So it was frequent when High’s kids were asleep that he’d leave the woman behind in a home that was far from happy, come to the Compound, and throw a few back.

He quit thinking about High and focused on Shy.

“She get home okay?” he asked.

“Do you give a shit?” Shy returned, and Joker felt his frame come alert.

He was not doing this again.

“Think I made this clear the other night, not your business who I fuck,” he returned. “But, just sayin’, Stacy was ridin’ the edge of smashed, the bitch has no problem drivin’ in that state, and so she wouldn’t fuck herself up, or someone else, I took her ass home. Then I took a ride. I didn’t hook up with shit.”

Shy visibly relaxed.

“She likes you,” Tab said softly.

She was right.

Carissa definitely liked him.

Then again, Carissa didn’t know him, so Tab was also wrong.

“She likes havin’ people in her life who give a shit,” Joker returned.

“There a reason you got a block about this bitch?” High asked.

Joker didn’t do this. He didn’t share.

He looked to High.

High didn’t share either. High was a hard motherfucker who kept himself to himself.

But High had once laid it out to Joker over vodka and brotherhood that home was no good. It made him miserable. And worse, he was worried the mask was slipping and his kids could read it.

Joker had been shocked as shit when the man shared. He’d also felt grateful. His brother giving him that said a lot about how he felt about Joker, and Joker didn’t miss any of it.

And he’d decided it was time to do this.

So he said, “I’m not that guy.”

“What guy?” High asked.

“The guy she needs,” Joker answered.

“How do you know?” Shy asked.

Joker looked to him. “Because I don’t like butterflies. They’re beautiful, but they’re delicate, and I don’t got it in me to handle anything with care.”

“Maybe you’re wrong,” High noted.

“And maybe I got a life that proves I’m right,” Joker returned.

“You can’t know unless you try,” Tabby put in.

“And chew her up in the meantime?” Joker asked and shook his head. “She doesn’t need that shit.”

None of them had an answer to that and he knew why.

They knew he was right.

“She’s home safe,” Tabby told him. “She texted me when she got there. But before she took off, she went for a ride with Snapper.”

Fuck.

Joker clenched his teeth, pushing the thought of Carissa wrapped around his brother on his bike to the back of his mind, where, for her sake, he’d put their fucking unbelievable kiss—and the fact she’d laid that on him, not the other way around—doing that hoping like fuck, if she wanted to find a man to get her off, she took that shit off Chaos.

“Good to know she’s safe,” he muttered, tipping his chin to them and moving away.