Chapter 7
Declan
The footage had looked different on the screen.
Declan sat back into the couch, the remote loose in his hand as the TV cast shifting light across the room, shadows dragging long across the floor with every cut of movement.
The clip replayed again, familiar now in a way that had nothing to do with repetition and everything to do with what he had missed the first time.
His phone buzzed beside him, lighting up with notifications; comments, tags, messages stacking faster than he could ever clear them, but he didn’t feel any need to look. His focus stayed fixed on her.
The attention no longer felt unusual. It had stopped feeling personal a long time ago.
Declan never intended to become whatever the internet turned him into.
Originally, he’d just been a personal trainer working out of their local gym building programs, helping clients, staying largely invisible outside of that.
The online side of things had only started because of Tyler.
Or more specifically, because mocking Tyler’s growing public profile had become entertaining enough to post.
Unfortunately, people liked him. Then they’d kept liking him. And somewhere along the way, the joking appearances beside his brother had evolved into sponsorships, interviews, millions of followers, and a version of his career he never would have actively pursued on his own.
Even this technically came from Tyler first. But unlike Tyler, Declan never hated the visibility once it happened.
Because behind all the noise, behind the branding and content and public recognition, there were still real people changing because of it.
People who had started exercising for the first time.
People who had learned how to eat properly, sleep properly, take care of themselves properly.
That part mattered to him, which was exactly why Riley interested him so much.
Because for all her rigidity and resistance, she understood something most people in the industry didn’t: fitness wasn’t just physical.
And if he could get someone like her explaining the science behind why these things worked, maybe people would finally stop treating health like aesthetics and start treating it like survival.
Riley moved through the frame with the same control she carried in person, posture restrained, movements measured even when they weren’t landing cleanly.
To anyone else, it read exactly how it was meant to: the academic out of her depth, a little rigid, slightly off-beat in an environment that didn’t quite fit her.
He now knew better. He leaned forward, scrubbing the footage back a few seconds, watching again with a sharper eye, his elbow braced against his knee, remote forgotten in his grip.
Because something about it didn’t sit right.
It hadn’t, even in the moment. At the time, he’d brushed it off.
Told himself she was overthinking, getting trapped in her own head like she seemed to do.
That pushing her a little, throwing her off balance, would force her to loosen up and meet him somewhere in the middle.
That had been the game. Rile her up. God, he’d enjoyed it.
The nickname had started as a throwaway. Something easy, guaranteed to get a reaction. And where he came from, that meant something.
His family communicated like this constantly, bickering and taking the piss out of each other until the lines between affection and antagonism barely existed anymore.
If someone teased you, pushed at you, kept dragging you into conversations, it meant they liked you.
It meant they were interested in your life and wanted you to smile and joke.
The people who got ignored were the ones you worried about.
So when Riley fascinated him almost immediately, he’d fallen into the same instinct without thinking. Push, tease. Get her attention however he could, and the nickname had worked every single time. That sharp look she’d shoot him, immediate and annoyed.
That’s not my name.
It was the most consistent reaction he could get out of her, and he kept chasing it, partly because it amused him, but mostly because it meant she was responding to him. It meant he could get through that wall of hers somehow, even sideways, even through irritation instead of anything softer.
He’d never had to work that hard for someone’s attention before, especially someone he wanted to get to know. Riley resisted him constantly. Corrected him, challenged him. She looked at everything he said like she was taking it apart piece by piece to see if it held together under scrutiny.
Half the time, he genuinely thought she couldn’t stand him.
No, not half the time. Most of the time.
And still, he kept pushing, because there was something about her he couldn’t leave alone.
The way she thought, the way she stayed so tightly controlled while still trying, despite everything, to connect with people who made absolutely no sense to her.
He liked getting reactions out of her, liked being the one person who could disrupt that perfect composure she carried everywhere else.
So he’d leaned into it. Too much.
His jaw tightened slightly as the footage continued.
Because if he was being honest, he hadn’t been training her today, he’d been testing her.
Every time he changed something just enough to throw off her pattern and see how she adapted, every smirk across the room when he caught her noticing. He’d known exactly what he was doing.
At the time, it had felt harmless. Familiar. The same kind of pushing and provoking he’d grown up around his whole life. The kind that meant affection, interest, investment.
Except Riley hadn’t grown up inside his family. She didn’t automatically hear care underneath sharp edges.
And now, rewatching the footage, he could see the things he’d missed in real time. The tiny hesitations. The over-corrections. The slight delay before she laughed, like she was still trying to work out whether everyone was laughing with her or at her before deciding how to respond.
Something heavy settled low in his chest. Fuck. His grip tightened around the remote.
Because some part of him hadn’t just wanted her attention. He’d wanted to break through that wall of hers completely, to see what was underneath it. And he was starting to realise that maybe Riley’s control wasn’t something she wore for fun, especially in the way she’d walked out.
That hadn’t been irritation. Hadn’t been her usual clipped frustration or sharp corrections. That had been… He scrubbed the footage back again, slower this time, his focus narrowing.
There, the delay.
Riley was frozen mid-frame, her hands lifted, fingers pressing first to her temples, then higher, covering her ears. He could tell the action wasn’t intentional, or for attention. It was containment.
Declan stilled. Something shifted into place with horrible clarity, the pieces locking together so fast it almost made him feel sick.
“…Oh, fuck,” he muttered quietly.
Because it wasn’t nerves. It wasn’t inexperience or her being ‘stuck in her own head’ or too rigid to adapt.
He knew what he was looking at. He had seen it before, sitting beside Ebony on the kitchen floor, while she cried.
The supermarket was too loud, someone changed plans too quickly and she couldn’t explain why it suddenly felt like her skin didn’t fit properly anymore.
He’d seen the shutdowns that looked like attitude to people who didn’t know her.
Seen the way overload built slowly until it tipped all at once.
And Christ, it was one of the worst things in the world to watch happen to someone you loved.
Because from the outside it looked manageable right up until it wasn’t. People assumed it was anxiety, that if the person just calmed down or stopped overthinking, they’d be fine.
But Declan knew better. It was as simple as too much noise, or too many moving parts. Patterns constantly shifting before she could stabilise against them. Over-stimulation.
He leaned back slowly into the couch, eyes still fixed on the screen as the rest of it followed close behind, brutal in its simplicity.
It was partially because of what had been happening to Riley, and yet it was also how it was made worse by the things he’d said to her.
Stop overthinking it.
Relax.
You’re making it harder than it needs to be.
The words replayed in his head now, casual at the time, ugly in hindsight.
His stomach dropped, because he hadn’t just missed it.
He’d pushed it with every variation in the drills.
Every time he deliberately disrupted her rhythm, because he liked watching her react.
Every fucking moment he’d kept pushing for another response because he thought it was funny, or interesting, or because he liked being able to get underneath her skin when nobody else could.
His hand dragged slowly back through his hair as the realisation settled heavier and heavier in his chest.
He knew better, that was the part that made it feel so bad.
He knew exactly what overload looked like in someone trying desperately to hold themselves together anyway. He knew how exhausting and disorienting it was, and intentional or not, he had been the thing pushing Riley there.
Because he’d mistaken provoking her for connecting with her and hadn’t realised there was a point where it stopped being playful and started becoming cruel.
Declan exhaled sharply through his nose, shame settling low and heavy in his chest.
“Fuck,” he said again, quieter this time. Because Riley had been trying the entire day, and he stood there grinning while he made it harder.
His gaze dropped back to the paused frame, to Riley’s hands pressed tightly over her ears, to the moment she tried to contain something no one else in the room had even noticed. “There’s no way she can experience that again.”