Page 61 of The Prime-Time Experiment

Dee’s expression softened slightly. “Yeah?”

Riley nodded. “She shared her own childhood experience,” she added.

That caught Dee off guard. “Oh that’s huge,” she said, quieter now. “Wow. And how did that feel for you?”

Riley stilled. That question was harder.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. And that, more than anything else, made Dee soften.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “That’s okay.”

Riley’s gaze dropped again. “They continued interacting with me in the same way afterwards,” she said. “There was no observable discomfort or judgement.”

Dee huffed softly. “Yeah, babe. That’s called being not assholes.”

Riley’s eyes lifted slightly. “That’s normal?”

Dee held her gaze. “For people who care about you? Yeah.”

Riley went still again. Care. She knew that word in theory, but she had always struggled to apply it in practice. “They adjusted for me,” she said, quieter now. “Throughout the evening without needing to be asked.”

Dee nodded. “That’s what good families do.”

Riley absorbed that, slower this time. “That’s what a loving family looks like?” she asked.

Dee didn’t soften it or try to dress it into something easier. “Yeah,” she said simply. “It is.”

The words settled differently this time. Not as information, but as a new perspective. Riley’s fingers pressed lightly against the edge of the counter as something uncomfortable rearranged itself quietly in her mind.

Because if people reacted like that when they cared about someone, if hearing about pain hurt them because they loved the person attached to it, then maybe her entire understanding of ‘safe’ had been built around the wrong premises from the beginning.

“I wouldn’t have struggled so much if I’d had that growing up,” she said quietly.

Dee’s expression shifted slightly, something aching moving through it. “Yeah,” she said softly. “It would’ve been easier, babe.”

Riley swallowed, gaze lowering toward the counter between them. Not easier because the events themselves would’ve changed. The thought landed with startling force. If someone had loved her properly—really loved her—then maybe the fear wouldn’t have settled so deeply into her nervous system that it rewrote the structure of it. Maybe someone would have noticed sooner, intervened sooner. Told her it was wrong before she had to teach herself that years later through observation and comparison and clinical language.

Maybe she would have learned safety did not equal survival, that care did not require hyper-vigilance.

Maybe her body would not have spent years treating existence itself like something that required preparation.

“They weren’t reacting to the information,” she said slowly, the understanding still forming while she spoke. “They were reacting to me, because they care.”

Dee nodded once. “Yeah,” she said gently. “They wanted you to not be alone.”

Riley’s breath caught faintly at that. Because suddenly the grief sitting underneath everyone’s reactions made sense in a way it hadn’t before. They weren’t horrified by the concept of abuse in the abstract, they were horrified because it had happened to her.

Dee stepped a little closer, voice quieter now. “You’re safe now,” she said gently.

The words lingered more than anything else. Safe now. Riley’s breath faltered. If now was safe, then before had not been. And if before had not been…

Something opened too quickly beneath it, a realisation so disorienting she had to press herself into the kitchen island to keep upright. The systems she had built, the control, the constant awareness: they hadn’t been her strengths like she thought they were.

They were her protecting herself. Her chest tightened sharply, the pressure expanding too quickly, her system struggling to contain the sudden influx of something she could not categorise or control. Her vision blurred slightly at the edges. She blinked, trying to stabilise it, but the sensation didn’t recede. Dee watched her carefully now.

“You don’t have to hold it together all the time, Ri,” she said softly.

Riley’s hand lifted halfway instinctively, like she could physically contain the reaction before it spread any further through her body. But there was nothing tangible to hold onto, nothing she could organise or redirect before it overwhelmed sequence entirely.