Page 105 of The Prime-Time Experiment

The message disappeared instantly from the screen, shifting from draft to action, and something in her stomach dropped with it, sharp and immediate, like stepping forward before confirming the ground beneath her would hold.

She stared at the conversation thread without blinking. The reply came less than a minute later.

Yeah. When?

Riley’s breath caught. He hadn’t hesitated. Hadn’t asked why she’d changed her mind or what had happened. There was no caution with it, just yes.

Something in her chest loosened painfully around the edges. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard before she typed again, slower this time.

There’s a café near my apartment. I’ve been going there a lot lately. I think you’d like it.

She sent it before she could overthink that too. The typing indicator appeared almost immediately, vanished, then returned again.

Tell me when.

Riley stared at the words longer than she meant to.

He wasn’t taking control of it, wasn’t attempting to fill the silence because it made him uncomfortable. He was leaving the decision with her completely, meeting her exactly where she was instead of forcing her where he wanted her to be.

Waiting for her. The thought settled somewhere deep in her chest, heavy enough to hurt.

Her grip shifted slightly against the phone as something unfamiliar moved through her, not relief exactly, but the terrifying realisation that maybe she wasn’t doing this alone anymore.

This time, when she typed her response, she didn’t stop to analyse it first. She just answered.

❈

She arrived early.

The café had become familiar over the past two and a half weeks. Not predictable exactly, but familiar enough that her body no longer treated it like something to brace against. The low hum of conversation stayed at a manageable level, cups knocking softly against saucers in uneven but tolerable rhythms. Colin greeted her from behind the counter when she walked in, another person near the register lifted a hand in acknowledgement. Riley returned both automatically now, small interactions that no longer felt impossible to navigate.

She chose the table by the window.

Outside gave her something steady to look at when her thoughts became too loud. People moved in loose patterns along the footpath, stopping at crossings, weaving around each other, continuing on. Nothing required anything from her there. Inside, the warmth of the coffee cup settled between her palms, grounding enough that she could feel where her body ended and the rest of the room began.

Usually, that helped.

Today, it didn’t.

Her attention kept dragging back to the door. Every time it opened, something inside her reacted before she could stop it, her focus snapping up automatically, breath catching and releasing in small uneven rhythms she couldn’t fully regulate.

Waiting.

When he finally walked in, she felt him before she properly saw him. Something in her awareness narrowed instantly, sharp and immediate, her focus pulling toward him like the rest of the room had quietly fallen out of alignment.

Then she looked up fully. Declan. For a second, everything else blurred around the edges.

He looked the same. The same broad shoulders, the same steady way of moving through a space. The same face she had spent the last two and a half weeks trying very unsuccessfully not to think about every waking second.

And suddenly, she could breathe.

The inhale hit her hard enough to make her almost dizzy with it, deep and automatic and real, filling her lungs fully for what felt like the first time in weeks. Riley stilled slightly at the sensation, disoriented by the immediate relief of it. She hadn’t realised how tightly she’d been holding herself together until now, how carefully she’d been existing around the absence of him.

Seeing him loosened something instantly.

Declan started toward her. Riley tracked all of it automatically, the tension held along his jaw. The brief flex of his hands at his sides before they stilled again. The fact his eyes never left hers for a single second as he crossed the café.

He stopped across from her table. “Hey,” he said.