Page 88 of The Prime-Time Experiment

Because Dee—Dee was leaving. And everything else became secondary.

Riley stepped forward immediately, the movement too fast to be measured, her hand slipping from Declan’s as she moved to follow without thought. Her breathing was uneven now, not fully controlled, her body operating ahead of structured thought.

“Riley—”

Declan’s voice reached her somewhere behind them, low and steady, but Riley didn’t stop. She couldn’t.

The only thing her mind seemed capable of holding onto was the fact that Dee was hurt. Everything else: the room, the people, the noise, Declan’s voice fell away beneath the singular realisation.

Riley followed her out of the ballroom and into the corridor beyond, leaving behind the lights and conversation and the version of the evening that, only minutes earlier, felt unexpectedly manageable. The muffled sounds of the event followed them briefly before fading behind closed doors, replaced by the quieter rhythm of footsteps against carpet and the distant hum of activity elsewhere in the building.

At the end of the corridor, Dee pushed through the exit with more force than was strictly necessary. Cool night air rushed over them, carrying away some of the heat and pressure of the room they had just left.

Dee kept walking. Riley matched her pace without thinking.

Her thoughts attempted to reorganise themselves, pulling apart the sequence of events and reassembling them in different configurations, searching for the point at which the evening shifted from stable to unstable. The chronology itself remained straightforward enough. Dee had spoken, Tyler had reacted. The atmosphere of the room changed almost instantly afterwards.

By the time Dee finally stopped, they had put enough distance between themselves and the venue that the sounds of the fundraiser were little more than a muted blur behind them. Traffic moved somewhere further down the street. A burst of laughter drifted briefly through the air before disappearing again.

Riley slowed beside her. “That interaction was—”

“Don’t.” The interruption wasn’t sharp. If anything, Dee sounded tired. She folded her arms across her chest and stared out at nothing in particular before letting out a slow breath. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

Riley stopped. The instinct to analyse what happened remained, but it no longer seemed useful. An explanation would not alter the outcome. Reclassifying Tyler’s behaviour would not change the fact that Dee was upset by it.

For a few moments, neither of them spoke. Only then did Riley become aware that she was holding Dee’s hand. She couldn’t identify exactly when it happened, somewhere between leaving the ballroom and reaching the street, she reached for her without conscious intention.

Dee hadn’t pulled away. The pressure of her hand remained steady against Riley’s palm, grounding in a way Riley recognised immediately. Riley focused on that instead of trying to analyse. Gradually, her breathing began to settle.

“I thought everyone was getting along,” she said eventually. Dee glanced at her, but didn’t interrupt. Riley lowered her gaze briefly. “I thought everyone had adjusted.”

The words felt incomplete almost as soon as she said them. Because what she had believed wasn’t simply that people had adjusted. She had believed the different parts of her life could occupy the same space without conflict. That Dee and Declan could exist within the same environment, that the Montgomerys and the life she shared with Dee could overlap without either one compromising the other.

For a while, that appeared to be true. Now she wasn’t sure.

“I can’t talk about this right now, Ri. I think I just need to go home.”

Whatever anger had carried her out of the ballroom seemed to have burned itself away, leaving only a kind of exhaustion Riley couldn’t categorise properly but recognised as significant.

Riley’s grip on her hand loosened for a fraction of a second before tightening again.

“Of course,” she said quietly. “I think it would be safer if I drive.”

Dee nodded without argument.

They started back toward the car together, their hands remaining linked as though neither of them had consciously decided to let go. Riley found herself focusing on the familiar pressure of Dee’s palm against hers, grounding herself in the simple certainty of it.

The evening no longer felt manageable. The event, the people, the conversations, all of it dissolved into noise somewhere behind them. The only thing that felt relevant now was getting Dee home.

Even so, her thoughts refused to remain still.

By the time they reached the car, she was no longer replaying what happened. She was thinking through her own actions: bringing Dee tonight, assuming that because nothing had gone wrong before, nothing would.

Riley opened the passenger door and waited while Dee climbed into the seat. Something about the sight unsettled her more than she expected. Dee looked smaller somehow, folded inward in a way Riley rarely saw. Usually, Dee expanded into spaces. Tonight she seemed to be withdrawing from one.

Riley closed the door gently and walked around to the driver’s side.

The familiar structure of the car settled around her immediately, quiet and predictable after the sensory complexity of the ballroom. Normally that would have been enough to steady her. Tonight it simply left her alone with her thoughts.