Page 113 of The Prime-Time Experiment

Riley blinked. Her gaze lifted slowly toward Dee. “I am currently inside the apartment,” she said. “The door is not obstruct—”

“Riley,” he cut in, laughter threading through his voice now, “both of you need to open the door.”

She paused. “Okay.” She ended the call, her gaze shifting to Dee. “Declan has instructed that we open the door together,” she said.

Dee narrowed her eyes. “That sounds suspicious.”

“Yes.” They looked at each other, then toward the door, and both stood anyway.

Riley pulled it open and stopped instantly, because standing in the hallway were Leanne, Declan, and Tyler.

Except Tyler was not standing there voluntarily. He was being dragged forward by the ear. By Leanne.

Riley blinked once, then again, the image in front of her failed to align with any existing behavioural framework she had established for the individuals involved.

Leanne Montgomery, consistently composed, patient, and objectively one of the kindest people Riley had ever encountered, was currently hauling a fully grown AFL player down the hallway one-handed with the calm efficiency of someone escorting a badly behaved child out of a supermarket.

“Keep moving,” Leanne snapped, not even looking at him.

“I am moving,” Tyler muttered, trying and failing to pry her hand from his ear. “You’ve got a grip like a vice—”

“Good,” she shot back. “You’ll remember this then.”

Riley stayed where she was, one hand still holding the door open as her brain attempted to reorganise the scene in front of her into something coherent.

It was failing quite significantly. None of this aligned cleanly with the existing behavioural data she had collected on any of the three individuals involved.

Behind her, Dee leaned sideways to look past her shoulder and immediately made a strangled sound that was unmistakably suppressed laughter. “Oh my god,” came the whispered response, completely unrestrained despite the volume.

Across the room, Declan caught Riley’s eye over the unfolding disaster. His expression hovered somewhere between apology and poorly concealed amusement, like he had seen this outcome coming well in advance and had consciously decided to let it happen anyway.

Her internal response was something unexpected. She laughed. It left her bright, sudden, completely unstructured, her hand lifting halfway to her mouth as if she could catch the sound and put it back.

Declan’s gaze snapped to her instantly, and he smiled. Not the controlled, easy version she was used to, but something fuller, warmer. Like seeing that, seeing her laughing, unguarded, present meant more than anything else happening in the room. The feeling settled somewhere beyond her usual instinct to immediately analyse it, her chest tightening slightly around something warmer this time.

Tyler cleared his throat awkwardly, the sound pulling the room gently back into motion. Leanne released his ear with a final, pointed shove forward.

“Well?” she said sharply.

Tyler straightened slightly, rolling one shoulder back like he was trying to settle into himself again. The defensiveness had gone out of him now, the sharpness stripped away, leaving behind something quieter that Riley recognised immediately as genuine.

He looked at Dee. “I was out of line,” he said, the apology delivered plainly, more like a fact he had accepted than something performative. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that,” he continued, his voice steadier now. “And I definitely shouldn’t have said what I said about your work.”

Dee didn’t move immediately. Riley noticed it at once, the subtle adjustment in the way she held herself. Not guarded exactly, but careful now in a way she hadn’t been before. Tyler exhaled once, dragging a hand briefly over the back of his neck.

“I don’t think you were wrong,” he admitted quietly. “About Ebony. I think I just…” He shook his head once, frustration turning inward now instead of outward. “I didn’t like hearing it from someone I didn’t know. And I took that out on you.”

A small pause. “And calling you crazy?” His jaw tightened. “That wasn’t okay. At all.”

The room shifted around the words. Riley felt like the space itself loosened after holding tension for too long. What had fractured between them earlier wasn’t gone, but it was being handled now instead of avoided. Acknowledged carefully, directly, without anyone trying to minimise it into something smaller than it was.

Dee exhaled slowly, some of the rigidity leaving her shoulders. “That was a pretty shit thing to say to a psychologist,” she replied, her tone even, but not cold.

Tyler huffed out a quiet breath, something almost self-aware in it. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve figured that out.”

The response had barely settled before Leanne’s hand came up and smacked him cleanly upside the head.

“Hey—” Tyler started, recoiling slightly, more offended than injured.