Page 46 of The Prime-Time Experiment

“No.”

“But you’ve built this entire environment around her.”

Declan glanced around the gym, following the direction of her observation before leaning back lightly against the bench.

“Not just me,” he said. “Tyler’s her dad, but AFL isn’t exactly built around school pickups and consistent routines. So, the rest of us help. My parents, me, who’s ever needed.”

There was no pride in the explanation, no expectation that she should be impressed by it. He sounded as though he were describing something obvious. “She’s got routines that work for her,” he continued. “Systems, things that make life easier. So, we work around those where we can. Makes more sense than forcing her to work around us.”

Something tightened unexpectedly in Riley’s chest. Makes more sense than forcing her to work around us. The logic itself wasn’t complicated. In fact, it seemed almost self-evident when he said it aloud. And yet it stood in stark contrast to most of Riley’s experiences, where adaptation had always flowed in one direction.

“Most families don’t do that.”

“Probably not,” Declan admitted with a small shrug. “But Ebony’s not difficult. She just needs different things sometimes.”

Riley looked away briefly. She wasn’t entirely certain why that particular sentence landed as heavily as it did. Perhaps because she’d spent most of her life being treated as though needing different things was the problem, rather than the environment that refused to accommodate them.

When she looked back at him, some of the usual distance in her expression had softened. “You adjust the environment,” she said slowly. “Instead of expecting her to.”

Something like recognition flickered across his face. “Exactly.”

Riley nodded, her gaze lowering briefly before lifting again. The concept itself was remarkably simple, and yet she had never really seen it put into practice.

“And her mother?”

The question was asked without hesitation, but it altered something in the room all the same. Declan didn’t look away.

“She died,” he said quietly. “When Ebony was really young.”

His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

“Mandy was hit by a drunk driver coming home from an AFL charity event.”

The words landed heavily. Riley felt her attention catch on them, not because she didn’t understand what he was saying, but because she did.

For a moment, her mind didn’t move automatically to analysis. It didn’t organise variables or constructing frameworks around the information. It simply stayed there.

A woman she’d never met.

A child who would grow up without her mother.

Instead of having a logical response, something surfaced, tightening low in her chest and existing deeper than conscious thought. Her breath caught before she understood why. The room she was in now blurred at the edges, losing definition as something older began pressing forward in its place.

The air felt thick and stale, like it had been trapped too long inside walls that never opened properly. Alcohol lived in everything there, sharp and sour and impossible to escape, soaked into the couch fabric, the carpet, the walls themselves. Even now, she could taste it at the back of her throat, phantom and persistent.

Then came the sounds. The television turned up too loud, dialogue collapsing into meaningless noise. Footsteps moving unevenly through the hallway. The dull impact of something hitting the floor hard enough to make the walls vibrate faintly around it.

She had learned to recognise it young, how to listen without looking like she was listening, how to track movement from behind closed doors. How to calculate safety in seconds instead of distance, measuring exactly how long it would take for him to reach her if his mood turned in her direction.

Her father had never been predictable enough to understand, this unpredictable mix of loud and quiet, both dangerous in entirely different ways.

“You’re useless.” The words no longer returned as sound. They lived deeper than that now, fused too tightly into memory to separate cleanly from her own internal voice.

“Should’ve been you.” Her chest tightened and ears started ringing.

“Ruined everything.” There had never been anything to counter those statements, no one stepping in to dispute them so they had settled, embedded themselves quietly into the architecture of her thinking until they stopped feeling like insults and started feeling like facts. Her body remembered them before her mind ever consciously did.

At first, what he did had been physical. Pain that arrived fast enough to erase her thoughts completely, hands striking without warning, forceful and immediate.