Page 11 of The Prime-Time Experiment

Riley had come alone.

Additional representation would have introduced unnecessary interference and diluted clarity of responsibility. She had no intention of remaining in this meeting if her conditions were not met, which meant legal mediation felt functionally redundant.

It did, however, leave her visibly outnumbered. She acknowledged the imbalance without reacting to it.

To her right, the disruption within the room resolved into something more specific. Declan Montgomery did not belong within the carefully muted environment surrounding him. Everything else in the room had been softened into neutrality. He had done the opposite.

The shirt beneath his blazer was a dark burgundy instead of the expected charcoal or navy, enough colour to disrupt the visual uniformity without crossing into unprofessional-ism. Intentional, Riley decided immediately. A chosen refusal to fully conform to the environment around him.

His posture reinforced the same conclusion.

He leaned back slightly in his chair, one arm stretched loosely along the backrest, the other resting near the table like the room required no adjustment from him whatsoever. The posture should have read as casual. It didn’t. There was something too controlled beneath it, something deliberate in the ease he projected, like he understood exactly how much space he occupied and had learned long ago how to wield that awareness to his advantage.

Irritatingly, Riley kept noticing him anyway.

Physically, he remained consistent with her earlier observations, though the office lighting altered him slightly. Under the cooler white fluorescents, his hair appeared darker than it had in the television studio, less chestnut, closer to black at certain angles. There was faint shadowing along his jaw now too, enough to soften the overly polished presentation he had worn on air.

None of it was relevant. Riley became aware, with growing irritation, that he simply made her want to observe him.

The realisation itself was deeply inconvenient. As though sensing the attention, Declan turned his head slightly and caught her looking.

Riley held the eye contact for exactly long enough to communicate mild disdain before returning her attention to the documents in front of her as though the interaction carried no significance whatsoever.

“Dr Lorrent,” one of the team members began smoothly, drawing the room back into structure, “we appreciate you taking the time to—”

“I would prefer to proceed directly to the negotiation,” Riley interrupted evenly.

There was no practical purpose in performing unnecessary pleasantries, particularly given she would not have attended this meeting under normal circumstances.

Following the morning show segment and the entirely disproportionate public response that followed it, Riley had contacted her employer with the intention of formally withdrawing from any continuation of the concept altogether. She had never intended to publicly pursue research relating to cardiovascular fitness and cognitive function, particularly not through social media.

Unfortunately, her employer had interpreted the situation very differently.

Apparently, the segment had performed ‘exceptionally well’ across multiple platforms after clips of her interaction with Declan had circulated online. Public engagement surrounding the contrast between them had escalated rapidly afterwards, particularly concerning what viewers repeatedly insisted on referring to as their ‘sexual tension’.

Riley remained unconvinced that irritation qualified as sexual tension. However, more irritating still had been her employer’s response.

According to him, verbally agreeing to ‘give it a go’ on live television constituted a public commitment.

Worse, during the conversation, he admitted something else. The network originally approached several senior psychologists within the company to participate in the segment. None of them wanted to do it. The opportunity was eventually passed down to her instead, not because she was approachable, as originally claimed, but because she was simply the remaining available option.

Riley had found that information profoundly irritating, and yet annoyingly, Dee’s perspective complicated her ability to dismiss the situation entirely.

At the time, Riley rejected the argument immediately on principle, however she was forced to acknowledge that Dee had a reasonable point regarding leveraging Declan’s platform to establish visibility for her work.

Her employer had agreed enthusiastically. Apparently, she should ‘lean into the opportunity’ and commit fully to the experiment. According to him, it could become ‘a beneficial learning experience’.

Riley informed him she did not require a learning experience. He laughed.

So now she was here, negotiating the terms of an experiment she would never have voluntarily agreed to had she been given an actual choice in the matter.

“Of course,” the woman across from her continued, sliding a document neatly across the table. “We’ve outlined a preliminary structure based on the proposal—”

Riley did not reach for it. “Before we proceed,” she said instead. “I need to clarify that my participation is contingent upon full methodological oversight.”

Declan’s attention shifted immediately, not toward the paperwork like she expected, toward her.

“The proposal, as currently structured,” Riley continued calmly, “lacks sufficient controls for valid implementation. Without consistency in application, the reliability of any resulting data becomes compromised. Any continuation of this experiment would require direct involvement from me regarding framework design, environmental variables, implementation procedures, and data interpretation.”