Page 24 of The Prime-Time Experiment

Riley hesitated. The next part came out slower, like wading through water to try and reach the right language to express it.

“I felt…” She stopped, the word catching. Re-calibrating. “Compressed.”

Dee’s brows pulled together slightly. “Compressed, how?”

Riley’s fingers stilled completely. “Everything was too close, too tight around me. There was no space to be, let alone process.”

Dee’s voice softened further. “And your body?”

Riley inhaled, the motion uneven even now. “I couldn’t get a full breath,” she said. “My chest did not expand correctly.” Her jaw tightened slightly. “I had to leave to breathe.”

Dee nodded, slow and certain. “Okay. That sounds like a panic response.”

Riley’s gaze flicked up briefly. “It was not irrational.”

“I didn’t say it was,” Dee replied immediately, just as calm. “You got overwhelmed. That’s not the same thing.”

Riley looked back down. Her fingers resumed their movement, but slower now. Less certain.

“I do not want to continue,” she said.

Dee studied her for a moment. “You don’t want to continue,” she said carefully, “or you don’t want to go back into that exact situation again?”

Riley’s eyes locked onto a spot on the floor, fixating. “The latter is not acceptable.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Riley didn’t answer, because the distinction was relevant and deeply inconvenient. It sat there, unresolved, pressing at the edges of something she didn’t want to examine too closely.

Her body tensed, coiling with the emotion she was trying to process.

“He is an asshole,” she said abruptly. The words flat but sharp, exacting in a way that felt unfamiliar coming from her.

Dee blinked once. Riley kept going, the structure slipping just enough to let something more reactive through.

“He is intentionally obstructive,” she said, faster now. “He understands the parameters and chooses to operate against them while maintaining plausible compliance.” Her jaw set. “It is inefficient. It is unnecessary.” She huffed out a breath. “I should not have agreed to this,” she added.

That one came quieter, but it held more weight. Dee’s expression shifted immediately.

“Okay, no,” she said, sitting forward. “We’re not doing that.”

Riley frowned slightly, her focus narrowing. “The conclusion is valid. The conditions are not conducive to—”

“No,” Dee cut in, firmer now. “That’s not logic, that’s you wanting out.”

Riley stilled. “He created an environment that prevented—”

“And you’re letting him win because of it?” Dee interrupted.

The words hit home harder than the rest. Riley’s head lifted slightly, her attention snapping back to her.

“That is not—”

“It is,” Dee said. “You don’t back out because something’s difficult. You don’t walk away because someone makes it harder than it needs to be.” Her tone cut, certainty settling into every word. “You double down.”

Riley’s gaze dropped briefly, because that part was true.

She hadn’t wanted to do the segment. Her boss practically forced her to do it. Every part of her resisted the unpredictability of it from the beginning; the cameras, the noise, the general nature of television. And even when it started going wrong, even when the entire thing became overwhelming in ways she hadn’t anticipated, she had stayed, because she had felt this inherent need to prove to herself that she could.