Page 44 of Holly Jolly Heat
Not my childhood home, though we were in it. Not my Seattle apartment where I worked.
This. This pack, this family, this chaotic dinner table.
This felt like home.
And I didn't know what to do with that feeling.
After dinner, I helped clean up, my usual task, but this time Lucas helped too, and then Ro, and then Dex. We moved aroundthe kitchen together with surprising coordination, passing dishes and finding rhythm.
Pack rhythm.
"You're thinking very loudly," Lucas observed, drying a plate.
"Just processing."
"Want to talk about it?"
"Not yet."
"Okay." He set down the plate and looked at me. "But when you're ready, we're here. All of us. However you need us."
That simple statement?We're here.It made my eyes burn with unexpected tears.
"Thank you," I managed.
After cleanup, the family settled in for their traditional evening routine, board games and terrible reality TV and general chaos. I started to retreat upstairs, but Maya caught my hand.
"Stay," she said simply. "Be with your pack."
"They're not?—"
"Michelle. Stop. They're your pack. You know it. They know it. Mom definitely knows it. Just... be."
So I stayed.
I sat on the couch between Lucas and Ro, with Dex in the armchair nearby, and we played ridiculous board games and laughed at terrible TV and just... existed together.
And it felt right.
Terrifying, but right.
Around ten PM, I finally excused myself to actually work, I had emails that genuinely needed responses, contracts to review, client fires to put out.
But as I climbed the stairs to my room, I looked back at the living room.
Lucas, Ro, and Dex were still there, talking with my family like they belonged. Like they'd always belonged.
And maybe they did.
Maybe this was what I'd been missing all these years while I built my business and my walls and my carefully controlled life.
Maybe home wasn't a place or a career or an achievement.
Maybe home was people. Pack.
I closed my bedroom door and leaned against it, processing.
Three days ago, I'd fled from Pike Place Market in pure panic.
