Page 80 of The Prime-Time Experiment

The suit was dark and cleanly tailored, structured through the shoulders without appearing rigid. The shirt beneath sat open slightly at the collar, the absence of a tie making him feel distinctly separate from the polished artificiality surrounding him.

His hair was styled only enough to keep it intentional, though the front had already fallen slightly loose, like he’d run a distracted hand through it once and never corrected it afterwards.

He did not appear consumed by the environment. If anything, the environment seemed to reorganise itself around him instead. And despite the conversation in front of him, Riley noticed immediately that part of his attention remained elsewhere. It shifted consistently, tracking movement beyond the immediate interaction as though he were searching for something specific. Searching for her.

The recognition settled somewhere low and strange in her chest before she could properly analyse why it mattered. Then his gaze found hers, and the change in him was immediate. His shoulders adjusted imperceptibly to most, his focus sharpened with sudden focus. Everything else in the room seemed to recede behind the directness of his attention the moment he recognised her standing there.

And somehow, impossibly, the ringing in her ears lessened, quieter beneath the sudden gravitational pull of his presence moving toward her.

Riley remained still as he crossed the room, though awareness gathered beneath her skin with increasing intensity for every step that brought him closer. The noise still existed; the movement still fractured constantly at the edges of her vision. But her nervous system no longer felt trapped beneath it in quite the same unbearable way.

Her attention kept narrowing toward him instead, toward something her body already identified as safe. By the time he reached her, the pressure beneath her ribs had become almost unbearable in its intensity. Her pulse existed everywhere at once; throat, wrists, fingertips. Too much awareness concentrated in a single direction.

Declan stopped in front of her, close enough now that she could distinguish the clean warmth of his cologne beneath the sharper scents saturating the room. Then his hand settled lightly against her arm before he spoke.

The contact was brief, but her body responded instantly, the static beneath her skin easing at the edges. Grounding her.

“Hey there, Riles.” Declan’s voice pitched lower than the noise around them, steady enough that she felt it settle through her body almost as much as his touch. His thumb shifted once, barely there against her sleeve, before his hand fell away again.

“You look gorgeous.” There was a brief, involuntary delay in her processing not of the words, but of the effect. Heat rose beneath Riley’s skin with startling speed, blooming across her cheeks before she could identify the physiological response quickly enough to suppress it.

“Thank you,” she said. Her voice remained even. Her body did not.

Awareness of him arrived all at once and in layers too complex to separate neatly from one another. His height felt more pronounced at this distance, his proximity altering her sense of space without becoming intrusive. The suit sharpened the natural structure of him rather than disguising it; broader through the shoulders, narrower through the waist, every line clean without looking overly rigid.

Her attention caught briefly on the open collar at his throat, the visible definition just beneath it. Then the scent of him reached her properly; subtle, clean, grounding beneath the sensory excess of the venue.

Riley’s gaze lifted before she consciously instructed it to, tracking unintentionally along the line of his jaw, and she realised with startling and deeply unhelpful clarity, she found him hot.

Not conceptually attractive or aesthetically pleasing like she had originally thought when they’d first met. This was what her type must be, she’d never stopped to recognise that before. The recognition hit hard enough that her thoughts stalled around it for half a second.

Her eyes lifted again automatically. Declan was watching her notice it, watching her look at him. There was a glimmer in his expression immediately, bright and unmistakably entertained, something warm sparking behind his eyes as though he had tracked the exact trajectory of her attention in real time.

But he didn’t interrupt it, or even look embarrassed. If anything, he looked quietly delighted by it, the corner of his mouth shifting slightly like he was trying very hard not to smile too obviously.

And somehow that made the heat in her chest worse. Dee stepped beside her then, breaking the moment gently enough that Riley’s nervous system loosened around the edges instead of snapping abruptly away from it.

“So this is the Declan,” she said lightly, offering her hand. “I’ve heard things.”

Declan smiled, taking it easily. “All good, I hope.”

“Undetermined,” Dee replied, shaking his hand once before releasing it. “We’re still gathering data.”

That earned a quiet laugh from him, genuine and unforced. Riley watched the exchange carefully. Dee was comfortable with him immediately. Declan matched her without hesitation.

“Come on,” Declan said after a moment, glancing back at Riley before shifting his attention to Dee. “I want you to meet everyone, Dee.”

The phrasing settled differently than Riley had expected. Not just an introduction. Not just movement from one part of the room to another.

Inclusion, but not directed at her. Directed through her.

She registered it instantly: the structure of the sentence, the order of names, the way her presence was already assumed rather than abnormal. Dee was the one being brought in, the one being integrated into something that already existed.

Which meant… Riley’s face turned a bright shade of red, a smile forming unconsciously.

She was not the variable being assessed. She was a constant.

She wasn’t here to be evaluated or judged. Normally, that was exactly what occurred. Instead, she knew with a resounding clarity that she, for once, had already been accepted.