Page 104 of The Prime-Time Experiment

The words landed heavily. Because he had respected the boundary she set, even while quietly carrying the thing she had abandoned because he knew it mattered to her. Even while missing her too. Even without knowing why she’d left.

“He still talks about you,” Ebony added, her tone unchanged. “Not all the time, but consistently enough that I know he’s thinking about you every day.”

Riley closed her eyes briefly, just long enough to steady the shift inside her. When she opened them again, the structure she had relied on didn’t feel as stable as it had before.

“I wasn’t fair to him,” she said quietly. It wasn’t criticism, just truth. “I made a decision that affected both of us without letting him be part of it.” Her gaze lowered briefly before returning to Ebony’s. “I thought I was protecting everyone, but really…” A slow breath left her. “I was trying to control how much it could hurt.”

Ebony nodded once. “Yeah.”

Riley let out a small breath through her nose, something almost rueful. “That’s not exactly how relationships are supposed to work.”

“No,” Ebony agreed gently. The silence afterwards felt calmer somehow, like something had finally clicked into place. Riley sat with it for another second before speaking again.

“I think I need to talk to him.”

The words came easily this time, certain. Ebony nodded immediately, like there had never really been another outcome. “I think you do, too.”

For a moment neither of them moved, then Ebony stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her without adjustment. Riley stilled briefly at the contact, the warmth of it settling through her before she could think too hard about why it mattered.

Then she hugged her back. Her hand pressed firmly against Ebony’s back, steady and grounding, and Ebony held onto her just as tightly in return.

They stayed like that longer than Riley normally would have allowed, the hug slowly shifting from something she was aware of into something she simply existed inside.

Something easy. Something real.

“I do not like losing you,” Ebony said softly against her shoulder.

Riley’s grip tightened slightly in return, something shifting deep in her chest, steady instead of sharp. “You won’t.” This time the certainty came easily. No overthinking or analysing whether she was allowed to believe it first, she just did.

Ebony stayed close for another second before leaning back enough to look at her properly again, her hands still resting warm against Riley’s arms.

The space between them felt different now, resolved.

Riley let out a slow breath, feeling something inside her settle quietly into place. Not fully resolved or perfectly understood, and yet she no longer felt something she instinctively wanted to run from.

“I’m going to fix this,” she said quietly.

Ebony nodded, like she already believed that. “I know.”

Chapter 23

Love

Riley

The message sat open on her screen for almost twenty minutes before she sent it.

Riley reread it over and over, not because the wording was wrong, but because this time the words carried weight she couldn’t organise into something safer. There was no structure underneath it, an explanation or a carefully reasoned justification she could hide inside.

Would you be willing to talk?

It felt painfully incomplete by her standards. Too exposed, too human. Normally, she would have rewritten it. Added context, reduced the possibility of misunderstanding before it ever had the chance to exist.

This time, she didn’t.

Her chest felt tight as she stared at the message, her breathing uneven in a way she stopped trying to correct several minutes ago. The instinct to retreat surfaced automatically, sharpen the wording, make it less vulnerable, less obvious that it mattered.

But she already knew he would understand what she actually meant. Before she could lose her nerve, before she could rebuild the distance she had spent weeks forcing between them, she pressed send.