Page 30 of The Prime-Time Experiment

Unfortunately, people liked him. Then they’d kept liking him. And somewhere along the way, the joking appearances beside his brother had evolved into sponsorships, interviews, millions of followers, and a version of his career he never would have actively pursued on his own.

Even this technically came from Tyler first. But unlike Tyler, Declan never hated the visibility once it happened. Because behind all the noise, behind the branding and content and public recognition, there were still real people changing because of it. People who had started exercising for the first time. People who had learned how to eat properly, sleep properly, take care of themselves properly.

That part mattered to him, which was exactly why Riley interested him so much. Because for all her rigidity and resistance, she understood something most people in the industry didn’t: fitness wasn’t just physical. And if he could get someone like her explaining the science behind why these things worked, maybe people would finally stop treating health like aesthetics and start treating it like survival.

Riley moved through the frame with the same control she carried in person, posture restrained, movements measured even when they weren’t landing cleanly. To anyone else, it read exactly how it was meant to: the academic out of her depth, a little rigid, slightly off-beat in an environment that didn’t quite fit her.

He now knew better. He leaned forward, scrubbing the footage back a few seconds, watching again with a sharper eye, his elbow braced against his knee, remote forgotten in his grip.

Because something about it didn’t sit right. It hadn’t, even in the moment. At the time, he’d brushed it off. Told himself she was overthinking, getting trapped in her own head like she seemed to do. That pushing her a little, throwing her off balance, would force her to loosen up and meet him somewhere in the middle.

That had been the game. Rile her up. God, he’d enjoyed it.

The nickname had started as a throwaway. Something easy, guaranteed to get a reaction. And where he came from, that meant something.

His family communicated like this constantly, bickering and taking the piss out of each other until the lines between affection and antagonism barely existed anymore. If someone teased you, pushed at you, kept dragging you into conversations, it meant they liked you. It meant they were interested in your life and wanted you to smile and joke. The people who got ignored were the ones you worried about.

So when Riley fascinated him almost immediately, he’d fallen into the same instinct without thinking. Push, tease. Get her attention however he could, and the nickname had worked every single time. That sharp look she’d shoot him, immediate and annoyed.

That’s not my name.

It was the most consistent reaction he could get out of her, and he kept chasing it, partly because it amused him, but mostly because it meant she was responding to him. It meant he could get through that wall of hers somehow, even sideways, even through irritation instead of anything softer.

He’d never had to work that hard for someone’s attention before, especially someone he wanted to get to know. Riley resisted him constantly. Corrected him, challenged him. She looked at everything he said like she was taking it apart piece by piece to see if it held together under scrutiny.

Half the time, he genuinely thought she couldn’t stand him. No, not half the time. Most of the time. And still, he kept pushing, because there was something about her he couldn’t leave alone. The way she thought, the way she stayed so tightly controlled while still trying, despite everything, to connect with people who made absolutely no sense to her.

He liked getting reactions out of her, liked being the one person who could disrupt that perfect composure she carried everywhere else.

So he’d leaned into it. Too much.

His jaw tightened slightly as the footage continued. Because if he was being honest, he hadn’t been training her today, he’d been testing her. Every time he changed something just enough to throw off her pattern and see how she adapted, every smirk across the room when he caught her noticing. He’d known exactly what he was doing.

At the time, it had felt harmless. Familiar. The same kind of pushing and provoking he’d grown up around his whole life. The kind that meant affection, interest, investment.

Except Riley hadn’t grown up inside his family. She didn’t automatically hear care underneath sharp edges.

And now, rewatching the footage, he could see the things he’d missed in real time. The tiny hesitations. The over-corrections. The slight delay before she laughed, like she was still trying to work out whether everyone was laughing with her or at her before deciding how to respond.

Something heavy settled low in his chest. Fuck. His grip tightened around the remote.

Because some part of him hadn’t just wanted her attention. He’d wanted to break through that wall of hers completely, to see what was underneath it. And he was starting to realise that maybe Riley’s control wasn’t something she wore for fun, especially in the way she’d walked out.

That hadn’t been irritation. Hadn’t been her usual clipped frustration or sharp corrections. That had been… He scrubbed the footage back again, slower this time, his focus narrowing.

There, the delay.

Riley was frozen mid-frame, her hands lifted, fingers pressing first to her temples, then higher, covering her ears. He could tell the action wasn’t intentional, or for attention. It was containment.

Declan stilled. Something shifted into place with horrible clarity, the pieces locking together so fast it almost made him feel sick.

“…Oh, fuck,” he muttered quietly.

Because it wasn’t nerves. It wasn’t inexperience or her being ‘stuck in her own head’ or too rigid to adapt.

He knew what he was looking at. He had seen it before, sitting beside Ebony on the kitchen floor, while she cried. The supermarket was too loud, someone changed plans too quickly and she couldn’t explain why it suddenly felt like her skin didn’t fit properly anymore. He’d seen the shutdowns that looked like attitude to people who didn’t know her. Seen the way overload built slowly until it tipped all at once.

And Christ, it was one of the worst things in the world to watch happen to someone you loved.