Page 109 of The Prime-Time Experiment

Relief so intense it almost hurt.

Grief for the weeks she had spent convincing herself she needed to leave, for how close she had come to losing this because fear had felt safer than wanting something badly enough to break her.

Her arms tightened around him instinctively, like if she held on hard enough she could keep the feeling from disappearing.

Declan didn’t try to stop her crying. He didn’t interrupt it with reassurance or questions or promises. He just held her closer, one hand moving slowly up and down her back in a steady rhythm that grounded her without trying to quiet what she was feeling.

And Riley let herself fall into it completely. Into him.

Her body softened against his in a way that once would have terrified her. Closeness had always felt like something temporary before, something she needed to manage carefully before it became too much. But this didn’t feel like drowning. It felt like being rescued, her life raft in a storm.

“Hold me tighter?” she whispered.

Declan’s arms closed around her immediately, firmer this time, one hand spreading across the middle of her back while the other slid gently into her hair, holding her against him like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Exactly where she needed him.

Riley exhaled shakily as the pressure settled around her, her body giving way piece by piece beneath the warmth of him. The tension she’d been carrying for years seemed to loosen slowly inside his arms, her breathing evening out against his chest.

His lips brushed softly against her hair. Riley closed her eyes and felt all of it: the steady weight of him around her, the certainty in the way he held her, the complete absence of hesitation.

Nothing about it felt conditional.

And for once, her brain didn’t try to pull the feeling apart. She didn’t analyse it or reduce it into something safer, smaller, easier to survive losing.

She just let herself have it. The relief, the terrifying realisation of how badly she wanted this. How badly she wanted him.

She was here, in his arms, with the rest of the world finally quiet around them. And somewhere beneath the fear and the instinct she’d always had to retreat before things mattered too much, something settled fully into place.

She had chosen herself. And she had chosen him, too.

Chapter 24

Laughter

Riley

The park was quieter than the café had been. It was still threaded with movement and sound: distant traffic beyond the trees, the rhythmic scrape of runners passing along the path, birds scattering noisily somewhere overhead.

But the noise dispersed differently here. It moved around her instead, diffuse enough that her brain stopped trying to hold every piece of it at once.

Beside her, Declan’s hand remained loosely linked with hers as they walked. The contact had happened without discussion somewhere after leaving lunch, his fingers brushing against hers briefly before settling there fully, easy and unforced like he had simply assumed she would tell him if she wanted the distance back.

She hadn’t.

Their pace slowed naturally as they moved further down the path, neither of them speaking for a while. The quiet settled easily between them, carrying the lingering warmth of the afternoon rather than the expectation of conversation.

Lunch had gone longer than Riley normally permitted these kinds of things to last. Long enough for structure to dissolve at the edges, their conversation drifting sideways into topics that served no productive purpose beyond continuing them. Long enough that she should have started feeling the familiar pull toward escape, toward solitude, toward the relief of being alone again.

Instead, she kept finding reasons to stay seated. One more story, one more question. One more quiet smile from across the table that made leaving feel strangely premature.

And she liked it. The thought settled strangely somewhere beneath her ribs. A year ago, she would not have believed she could exist inside something like this without wanting to escape it eventually. Now, walking beside him, she realised she hadn’t once thought about leaving.

The path curved gently ahead of them, uneven sunlight filtering through the trees overhead in shifting bands across the ground. Declan’s shoulder brushed hers lightly as they walked. The contact didn’t pull her out of herself anymore. It grounded her further into the moment instead.

So she adjusted closer. He matched it immediately, subtle enough that someone else may not have noticed. His pace slowed slightly to align more comfortably with hers, his body shifting instinctively to maintain the contact rather than letting it disappear naturally with movement.

Riley kept her gaze forward, but her awareness stayed fixed on the steady weight of him beside her.