Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Alycia
Ms. Mel says, “Welcome to the family,” and it’s like someone tossed a match into a pile of very enthusiastic, very combustible Hendrix siblings.
Cole nearly knocks over his water glass. “Oh, wow. That’s it. That’s the highest honor in this house. We’re never letting you two forget this.”
“Cole, stop announcing it like it’s breaking news.” Beau drags a hand down his face.
“Momma, you cannot just spring that on people.” Ramona claps once, delighted and horrified at the same time.
“I can do whatever I want in my house,” Ms. Mel declares, folding her napkin like the activity is confidence.
Kyle looks like he wants to climb under the table. Not metaphorically, but literally. His hand tightens on his napkin, his shoulders creeping up like he’s waiting for a rogue puck to fly at his face.
“Momma,” he says slowly, carefully, like he’s approaching a wild animal. “We talked about boundaries.”
“I adore boundaries,” she replies brightly. “I just don’t always keep them. And this needed to be said.”
Something inside me goes very still while my body does the opposite. My heart kicks hard, and my breath flutters high. It feels like standing on the edge of a cliff. The ground beneath me is steady at the exact moment my brain registers how far there is to fall.
“Thank you,” I hear myself say. “That’s… incredibly kind.”
It’s dangerously kind because warmth like this has strings.
It plants roots and opens doors I don’t know how to walk through.
The weight behind her welcome, the certainty in her voice, the way every Hendrix in the room turned to look at me, not with suspicion or judgment…
but with unconditional acceptance, like they’ve already decided I belong here. And that’s the part that terrifies me.
My chest goes tight, breath catching somewhere just below my ribs.
I grip the edge of my napkin to hide the tremor in my hand.
A thousand alarms fire in my brain—don’t fall for this, don’t read into this, don’t want what isn’t yours—but underneath them, something quieter rises.
Before it can grow roots, her smile widens, warm enough to melt every defense I’ve spent years perfecting.
“Please, call me Momma,” she says, absolutely beaming.
Kyle chokes so violently, I’m surprised he stays in his chair. His knee slams the underside of the table, silverware rattling like the entire house is reacting with him.
“Momma,” he sputters, voice cracking in a way I didn’t think was physically possible for him, “you can’t just— She can’t just— Alycia doesn’t have to call you…”
The words tumble out of him in a frantic mess, like his usually smooth brain-to-mouth connection has shorted out. The Kyle Hendrix who deflects pressure like it’s part of his job description is absolutely panicking. And somehow, his panic steadies me more than any breath exercise ever has.
He isn’t panicking because he’s embarrassed. He’s panicking because of what this means for me. He doesn’t want me to feel cornered or overwhelmed. He cares, more than he ever says out loud, how this lands on my heart.
Suddenly, it isn’t just me holding something fragile between us. He is holding it, too. Maybe I shouldn’t let that matter. Maybe I shouldn’t feel anything about it at all.
But I do.
Cole slaps the table like this is the season finale of a show he’s been binge-watching. “Oh, this is premium entertainment. I needed this today.”
“Can we not traumatize her in the first five minutes?” Beau exhales, gripping the bridge of his nose between his fingers.
From the other end of the table, Cooper appears in the doorway, eyebrows arched. “What did I miss? And why does Kyle look like he’s about to pass out?”
“Your mother welcomed Alycia to the family,” Ramona responds, running a soothing hand down Kyle’s back.
“Oh.” Cooper snickers. “Yeah, that’ll do it.”
Kyle shoots him a betrayed look. “Coop. Not you, too.”
“You’ll live,” Cooper says, completely unbothered, taking his seat next to Ramona like this is the most natural chaos in the world.
Across from me, Alise is leaning forward, chin propped in her hand. “Are we sure Auntie Mel used the voice?”
“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 is still 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 the idea of 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.