Page 8 of The Prime-Time Experiment

Dee’s hand moved faster than Riley expected, closing lightly over her wrist before she could press call. Riley looked up, her expression sharpening slightly. “I need to respond.”

“No,” Dee said, far too certain. “You need to understand what you’re responding to first.”

Riley frowned. “I am aware of the segment, Deanna.”

Dee gave her a long and pointed look, deeply unimpressed. “Riley, love,” she said, “this is not about the segment anymore.”

She shifted, turning her phone back toward her and unlocking it with quick, practised movements. There was a brief pause as she navigated, then she held it out again. “Just watch.”

Riley resisted briefly. The action itself didn’t bother her nearly as much as what it implied: there was something she missed.

Then she took the phone. The video was already playing. Not the full segment, an edited clip.

“Alright,” he said. “Then let’s test it.” A pause. “Yes.” Cut.

Riley’s expression didn’t change. “This is incomplete,” she said.

Dee made a quiet sound of disbelief. “That’s not the point.”

“The context has been removed,” Riley continued, handing the phone back. “Whoever the user montgomerysandwich is modified the progression of the discussion, which is necessary to understand the argument.”

“No one cares about the structure of the argument,” Dee said, almost gently.

Riley blinked once. “They should.”

“They don’t think the way you do, Riley.”

Dee turned the phone again, her thumb moving rapidly across the screen with the kind of efficiency that came from familiarity rather than panic.

“Look at the caption,” she said.

Riley did.

“hot trainer gets nerdy doctor to agree to a challenge on live tv 😭”

Her brow furrowed slightly. “That is not an accurate representation of—”

“Keep reading.”

Riley’s gaze dropped to the comments. At first, she processed them the same way she processed everything else, quickly, categorically, filtering for relevance.

“The tension???”

“He’s literally obsessed with her”

“No because the way he’s looking at her—”

“She’s trying so hard not to smile I can’t”

“This is enemies to lovers coded and you can’t convince me otherwise”

Riley blinked. Once, then again. Her expression remained composed, but there was the faintest delay now between what she read and how she processed it.

“This is completely factually incorrect,” she said.

Dee laughed, not quietly this time. “Oh, I knew you were going to say that.”

“There is no basis for these interpretations.”