Chapter 24 #2
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 brushes my 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.
I don’t pull away either, focusing on breathing like a normal person. Across the table, Alise lifts the basket of rolls toward Ramona.
“Coop, if you don’t stop reorganizing the serving spoons, I swear—”
“I’m not reorganizing,” Cooper argues, adjusting a spoon by a quarter inch. “I’m optimizing efficiency.”
“Cooper,” Ramona says, not looking at him, “eat your dinner or so help me—”
He sits immediately, and the table cracks open with laughter.
The tension slips another notch down my spine.
This is the man who can freeze an entire press conference with one sentence, obediently sitting because his wife told him to.
It is disarming and a reminder that titles and power and jobs all stay at the door here.
I can feel Kyle monitoring the room, picking his moments to speak, deflecting with sarcasm when things skim too close. For a second, I wonder if anyone else besides Beau notices. I see it in the way his attention catches on Kyle for a beat too long, like he is tracing an old pattern.
Kyle clears his throat, and his thumb sweeps over my knee before he pulls his hand back to his own lap. The loss of contact is so sudden that it leaves a small ache behind.
“All right, all right,” Cole declares loudly, waving a fork like a conductor’s baton. “We’ve been civil for too long. Someone insult someone else’s career choices before I die of boredom.”
“You shaved racing stripes into your eyebrows in high school,” Beau says dryly. “Your career choices are never the safest target.”
“It was a look,” Cole insists.
“I’m pretty sure it was a cry for help,” Darius deadpans, not even looking up from his phone.
The table erupts, and Kyle leans forward, shoulders shaking with quiet laughter he doesn’t bother to rein in. I laugh, too, and not a polished, socially acceptable chuckle. A surprised, almost breathless sound that feels like it belongs to someone who isn’t constantly managing the room.
When I suck in a breath and reach for my water, my hand shakes just enough that the glass clinks against my plate. Kyle’s hand is there instantly, steadying the bottom before it tips.
“Are you still doing okay?”
I nod, but the truth curls warm under my ribs.
“All right,” Ms. Mel says suddenly, rising from her chair with an authority that freezes every Hendrix boy instantly. “I made peach cobbler for dessert, and I’m not letting it go cold because you people are too busy arguing about eyebrows.”
“Momma, we’re full,” Kyle groans.
“You will eat dessert.” She gives him a look that could take the paint off a car.
“You know that you’re legally required to cave to that woman,” Ramona says, patting his shoulder.
More laughter rolls around the table. People stand, shuffle, and dodge each other in a choreography they have been perfecting for years. When a slice of cobbler lands in front of me, steam curling up, smelling like cinnamon, warm sugar, and summer, I just stare at it for a second.
“You’ll want to pace yourself.” Beau nods toward it. “Momma takes offense if people don’t get seconds.”
“Beau!” Ms. Mel yells from the kitchen.
He grins, unbothered.
“What do you think so far?” Cooper leans forward.
It sounds casual, but it’s not. Cooper does not ask throwaway questions. He is taking the temperature of the room and of me.
“It’s… a lot.”
He nods once, as if he expected nothing less.
“But,” I add, surprising even myself, “it’s really good.”
His smile is small but sincere. Beside me, Kyle’s shoulders relax, as if that one tiny shift took weight off him, too.
Dessert turns into its own kind of chaos.
Cole declares himself the king of cobbler.
Darius tries to steal a second piece. Ramona trades bites with Alise.
Peach and cinnamon fill the space, soaking into everything, including the parts of me I usually keep sealed off.
Somewhere in the middle of all of that, something shifts. Not around me, but inside me.
It starts as a low ache in my chest, suspiciously close to wanting. This scene shouldn’t feel safe. This noise shouldn’t feel comforting. This family, his family, shouldn’t feel like a place my heart already understands. But it does, and that’s a problem.
Kyle’s knee bumps mine again, the lightest check-in, and my pulse trips. He isn’t asking for anything. He’s just there, showing up in a dozen small ways he probably thinks I will ignore.
I don’t because suddenly, it is clear. This fits dangerously too well, both to me and to the life I’ve built around not needing anyone.
It feels like some deep part of me, the part I have kept locked tight for years, recognizes something in the boy sitting beside me.
The boy who keeps trying to steady me without asking for anything in return.
This was supposed to be pretend. A story we wrote so the fallout from one impulsive outburst at a press conference would not swallow us. The lie is the only part that doesn’t feel real anymore. Not to me. And from the way his thumb lingered on my knee, not to him either.
The table erupts again at some ridiculous thing Cole says.
The sound drifts around me like a tide. I suddenly realize I don’t want to pull away from this house, from this warmth, from the way my name sounds in these walls.
I don't want to leave and pretend none of it shifted something fundamental in me.
That realization settles in my chest with a quiet finality.
I don’t want to give this up, and that might be the most dangerous truth of all.