Disconfirmation
Riley
The apartment was quiet when Riley stepped inside. Not the kind of quiet she had grown up with, the strained, unstable kind that made her hyper-aware of every sound underneath it, waiting for the shift in atmosphere that meant something was about to go wrong.
This quiet was always different when it was with Dee.
Something she could now define as safe. She paused just inside the doorway, hand resting lightly against the handle as the silence settled around her without demanding anything in return.
It didn’t press against her nervous system like it might have years ago.
It was always a relief to walk in the door, to know this was the one place she truly had where she knew irrevocably she was okay.
Her bag slipped from her shoulder onto the floor with a muted thud. She nudged her shoes off near the door, leaving them slightly uneven against the wall.
Riley noticed. And, unexpectedly, didn’t correct them.
“Is that you, Ri?”
Dee’s voice carried from the kitchen. Riley turned toward it, moving slower than usual, like something in her hadn’t quite settled yet. Dee was leaning against the counter, but the second she saw Riley, she straightened.
“You’re later than I thought you’d be,” she said, lighter at first, and then her eyes narrowed slightly. “Is everything okay? How’d it go?”
Riley stopped a few steps into the room. “It was…” she started, then paused, her brow pulling slightly. “Different.”
Dee folded her arms loosely. “Different how?”
Riley exhaled, but it wasn’t quite steady. “They were very consistent,” she said. “In their behaviour. There were no observable shifts in tone or escalation.”
Dee blinked. “Okay, that was very clinical. Try again. Did you like them?”
Riley hesitated. “Yes,” she said, quieter. “I did.”
That alone made Dee’s expression change. “Okay... So why do you look like you’re confused?”
Riley’s gaze dropped briefly, then lifted again. “I answered a question,” she said.
Dee straightened. “Okay,” she repeated. “I love you Ri, but I need more information than that. What kind of question?”
“Ebony asked how I manage when environments become overwhelming,” Riley said.
Dee’s brows shot up. “And you just… what? Gave her a grounding technique?”
Riley shook her head once. “No.” A beat. “I explained why I prefer controlled environments.”
Dee went still. “Riley,” she said carefully, “what does that mean, exactly?”
Riley didn’t look away this time. “I told them about my father.” The silence that followed was deafening. Dee stared at her.
“You… told them?” she said, softer now, like she wasn’t sure she’d heard right.
Riley nodded once. “Yes.”
“Like actually told them? Not vague, not deflecting. Like, told them told them about your childhood?”
“I didn’t go into detail about the abuse I lived with, but I mentioned it, yes.”
Dee let out a slow breath, one hand coming up to her forehead. “Oh wow, Ri,” she said, half to herself. “That’s massive.” She dropped her hand, looking back at Riley properly now. “Are you okay? How did they react?”
Riley paused. That was the part that didn’t fit. “They didn’t react as I expected.”
Dee frowned slightly. “Did they judge you?”
Riley’s fingers shifted against the counter. “No, not at all. The opposite, Declan’s mother understood,” she said. “She didn’t question it or attempt to redirect the conversation.”
Dee’s expression softened slightly. “Yeah?”
Riley nodded. “She shared her own childhood experience,” she added.
That caught Dee off guard. “Oh that’s huge,” she said, quieter now. “Wow. And how did that feel for you?”
Riley stilled. That question was harder.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. And that, more than anything else, made Dee soften.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “That’s okay.”
Riley’s gaze dropped again. “They continued interacting with me in the same way afterwards,” she said. “There was no observable discomfort or judgement.”
Dee huffed softly. “Yeah, babe. That’s called being not assholes.”
Riley’s eyes lifted slightly. “That’s normal?”
Dee held her gaze. “For people who care about you? Yeah.”
Riley went still again. Care. She knew that word in theory, but she had always struggled to apply it in practice. “They adjusted for me,” she said, quieter now. “Throughout the evening without needing to be asked.”
Dee nodded. “That’s what good families do.”
Riley absorbed that, slower this time. “That’s what a loving family looks like?” she asked.
Dee didn’t soften it or try to dress it into something easier. “Yeah,” she said simply. “It is.”
The words settled differently this time. Not as information, but as a new perspective. Riley’s fingers pressed lightly against the edge of the counter as something uncomfortable rearranged itself quietly in her mind.
Because if people reacted like that when they cared about someone, if hearing about pain hurt them because they loved the person attached to it, then maybe her entire understanding of ‘safe’ had been built around the wrong premises from the beginning.
“I wouldn’t have struggled so much if I’d had that growing up,” she said quietly.
Dee’s expression shifted slightly, something aching moving through it. “Yeah,” she said softly. “It would’ve been easier, babe.”
Riley swallowed, gaze lowering toward the counter between them.
Not easier because the events themselves would’ve changed.
The thought landed with startling force.
If someone had loved her properly—really loved her—then maybe the fear wouldn’t have settled so deeply into her nervous system that it rewrote the structure of it.
Maybe someone would have noticed sooner, intervened sooner.
Told her it was wrong before she had to teach herself that years later through observation and comparison and clinical language.
Maybe she would have learned safety did not equal survival, that care did not require hyper-vigilance.
Maybe her body would not have spent years treating existence itself like something that required preparation.
“They weren’t reacting to the information,” she said slowly, the understanding still forming while she spoke. “They were reacting to me, because they care.”
Dee nodded once. “Yeah,” she said gently. “They wanted you to not be alone.”
Riley’s breath caught faintly at that. Because suddenly the grief sitting underneath everyone’s reactions made sense in a way it hadn’t before. They weren’t horrified by the concept of abuse in the abstract, they were horrified because it had happened to her.
Dee stepped a little closer, voice quieter now. “You’re safe now,” she said gently.
The words lingered more than anything else. Safe now. Riley’s breath faltered. If now was safe, then before had not been. And if before had not been…
Something opened too quickly beneath it, a realisation so disorienting she had to press herself into the kitchen island to keep upright. The systems she had built, the control, the constant awareness: they hadn’t been her strengths like she thought they were.
They were her protecting herself. Her chest tightened sharply, the pressure expanding too quickly, her system struggling to contain the sudden influx of something she could not categorise or control.
Her vision blurred slightly at the edges.
She blinked, trying to stabilise it, but the sensation didn’t recede. Dee watched her carefully now.
“You don’t have to hold it together all the time, Ri,” she said softly.
Riley’s hand lifted halfway instinctively, like she could physically contain the reaction before it spread any further through her body. But there was nothing tangible to hold onto, nothing she could organise or redirect before it overwhelmed sequence entirely.
“And hey…” Dee said more gently, stepping slightly closer. “Your dad might not have loved you the way you deserved—” Riley flinched hard enough that Dee noticed, but Dee didn’t retract the statement.
“That doesn’t mean you’re unlovable, Ri,” she said steadily. “It means he wasn’t capable of loving anyone properly in the first place.”
Riley’s breathing faltered unevenly.
“And that was never on you,” Dee continued, softer now. “None of it was.”
The pressure in Riley’s chest spiked violently, too much emotion arriving too quickly for her nervous system to process cleanly. Her thoughts lost coherence around the edges, fragments colliding faster than she could separate them.
“You are loved,” Dee said. The certainty in her voice made it worse somehow. She said it so casually, so matter-of-fact, like it wasn’t optimism or comfort or something being offered conditionally. It was simply true.
“By me,” Dee continued quietly. “By the people you’re finally letting close to you. By that family tonight.” Her expression softened slightly. “In the span of one night, you’ve had that entire family fall in love with you. Do you see how loved you are?”
Riley’s throat tightened painfully, because that was the part she still didn’t know how to hold. The possibility that people could know what had happened to her and feel grief instead of disgust.
Protection instead of blame. Love instead of obligation. And suddenly all she could think about was how different her life might have been if someone had looked at her like that sooner.
That, that broke something. The word didn’t sit outside her anymore. Dee stepped forward then and pulled her into a hug.
Riley’s entire body locked instantly. Every muscle went rigid, every instinct pushing hard for withdrawal: for space, for control, for distance. Her hands hovered awkwardly between them, not touching, her breath catching sharp and uneven in her chest.
“This is—” she started, her voice unsteady, “this is not—I can’t—”
“I know,” Dee murmured softly. “Just stay with me for a second.” She didn’t tighten her grip, didn’t force Riley to reciprocate it.
She just… stayed. Holding her, giving her someone to ground against. Riley held herself there, rigid and unmoving.
Every instinct was telling her to pull back, regain control.