Misattribution of Intent #2
“He stated that I looked ’fine,’” Riley said. “And ’cute’ in relation to being recorded.”
Dee’s mug lowered slowly. “Okay, no. No, that’s not—”
Riley continued, as though finishing a report, “When I was no longer compensating effectively, he continued to instruct rather than reduce variables. The interaction did not adjust to my capacity.”
Silence settled between them for a moment. Dee stared at her.
“Okay,” she said finally, slower now. “That’s… a lot.”
Riley didn’t respond. Her hands kept moving, but the rhythm had changed to one that was more erratic. Dee leaned forward slightly, her voice shifting.
“Hey,” she said. “Pause for a second.”
Riley’s fingers stopped. Dee watched her for a second, then shook her head lightly. “That’s what he did,” she said. “I get it that is a lot to absorb.”
She placed her mug down on the table, before looking Riley in the eyes.
“You had a pretty obvious reaction from how you came home, so how did it make you feel?”
Riley blinked. The question didn’t land cleanly.
Dee didn’t look away. “Not the variables, not the effects on the experiment or the environment. I want to check in on you.”
Riley’s gaze dropped back to the wool, her fingers tightening slightly around it. There was a delay.
“I was unable to stabilise,” she said.
Dee’s expression didn’t change. “That’s not a feeling, Ri.”
Riley exhaled, sharper this time. How did she feel? She had never been good at analysing emotions. She knew the facts, that her physiological state had been affected. “My breathing did not regulate correctly,” she said, slower now. “It remained shallow.”
Dee softened slightly, but didn’t interrupt. Riley swallowed.
“I could not organise the inputs,” she continued. “They did not separate into usable patterns.” Her grip tightened again. “There was no point of reference.”
Dee nodded once, gently. “Okay. Keep going.”
Riley hesitated. The next part came out slower, like wading through water to try and reach the right language to express it.
“I felt…” She stopped, the word catching. Re-calibrating. “Compressed.”
Dee’s brows pulled together slightly. “Compressed, how?”
Riley’s fingers stilled completely. “Everything was too close, too tight around me. There was no space to be, let alone process.”
Dee’s voice softened further. “And your body?”
Riley inhaled, the motion uneven even now. “I couldn’t get a full breath,” she said. “My chest did not expand correctly.” Her jaw tightened slightly. “I had to leave to breathe.”
Dee nodded, slow and certain. “Okay. That sounds like a panic response.”
Riley’s gaze flicked up briefly. “It was not irrational.”
“I didn’t say it was,” Dee replied immediately, just as calm. “You got overwhelmed. That’s not the same thing.”
Riley looked back down. Her fingers resumed their movement, but slower now. Less certain.
“I do not want to continue,” she said.
Dee studied her for a moment. “You don’t want to continue,” she said carefully, “or you don’t want to go back into that exact situation again?”
Riley’s eyes locked onto a spot on the floor, fixating. “The latter is not acceptable.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Riley didn’t answer, because the distinction was relevant and deeply inconvenient. It sat there, unresolved, pressing at the edges of something she didn’t want to examine too closely.
Her body tensed, coiling with the emotion she was trying to process.
“He is an asshole,” she said abruptly. The words flat but sharp, exacting in a way that felt unfamiliar coming from her.
Dee blinked once. Riley kept going, the structure slipping just enough to let something more reactive through.
“He is intentionally obstructive,” she said, faster now. “He understands the parameters and chooses to operate against them while maintaining plausible compliance.” Her jaw set. “It is inefficient. It is unnecessary.” She huffed out a breath. “I should not have agreed to this,” she added.
That one came quieter, but it held more weight. Dee’s expression shifted immediately.
“Okay, no,” she said, sitting forward. “We’re not doing that.”
Riley frowned slightly, her focus narrowing. “The conclusion is valid. The conditions are not conducive to—”
“No,” Dee cut in, firmer now. “That’s not logic, that’s you wanting out.”
Riley stilled. “He created an environment that prevented—”
“And you’re letting him win because of it?” Dee interrupted.
The words hit home harder than the rest. Riley’s head lifted slightly, her attention snapping back to her.
“That is not—”
“It is,” Dee said. “You don’t back out because something’s difficult. You don’t walk away because someone makes it harder than it needs to be.” Her tone cut, certainty settling into every word. “You double down.”
Riley’s gaze dropped briefly, because that part was true.
She hadn’t wanted to do the segment. Her boss practically forced her to do it.
Every part of her resisted the unpredictability of it from the beginning; the cameras, the noise, the general nature of television.
And even when it started going wrong, even when the entire thing became overwhelming in ways she hadn’t anticipated, she had stayed, because she had felt this inherent need to prove to herself that she could.
Dee held her gaze. “You are literally the person who stayed up all night in second year university just to prove you were right and that stupid lecturer was mis-utilising the research,” she said. “You do not, and have never, backed down.”
Riley didn’t know what to say, so she sat there, unblinking, in an attempt to process everything she was saying.
“This isn’t about you not wanting to continue,” Dee went on.
“This is about Declan. I don’t know what it is about this man, but he has been able to get under your skin, and is pushing you into a situation where you couldn’t function.
And now, you’re trying to remove yourself from the whole thing instead of fixing the part that broke. ”
Riley’s felt her eyebrow twitch. “He disrupted the structure,” she said.
“Yeah,” Dee agreed. “So? Rebuild it.”
Riley frowned. “That requires his cooperation.”
“Then make it a requirement,” Dee said simply. That made Riley pause.
“He is within contractual limits,” she said. “I cannot—”
“You wrote that damn contract,” Dee cut in. “You’re telling me you can’t find a way, a loophole?”
Riley didn’t answer immediately. Dee’s expression softened slightly again, but her tone didn’t lose its certainty. “You are Riley Lorrent and you don’t quit,” she said. “You adapt, you out-think, and then you make it impossible for the other person to keep playing games.”
Riley’s focus sharpened, just slightly.
“You always have.”
A quiet beat settled between them. Riley didn’t respond. Her fingers resumed their movement through the wool, slower now, more deliberate, though the tension in them hadn’t fully eased.
Dee watched her for a second longer, then leaned forward slightly, her voice lowering.
“This is your chance,” she said. “You don’t walk away from this, you fix it. You make it so tight he can’t pull that shit again... You prove him wrong.”
Riley’s hands stilled. Before she could respond, her phone buzzed against the counter, the sound cutting cleanly through the space.
Both of them glanced down. The screen lit up.
Declan.
Dee’s brows lifted immediately, something almost delighted flashing through her expression. “Oh my god,” she said under her breath. “Speak of the devil.”
Riley didn’t move at first. She just looked at the name, her focus narrowing, sharpening into something far more clinical than it had been a moment ago.
Dee nudged the phone slightly toward her. “Well?” she said. “There’s your opportunity.”
Riley’s jaw set.
Dee leaned back just enough to give her space, but her voice didn’t soften. “Right now.”
Riley exhaled slowly, the breath more standard than the ones before it. Her fingers tightened once against the edge of the counter, grounding, before she leaned forward and picked up the phone.
There was a brief pause on the other end before the response came, easy and immediate.
“Riles.”
Her spine went rigid. The reaction was physical, automatic. Her grip tightened around the phone, the wool in her other hand pulling taut without her noticing.
“I told you not to call me that.” Riley’s shoulders tensed. “Why are you calling?” she asked, her tone flattening.
There was the faintest shift on the other end, like he hadn’t expected that to be her opening.
“You left our session.”
Riley’s fingers tightened slightly around the phone. The statement was obvious, unnecessary, and for a brief second she considered saying exactly that. Instead, she exhaled through her nose.
“I am aware.”
A pause followed. Not long, but long enough to register.
“That wasn’t how today was supposed to go.”
Riley’s gaze flicked briefly toward Dee, then back down again, trying to focus more on the wool, at least that was something she could control.
“That is an inaccurate assumption,” she said. “Today proceeded exactly as the environment dictated.”
“Right,” he replied, and there was something different in his tone now that was less performative, more direct. “I’m going to need you to tell me what that means.”
Riley stilled, body growing taut. Of all the things that she expected from this conversation, him asking for clarification was not one that she expected.
“It means,” she said, slower now, re-calibrating as she spoke, “that the conditions were not conducive to controlled application. The variability exceeded functional limits.”
There was a brief pause.
“Okay.”
She blinked once. Was he… Okay? Declan, who had spent the entire day deliberately disrupting her structure, was just…
“Okay?” she repeated.
“Yeah,” he said. There was a small shift in his tone, less flippant, more grounded. “So, we fix that.”
Riley’s focus sharpened immediately, suspicion threading through the space between them. “That is not a unilateral decision.”
“Didn’t say it was,” he replied. “I’m asking what you need.”