Page 14 of The Prime-Time Experiment

Riley

The environment was unsuitable for an experiment. Riley recognised that before she had fully crossed the threshold.

When she initially suggested a laboratory setting, Declan had laughed outright. At the time, she hadn’t understood the reaction. Standing in the middle of the space now, she did.

This gym was not designed for controlled observation.

The entire warehouse operated on a loose, instinctive system that seemed to function without ever becoming fully structured. People moved through the room fluidly, conversations overlapping beneath the constant pulse of music and shifting movement.

Riley adjusted her grip on her laptop and stepped further inside. The equipment areas were only loosely divided; free weights occupying one side of the warehouse, resistance machines scattered across the other, open floor space stretching through the centre. There were no enforced transitions, no visible sequencing, no consistent progression between stations. People drifted wherever they wanted based on preference rather than program design.

To Riley, it looked more like managed chaos.

Even the lighting felt inconsistent beneath the exposed industrial fixtures, brighter in some areas than others.

Her shoulders tightened slightly before she consciously registered why. Riley crossed toward the seating area near the far wall, setting her bag down carefully, pausing a moment beside the table. The warehouse at least had air conditioning, though it did little to cut through the smell of old sweat and synthetic perfume lingering heavily through the room.

Her fingers pressed briefly against the edge of the table. Inhale. Hold. Exhale slowly. Again. The familiar rhythm settled some of the static beneath her skin, enough that the environment stopped pressing at her attention quite so sharply.

Only then did she open her laptop and pull up the spreadsheet she prepared the previous evening. She reviewed every one of Declan’s client programs in detail, restructuring them into something objectively measurable. Entire sections collapsed almost immediately under scrutiny; redundant exercise variations, inconsistent progression models, unnecessary adjustments disguised as audience engagement.

She had deleted those parts without hesitation. The process was deeply satisfying.

Riley let her eyes move across the spreadsheet once more, checking for inconsistencies, for gaps she might have missed the night before. There were none. She knew that she was thorough, but she had never trusted herself, she always felt the need to double check.

She began cross-referencing the first session against the clock on the wall, aligning projected start times with her schedule, adjusting by seconds where necessary. The ticking second hand became a fixed point: a reliable grounding sound in an otherwise wild environment.

A shadow shifted across the edge of her screen. “You reorganise active client programs without input before saying hello to everyone, or is that just me?”

His voice came from above her, close enough that it cut cleanly through the surrounding noise. Casual, almost conversational. But there was something under it, tightened, deliberate that made her think otherwise.

Riley didn’t look up immediately. She finished typing the line she was on, pressed save, and only then allowed her attention to shift. When she did, he was closer than she expected.

Declan stood beside the table, angled slightly toward her, close enough that Riley had to lift her chin marginally to meet his gaze.

He had already changed for the gym floor. Dark training shirt, sleeves fitted tightly across his shoulders, the material dampened faintly at the collar from exertion. One of his hands rested briefly against his hip before dropping again, fingers flexing absently like he had only just stepped away from a set.

There was something deeply unbothered about him.

While the rest of the environment pressed at Riley from every direction; the noise, movement, overlapping conversations, Declan seemed to exist within it effortlessly, as though the chaos reorganised itself around him instead of demanding adjustment.

It was inefficient, the way he occupied space. Too close. Too comfortable.

“Your programming lacked consistency in progression and recovery allocation,” she said, eyes still scanning her notes. “I corrected it.”

There was a soft thud as his gym bag hit the floor beside hers. The sound registered heavier than necessary. He didn’t move away. “And you don’t see an issue with doing that?”

The question made Riley look up. Declan was already watching her. His expression remained relaxed, easy in the way it always seemed to be, but something beneath it shifted subtly while she spoke.

“Not when it improves the outcome.”

Declan’s posture closed off slightly at the response, the openness from earlier replaced by something restricted, as if whatever reaction he’d been about to give was being held back behind his teeth.

“Well,” he said, his voice flattening just enough for the difference to register, “thank you for that, Riles.”

Riley’s fingers stilled against the keyboard. The nickname landed incorrectly every time, abrasive in a way she could not fully explain beyond the simple fact that it was not her name.

Her gaze sharpened immediately. “That is not my name.”