Chapter 8 #2
Clay and Hunter were arguing about something involving a carburetor.
Maggie was yelling at both of them from the kitchen.
Sophia was on the couch, painting her nails and providing commentary on everyone else's life choices.
Wyatt and Ivy were tucked in a corner, Wyatt reading while Ivy scrolled through something on her phone that was probably cattle genetics data.
Uncle Owen was watching a game on TV, occasionally shouting at the referee.
And in the middle of it all was Louisa, orchestrating the chaos like a conductor, spoon in one hand, dish towel in the other.
"Stephanie!" Louisa spotted us immediately, crossing the room to pull Stephy into a careful hug. “Oh, honey, you look so much better. Come sit, let me get you something to drink. Are you hungry? Of course you're hungry, dinner's almost ready."
Before Stephy could respond, she was being ushered to the couch, a glass of sweet tea in her hand, Sophia scooting over to make room.
"That color would look amazing on you," Sophia said, holding up the nail polish. "Want me to do yours after?"
Stephy looked like a deer in headlights. “I... okay?"
And just like that, she was absorbed. No grand entrance, no big production or formal introductions. Just instant acceptance, like she'd always been there.
Dinner was exactly as advertised—pure, unfiltered Blackwood chaos. Everyone talking at once, three different conversations overlapping, food being passed in every direction like a culinary tornado.
Clay stole a roll off Maggie’s plate. Maggie retaliated by dumping half a bottle of hot sauce into his sweet tea without breaking eye contact. Clay took a sip, choked so dramatically you’d think he’d been shot, and the whole table erupted.
Hunter contributed mostly with eyebrow raises and the occasional grunt, which somehow communicated entire paragraphs if you knew the language. Owen kept telling stories, half-truths and full exaggerations, that had Ivy cackling and Sophia threatening to call him out on every detail.
“…and then,” Owen said as he reached for more brisket, “Clay thought it’d be funny to put a rattlesnake shed in Maggie’s pillowcase.”
Maggie pointed her fork at him. “I was twelve. Twelve. My brain was still developing. I thought it was alive.”
Wyatt leaned back in his chair, grinning. “She let out a banshee scream you could hear clear to County Line Road. Clay was fourteen and already mouthy as sin, but I have never—never—seen him move that fast.”
Clay’s scowl deepened. “I wasn’t running. I was executing a tactical retreat from an unpredictable threat.”
“A twelve-year-old girl with a cast-iron skillet,” Ivy said, laughing. “Yeah. Terrifying.”
“You weren’t there,” Clay muttered. “She was feral. She came at me like a rabid raccoon.”
Maggie lifted a brow. “You put a snake skin in my bed!”
“Shed,” Clay corrected weakly. “Completely harmless.”
Stephy was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes—good tears, the healing kind that made something in my chest unclench.
“Oh my God,” she wheezed, “you all were menaces.”
Clay pointed his fork at her. “Were?”
Sophia leaned toward Stephy conspiratorially. “You should’ve seen the time we put bleach in Clay’s shampoo, and he walked around looking like a highlighter for a week.”
Clay groaned. “You told me it was a medical shampoo!”
“It was,” Sophia said sweetly. “Medically hilarious.”
More laughter. More teasing. More warmth than any one room should’ve been able to hold.
“For the record,” Maggie said, lifting her glass, “the girls have always been outnumbered, but never outmatched.”
“Not once,” Ivy confirmed proudly.
Clay pointed at me like I was his last hope. “Liam, back me up.”
“Nope,” I said, taking a drink. “You’re on your own, brother.”
Stephy grinned at me across the table—soft, warm, a little shy and a lot alive.
And for the first time since LA, she looked like she belonged somewhere.
Like she belonged here.
Ivy leaned toward Stephy. "They do this to everyone. Last month, they spent an hour telling me about Wyatt's attempt to serenade me as if I hadn’t been there myself. He forgot the words to his own song."
"I was nervous," Wyatt protested.
"You were drunk," Ivy corrected, but her hand found his under the table.
This was my family. Loud, invasive, embarrassing, and absolutely perfect. And watching Stephy in the middle of it, laughing and blushing and actually eating, I saw her understanding what she'd been missing. What real family looked like.
After dinner, Louisa conscripted help for dishes—not because of gender roles but because she only trusted certain people with her good china. The rest were banished to the porch with coffee and strict instructions not to break anything.
I found Stephy later on the back porch swing, Sophia beside her, painting her nails a soft pink while Ivy sat in a rocking chair, discussing the logistics of touring.
"Twenty cities in twenty-five days?" Ivy was saying. "That's insane. Cattle drives were less brutal than that."
"It's what they said the fans wanted," Stephy replied, blowing on her wet nails.
"Fuck what they wanted," Ivy said bluntly. "What did you want?"
Stephy looked startled by the question. "I... I don't know. Nobody asked."
"Well, I'm asking."
“All done,” Sophia said softly, brushing a thumb over Stephy’s knuckles like she was handling something fragile and precious. “They look perfect on you.”
Stephy smiled down at her nails—soft pink, glossy, delicate—and whispered, “They’re beautiful.”
“So are you,” Sophia murmured, kissing her cheek before slipping back inside the house like the gentle whirlwind she was.
Ivy stood and stretched. “Think about it,” she told Stephy. “What you want. Not what the world expects from you.” Then she called toward the kitchen, “Wyatt! We’re leaving before your mother hands us a casserole big enough to feed the county.”
When the door closed and their truck pulled away, Stephy stared at her hands as if she couldn’t quite believe they belonged to her.
“Your family is…” she breathed.
“Chaos?” I offered.
She shook her head. “Good. Kind. They didn’t ask for anything. They just… gave.”
“That’s them,” I said quietly. “It’s always been them.”
Stephy’s voice went softer. “Thank you for bringing me here, Lee. You didn’t just give me a place to heal…you gave me a place to feel like myself again.”
I lowered myself onto the porch swing beside her, careful of her ribs, watching the way the warm light brushed across her face.
“Sophia seems convinced about a lot of things,” she said with a small, breathy laugh.
“She does,” I admitted.
Stephy lifted her eyes to mine—slow, steady, searching. “And what about you?”
For a moment, the air changed—thicker, warmer, weighted with something we weren’t pretending not to feel anymore.
I held her gaze. Didn’t look away. Didn’t soften. Didn’t hide.
“I’ve always known where you fit,” I said quietly. “I think you’re starting to feel it too.”
Her breath caught—small, sharp, real—and then she leaned into me, head fitting against my shoulder like we’d done it a thousand times.
“Yeah,” she whispered, the word barely a breath. “I think I am.”
We stayed like that while the sky went dark and the porch light hummed softly above us. The sounds of my family spilled out the windows—laughter, clattering dishes, the warm chaos of people who loved each other without conditions.
Stephy’s freshly painted nails glowed faintly in the last slip of daylight.
She wasn’t healed. Not yet. But she was healing.
With me.
And she wasn’t running from that truth anymore.
“Next Sunday?” she asked quietly, like she already knew the answer.
“Every Sunday you want,” I said.
A heartbeat. “I want.”
And God help me, that simple sentence felt like a promise neither of us had to say out loud.
Owen appeared in the doorway. "Y'all coming in for dessert, or are you gonna sit out here making moon eyes at each other all night?"
I shot upright, heat crawling up my neck. ”We're not—" I started.
"We'll be right in," Stephy said, laughing.
Owen winked and disappeared.
"Your uncle is not subtle."
"None of them are. Fair warning—they're all planning our wedding already."
"Just the wedding?" She stood, offered me her hand. "Maggie was discussing baby names earlier."
I ran a hand over my face. Mortified and secretly pleased. “Jesus.”
She giggled. ”That was actually one of them."
We went back inside to pie and coffee and more stories. Stephy helped clear plates, got into an argument with Clay about the best Willie Nelson album, let Hunter explain something about engines that went completely over her head, but listened anyway.
This was what she'd been missing in LA. Not just safety, not just protection, but belonging. Real, messy, complicated, wonderful belonging.
"Thank you," she whispered again as we walked back to her cabin later, the family's goodbye hugs still warming her. "Thank you for all of this."
"Always," I said, meaning it. "Always, sweetheart."
She squeezed my hand, and we walked home through the Texas night, the sound of family laughter still echoing behind us.