Therapy Session
Kyle
Dr. Shah waits for me to sit. I drag a hand through my hair, force my knee to stop bouncing, and pretend I’m not vibrating out of my skin. She crosses one leg over the other, notebook resting lightly on her knee. “How are you feeling?”
“Loaded question.” I huff out a laugh that sounds wrong on the way out. “You want the short version or the honest one?”
Her mouth curves, just barely. “You usually do both.”
“Yeah. Fair.” I lean back and stare at a spot on the ceiling. “I brought Alycia home.”
She is quiet, and I can feel her giving that room to the words, like she always does when she knows something big is hiding in them.
“My mom invited her to family dinner.”
“How did that feel?”
“Like handing my heart to a grenade and hoping it decides it wants to be a paperweight instead.” A laugh slips out, softer this time. “I grew up in that house. I know which arguments are safe and which ones are about to tilt into something else. Alycia walked into it cold.”
“What did your body do when she walked in?” Dr. Shah asks.
“Got tight. Hyperaware.” I tap my chest with two fingers. “Right here, like a goalie watching a rush come down the ice and knowing one bad bounce changes everything.”
“What is everything, exactly?”
“Her opinion of me and my family. Whether she looks at my life and thinks, Nope, too much, I’m out.
Whether my brothers say something stupid, and she realizes she wants no part of this circus.
Whether Momma likes her too much, which would make it harder on her when this fake dating thing ends.
” My voice roughens. “Whether she sees me the way I am there and decides she likes the other version better.”
“The other version?”
“At the rink, on the ice, and in the press room. I know those scripts. I know how to skate that game. At home, I’m not… I’m not the easy one.”
Dr. Shah watches me carefully. “Tell me about that.”
I rake a hand through my hair and let it fall. “Cooper is the leader. The coach. People move when he talks. Beau is steady, and everyone leans on him without realizing they’re doing it. Cole is chaos, but charming enough that he gets forgiven before anyone finishes being mad. And I…”
The words stick, but I push them out anyway.
“I’m the one who makes too many jokes at the wrong time. The one who pushes back. The one who got in trouble the most. The kid everyone loves but also keeps an eye on, just in case.”
“And how does that feel in your body when you are home?” she asks.
“Like I’m shrinking. My shoulders pull up, my spine goes straight, and my mouth usually runs faster than my brain. If I can stay one joke ahead of everyone, maybe they won’t notice the parts of me I don’t want them to see.”
My lungs give up the air all at once, and it feels like I’ve run a sprint without moving.
“Last night, I felt all of that come back. One second, I’m walking in with Alycia, trying to be steady for her, and the next, I’m sixteen again and waiting for someone to ask what I messed up this time.”
Her pen moves once. “And Alycia is there in the middle of that.”
“Exactly.” My hand curls against my thigh. “Every time she laughed, my body relaxed. Every time she went quiet, I could feel myself bracing for a hit.”
“What did you notice about her?”
“She tried to be small at first. All polite smiles and shoulders a little tight. The PR version of Alycia. But my family doesn’t let anyone stay on the edges for long. They folded her in without asking.”
“And how did that land on you?”
“It was a lot.” I let out a breath. “It made me stupidly proud and absolutely terrified.”
“Tell me about proud first.”
“She held her own and didn’t let them steamroll her. She was quick and sharp and soft in all the ways I knew she would be.”
My chest tightens.
“Seeing her there, laughing with my brothers and joking with my mom… it did something to me. It felt right. Too right.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means my body logged it like a blueprint. This is what it could be like if this were real. If she were mine and not just playing the part.” I swallow. “It felt like something I’ve wanted for a long time, even if I didn’t have words for it.”
“And the terrified part?”
“That they’ll get attached to her, and she’ll get attached to them. Momma will keep saying things like welcome to the family, and Alycia will start to believe it.”
“Tell me about that moment,” she says gently.
I feel my hands clench. “My whole body went cold and hot at the same time. I couldn’t even get words out right. I sounded like an idiot.”
“What were you afraid of?”
“That she’d feel trapped or think I’d set her up. That the whole thing would scare her off. And that my family was building something on a foundation that isn’t real.”
“And what did you see on Alycia’s face?”
“Like no one had ever said something like that to her before and meant it.” The feeling catches right below my sternum, tightening like someone’s pulling a string from the inside. “And I don’t know how to give her that without lying.”
“Did you lie?” she asks.
“By omission. We let them think we’re together. I didn’t correct Momma. I just… tried to keep Alycia from drowning.”
“How?”
“I put my hand on her knee under the table. She looked fine on the surface, but I could see the tells—the tight shoulders, the shallow breathing, the shaking fingers. I know those tells. I have them, too.”
“What did your body do when you touched her?”
“It calmed,” I say, voice unsteady. “Everything quieted. And for a second, it felt like we were on the same team again. Even if no one else knew it.”
“That sounds like the line between pretend and real.”
“There was no line, not in that moment.” What comes out isn’t really a laugh—just a breath with edges.
She waits, letting the truth thicken the air. “And after?”
“I didn’t want to take her home,” I say quietly. “I wanted her to stay. I wanted her to wake up there. I wanted… I wanted too much.”
“And the gala is this weekend.”
“Yeah.” My gut reacts before my brain does, pulling tight on instinct. “It’s the night where the rest of the world gets to watch us play house, too.”
“What is your body doing when you think about that?”
“Everything at once. My chest gets tight; my hands go numb. I start running through every scenario—the cameras, the press, the players. Cooper watching from across the room. Alycia trying to keep everyone happy.”
“And you?”
“I’ll either look at her too long or not enough. I’ll either wreck her job again or give myself away.”
“What are you afraid will happen?”
“That it’ll be too much.” The next words scrape out, softer than they should be. “For her. For me. For the lie. That she’ll wake up after the gala and realize none of this is worth whatever she feels when I touch her knee under a table.”
“And what do you want to happen?”
The question knocks the breath out of me.
“I want her to feel safe. At my momma’s house. At the gala. With me. I want her to know I’ll catch whatever tries to blindside her.”
“I want it to feel real. Just for one night.”
“And what scares you most about the gala?” she asks softly.
The words hitch, not enough to break, but just enough to betray me.
“That she’ll see me, the version I can’t control, and realize I’m not worth choosing.”
Dr. Shah nods once. “At the gala, your only job is to notice the moments that feel real. Don’t suppress them. Don’t perform them. Just notice. And afterward, we’ll talk about what they meant.”
I breathe out slowly, the air shaking on the way.
“Yeah,” I say finally, voice rough. “Okay.”
But inside my chest, something is already shifting.