Page 94 of The Prime-Time Experiment

So, he drove to the apartment with no speech prepared and no particular outcome in mind. He wasn’t here to convince her of anything; wasn’t here to corner her into a conversation she clearly wasn’t ready to have. He just needed her to know that if she looked behind her, he hadn’t vanished.

The hallway outside the apartment was quiet when he arrived. For a moment he stood there staring at the door, wondering whether this counted as respecting her space or completely ignoring it. Eventually he decided there was no useful answer to that question and knocked anyway.

The door opened a few seconds later. Dee looked mildly surprised to see him, although not nearly as surprised as she probably should have been.

“Hi there,” she said.

“Hey.” The word left him automatically, his attention already slipping past her shoulder into the apartment beyond. He wasn’t consciously looking for Riley, at least, that was the lie he told himself.

Dee followed the direction of his gaze and her expression softened immediately. “She’s not here.”

Declan nodded once. The answer wasn’t exactly unexpected, but hearing it still left a hollow feeling somewhere beneath his ribs. “Okay.”

But he couldn’t leave. He just stayed where he was, hands in his pockets, suddenly aware that he’d driven all this way without ever deciding what he was supposed to do once he got here.

“She won’t see you,” Dee said gently.

Declan let out a slow breath and glanced down the hallway before looking back at her. “Yeah, I figured.”

The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable. If anything, it felt strangely familiar. He’d spent enough time around Riley to become accustomed to conversations that left room for people to think. He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and shifted his weight.

“I’m sorry.”

Dee frowned. “For what?”

“For the other night.”

The words came out more quietly than he’d intended. “For Tyler. For all of it.”

“Decl—”

“I know I wasn’t the one saying it,” he said, cutting her off before she could dismiss it. “But you were there because of me. It was my family and my invitation.”

Something in Dee’s expression softened. “He was out of line.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean really out of line.”

Declan huffed a quiet laugh. “Yeah. I gathered that.”

“And I threw wine on him.”

That pulled a genuine smile from him. “You definitely did.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. “Not my finest moment.”

“Depends who you ask.” For the first time since opening the door, Dee laughed. The sound eased some of the tension sitting in his chest, although not nearly enough.

Because Riley was still missing from the conversation, Riley was still the reason he was standing here. Dee seemed to recognise that too. Her expression settled as she looked at him properly.

“You care about her.”

It wasn’t phrased as a question. Declan didn’t answer it like one. “Yeah.”

There wasn’t much point pretending otherwise anymore. Dee studied him for a moment before nodding to herself. “Good. Because she’s not going to make this easy.”

A small smile pulled at his mouth despite himself. “Trust me, I’ve noticed.”