Fuck.
“How out of the picture?” Joker pushed.
“Very,” Hank told him.
Joker looked between the both of them.
Then he clipped, “I get their hopes up, shit goes south, we got a problem.”
“There won’t be any problems,” Lee replied inflexibly.
Joker took a beat.
Then he said, “You gotta give me twenty-four hours.”
“Why?” Lee asked.
“’Cause I gotta talk to Carissa,” he told him.
“Good call. She can back you up with your teacher,” Hank muttered.
Actually, he hadn’t thought of that. But he’d pull her in on that too.
What he’d thought of was little fingers curled around his own.
Tight.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But gotta talk to her mostly because, they say no, I gotta know if she’s good takin’ on a baby who might have problems down the line.”
Lee’s head jerked, and Hank stared.
Joker walked away.
*
The next day, standing in the Compound, Carissa at his side, her hand tight in his, Joker stared at Keith Robinson, who stood, head bent, hand lifted and wrapped around the back of his neck.
They were the only ones in the room.
They waited.
He took his time.
Finally, he dropped his hand and looked at Joker.
“I can’t put my wife through it again.”
Joker nodded.
He’d given him the info, and he wasn’t surprised at his decision. The man loved his wife. Carissa went through what Keith watched his wife go through, Joker would make the same call.
“Then Carissa and I are takin’ her on.”
Keith blinked before his face changed.
“That’s honorable Carson”—he looked to Carissa—“Carissa, honey”—back to Joker—“but believe me when I say that if things turn, you fall in love in an instant, and hearts break very easily.”
“I’ve been assured by people who can do that that things won’t change,” Joker told him, repeating something he’d already shared.
“You think that and then—”
“Keith, you don’t get me,” Joker cut him off quietly. “These people would not have approached me if they didn’t know things would not change.”
Keith stared into his eyes.
Joker let him.
Carissa squeezed his hand and leaned into his arm.
“Maybe I should talk to my wife,” Keith whispered.
Carissa made a sound like she was fighting tears.
“Maybe you should,” Joker replied. “No pressure. Either way, that little girl will have a home. But you got my number. We’ll be at the hospital.”
Keith nodded and didn’t waste time after his handshake for Joker and letting Carissa touch her cheek to his before he took off.
“Do you pray?”
Carrie’s quiet question made him look down at her to see she was looking after Keith.
“No,” he answered.
Her gaze came to him.
“Start,” she whispered.
He looked in her eyes.
Then he started.
*
Joker was leaning his shoulders against a wall in the maternity ward at Children’s Hospital, watching Keith Robinson walk into a room with a physician and a CPS officer.
Carissa and Keith’s wife were suited up and in a room with the incubator, holding Keith’s new daughter.
The door closed on Keith, and when it did, Joker felt a whisper up the back of his neck.
He turned his head and instantly braced.
At the end of the corridor stood Knight Sebring.
Next to him was a woman Joker knew. She’d been on Chaos’s patch often. He’d ousted her a few times himself. She was a mouse, a flake, and an addict. She had no business being in the life. She was too weak. That life was going to chew her up, it was only a matter of time.
He hadn’t seen her in months, and he’d thought the life had chewed her up.
Now he saw she looked frail and tired, and was wearing a bulky hoodie and baseball cap pulled low over her forehead.
Knight tipped his head to the side.
Joker jerked up his chin.
Knight nodded.
The woman put her hand to her mouth and her body bucked as her face collapsed.
Knight put a hand to her back, turned her, and they disappeared.
So this wasn’t Lee’s deal.
It was Knight’s.
Which meant that woman had just disappeared, she did it safe, she’d do it clean. Knight was giving her a new life plus the knowledge her kid would be loved.
Joker drew in breath.
Then he looked at his boots and let it out.
*
Carissa sat next to him in his truck as they drove from the hospital.
“You know I love you?” she asked quietly.
“I know you love me, Carrie,” he answered the same way, squeezing her hand he held on his thigh.
She squeezed back.
They rode in silence.
She broke it with, “I want another one.”
“I know, Butterfly.”
“Soon,” she whispered.
He’d do soon. He would have planted one in her that night, but he’d been declared clean (something, for her, she’d already thought of, considering her ex had replaced her, and it was something that came as a matter of course through her care while having Travis) and she was now on the Pill.
“We’ll do soon,” he promised.
That got him another squeeze.
“You want Las Delicias?” he asked.
“I do, but that’s our family place, you, Travis, and me,” she answered, and he felt his chest get light. “Why don’t we get a burger or something?”
“Whatever you want, Carrie,” he muttered.
She squeezed his hand again.
He drove her to My Brother’s Bar for a burger.
And after, he took her to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard.
*
“Joke!”
He turned his head at Lenny’s call, and at what he saw, Joker muttered, “’Scuse me,” to the photographer he was talking to.
Then he smiled as he walked through the garage to Carissa, who was wearing a sweet tank with shiny shit stitched on the front, sweeter jeans, and the high-heeled black ankle boots he’d fucked her in the night she keyed his father’s car.
She also had big hair, lots of makeup, and a huge, bright smile. The whole package meant Joker was fighting his dick getting hard as he made his way to her.