Across from me, Alise is leaning forward, chin propped in her hand. “Are we sure Auntie Mel used thevoice?”
“She used the voice.” Darius nods enthusiastically.
Alise’s eyebrows shoot up. “Sorry, Kyle, you can’t walk that back. It’s basically a binding contract.”
“Momma, seriously. Boundaries.”
“I have plenty of boundaries,” she says, waving him off. “You just don’t like mine.”
“Momma’s on fire tonight.” Cole cackles.
Kyle groans into his hands, and the table reacts in a ripple I can feel more than see. A few snorts, someone choking back a laugh, a chair scraping as someone shifts for a better view of his suffering. What hits me is not the noise, but the way that none of it is aimed at me. They’re laughing at and teasing Kyle and folding me into the room without poking at the edges of my presence. Somehow, that makes it easier to breathe.
Across the table, Alise catches my eye. It’s a small, knowing glance. The kind another woman gives when she recognizes exactly how overwhelming family can be. She doesn’t make a big deal out of it. Just a quiet, steady reassurance.
Somewhere behind her, Cooper mutters something about Hendrix men losing their composure, and Ramona shushes him without even looking his way. It is domestic and chaotic and… normal. For the first time tonight, I don’t feel like I’m on display. I feel included.
Ms. Mel’s declaration still hangs in the air like confetti no one has swept up yet, but the table slowly finds its rhythm again. Hands pass dishes, and conversations fracture into smaller pockets.
Cooper leans toward Ramona to say something that earns him a playful swat on the arm. Darius and Alise negotiate over a roll like it is a hostage situation. Cole attempts to tell a story he is obviously embellishing, and Beau doesn’t even bother trying to correct the details. It all moves around me in warm waves.
Kyle exhales beside me like he has been holding his breath longer than he meant to. His knee bumps mine under the table, just enough to get my attention. “You sure you’re okay?”
He tries for light, but there’s something steady and careful underneath it. Sitting this close, it’s impossible not to notice the shift in him. At the rink, Kyle moves like gravity bends around him. Here, in the house where every version of him has existed, the charm isstill there, but his edges are sharper. His jokes land a little faster. His shoulders sit a little straighter. His eyes flick around the table the way I watch a press room, like he’s scanning for where the next blow might come from.
It hits me then that this tension isn’t about me at all. It’s about history and expectation and the way families turn into muscle memory. The same way my spine straightens when my mother’s voice shifts is the way his body braces here. Somehow, seeing that doesn’t make him smaller in my eyes. It cracks something open instead, because this version of him sitting beside me at this table is the closest he has ever come to letting me see what lives underneath the charm.
“Yes,” I say, before the fear in my chest can answer for me. “I think I am.”
His gaze moves over my face, double-checking, before the tension in his shoulders eases. I can feel the shift through the small space between us. Someone slides a bowl of mashed potatoes toward my elbow. A roll goes flying—absolutely Cole’s fault. Ms. Mel warns someone about touching the chicken before she says so. The noise swells, but it doesn’t press in on me quite as hard.
Cooper lifts his fork in my direction. “Alycia, get some mac and cheese before Cole claims it like he invented it.”
Cole doesn’t look up. “I have no shame and zero regrets.”
The laugh that comes out of me isn’t polite or controlled. It feels unplanned, pulled straight out of my chest. When I glance up, Cooper is watching me. It’s the smallest thing, barely a curve at the corner of his mouth, but it lands with more weight than I expect. Cooper Hendrix does not hand out approval casually. He notices everything, especially when it comes to his brothers and the team. That quiet little smile isn’t for the table, but for me. A subtle, deliberate shift from an unknown quantity to someone safe. For reasons I don’t have words for yet, that loosens something inside me, one thread at a time.
The table moves again. Plates shifting. People reach across each other. Voices overlap. And for the first time since we walked through the door, the noise doesn’t feel like a storm I have to withstand. It feels like weather that I’m allowed to exist inside.
Kyle leans closer, just enough that the heat of his shoulder kisses my arm. “You know they like you, right?”
“They like theideaof me.”
“No,” he says, and there’s no hesitation in it. “They like you.”
If only they knew. All of this warmth is built on a story Kyle and I made up to survive one impulsive kiss. The lie is the framework, but nothing about what’s happening at this table feels false. Not the way Alise slides a second roll onto my plate like it is non-negotiable. Not the way Ramona watches me with that soft,assessing look that says she remembers what it’s like to be new here. Not the way Cooper keeps half an eye on both of his brothers without making it obvious.
Something flickers low in my chest, like a spark landing on dry kindling. I’m not ready to name it, but I feel it anyway. The quiet, dangerous pull of wanting him to be right. Wanting to believe I could fit here. With them. With him.
Before I can respond, the table pulls me back in. It all tilts around me in color and sound, and for once, I don’t feel like the only person in the room pretending to be fine. I reach for my water glass; the condensation is cold against my fingers, and a warm hand settles on my knee under the table.
The touch is steady and intentional, not possessive, but an anchor. My fingers tighten around the glass, holding tighter than I mean to. I swear I can feel every point of contact between his palm and my skin through the fabric of my dress.
Kyle doesn't look at me. He doesn’t make a joke or call attention to it. That’s what makes it feel so intimate. This isn’t part of the performance or for anyone else but me. He’s doing it because he can tell I’m overwhelmed, even while I’m doing everything to hide it, because this is how he steadies himself, too. Contact. Pressure. Something solid.
The connection is quiet and invisible to everyone else. My chest tightens, not with panic, but with something far more dangerous. His thumb barely brushesmy knee, a small arc that should be insignificant but isn’t in the slightest.
This family. This table. This storm of voices. It should be too much. But his hand says,You aren’t in it alone. For reasons I don’t want to examine, my breath leaves on a soft, controlled exhale. I don’t look at him because if I do, the truth of what this is turning into might show on my face before I can write a script around it.
