killed by a weasel with a grudge. It shits me to have to tell you this because I wanted to protect you from it, but you gotta have it all just in case that jackhole gets it. She had words carved in her skin, one was Chaos and the other was my name because she was my snitch.”
“Oh my gosh,” I breathed, feeling my eyes grow round.
“She wasn’t a good woman but she tried to do good by the Club, even if in doin’ it, she got paid for it. That was her world and that’s the way it needed to be. But she’s dead and she’ll be avenged. The Club will see to that, but they won’t see to it directly. The way it’s done will never color the Club.”
I turned to him, putting a hand to his stomach, feeling all he was giving me, why he was giving it to me, warm me with a heat that sunk straight into my bones.
“Joker—”
“That’s it,” he stated. “That’s all of me. Or all of me that could hurt you and Travis. Now, straight up, if you needed me to leave the Club ’cause you think that would make your case stronger, I’ll tell you, I’d consider it. But that’d say somethin’ about you. Somethin’ about what you think of my brothers, who are me. And in the end, I know it would fuck with me, which would fuck with us. So I can’t give that to you, Carrie.”
“I—”
“But I will walk away.”
My body locked.
He kept talking.
“It’ll kill me. I want you in my life. I want your son in my life. I like what we got, and I like the idea of where we’re going, what we’re building. Never dreamed in my life. But now I dream of that. Givin’ it to you. Givin’ you your Candy. And more. Havin’ that for me. But for you and your boy, you need me to, I’ll walk away.”
No.
No, no, no!
“You were a fighter?” I asked hoarsely, emotion clogging my throat, needing to ask that because I couldn’t even think of how he finished all he had to give me.
“Had a father beat on me,” he answered and I fought my flinch. “Had to let that go. Had to get it out. So I did.”
“A woman was murdered?” I went on.
“Yeah. And I won’t know who or how or when, but if the man responsible bites it, I’ll know why.”
I fell silent.
His hand left me.
I felt bereft.
“Carissa, if this has to happen, it’s gotta happen now,” he declared. “You need this done, I gotta walk out the door. You give me more of you, more of Trav, make that decision later, you’ll strip somethin’ off of me that’ll never heal.”
“If you walk away from me, you’d kill me.”
His head jerked.
But I wasn’t done.
“And if you ever turn your back on the Club, I’d never forgive you, Carson Steele.”
Joker stood there, completely still, and stared at me.
“Aaron is going to do everything he can to ruin everything,” I told him. “And he might succeed. That frightens me. No, it terrifies me, because I don’t want to go through it again. But this time, I don’t want to put you or anyone else I care about through it. That said, whatever he takes, wherever I land the next time, and the next, and maybe even the next, I’ll survive, just as long as I still have Travis and just as long as I still have you.”