Variables in Motion #6
“Don’t.” The interruption wasn’t sharp. If anything, Dee sounded tired. She folded her arms across her chest and stared out at nothing in particular before letting out a slow breath. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
Riley stopped. The instinct to analyse what happened remained, but it no longer seemed useful. An explanation would not alter the outcome. Reclassifying Tyler’s behaviour would not change the fact that Dee was upset by it.
For a few moments, neither of them spoke. Only then did Riley become aware that she was holding Dee’s hand. She couldn’t identify exactly when it happened, somewhere between leaving the ballroom and reaching the street, she reached for her without conscious intention.
Dee hadn’t pulled away. The pressure of her hand remained steady against Riley’s palm, grounding in a way Riley recognised immediately. Riley focused on that instead of trying to analyse. Gradually, her breathing began to settle.
“I thought everyone was getting along,” she said eventually. Dee glanced at her, but didn’t interrupt. Riley lowered her gaze briefly. “I thought everyone had adjusted.”
The words felt incomplete almost as soon as she said them.
Because what she had believed wasn’t simply that people had adjusted.
She had believed the different parts of her life could occupy the same space without conflict.
That Dee and Declan could exist within the same environment, that the Montgomerys and the life she shared with Dee could overlap without either one compromising the other.
For a while, that appeared to be true. Now she wasn’t sure.
“I can’t talk about this right now, Ri. I think I just need to go home.”
Whatever anger had carried her out of the ballroom seemed to have burned itself away, leaving only a kind of exhaustion Riley couldn’t categorise properly but recognised as significant.
Riley’s grip on her hand loosened for a fraction of a second before tightening again.
“Of course,” she said quietly. “I think it would be safer if I drive.”
Dee nodded without argument.
They started back toward the car together, their hands remaining linked as though neither of them had consciously decided to let go. Riley found herself focusing on the familiar pressure of Dee’s palm against hers, grounding herself in the simple certainty of it.
The evening no longer felt manageable. The event, the people, the conversations, all of it dissolved into noise somewhere behind them. The only thing that felt relevant now was getting Dee home.
Even so, her thoughts refused to remain still.
By the time they reached the car, she was no longer replaying what happened. She was thinking through her own actions: bringing Dee tonight, assuming that because nothing had gone wrong before, nothing would.
Riley opened the passenger door and waited while Dee climbed into the seat. Something about the sight unsettled her more than she expected. Dee looked smaller somehow, folded inward in a way Riley rarely saw. Usually, Dee expanded into spaces. Tonight she seemed to be withdrawing from one.
Riley closed the door gently and walked around to the driver’s side.
The familiar structure of the car settled around her immediately, quiet and predictable after the sensory complexity of the ballroom. Normally that would have been enough to steady her. Tonight it simply left her alone with her thoughts.
She had spent weeks convincing herself that the balance was holding.
Training sessions with Declan existed separately from her life with Dee, and yet somehow the two had begun to overlap without immediate consequence.
The arrangement had appeared stable enough that she stopped actively monitoring it.
Now she wondered whether she had mistaken the absence of failure for evidence of success.
Across from her, Dee shifted slightly and turned toward the window. The movement was small, but Riley felt it instead of saw it.
Dee was hurt. Riley couldn’t separate that fact from herself, because Dee hadn’t arrived at the event independently.
Riley had brought her and asked her to come there, she had introduced the overlap.
Riley had assumed that the people who mattered to her could occupy the same space without consequence.
The thought settled heavily in her chest.
Dee had always been the constant. Through every version of Riley that existed over the past eight years, Dee remained. The idea of being responsible for introducing instability into that relationship felt fundamentally wrong.
By the time Riley started the engine, the shape of the conclusion had already begun to form. If maintaining both environments created risk for Dee, then maintaining both environments was no longer an acceptable option.
The logic arrived naturally after that.
The contract could end, the Montgomerys would return to being a separate part of her life rather than an overlapping one.
The variables could be separated again.
It was a clean solution, and yet as Riley pulled away from the curb, a persistent pressure remained lodged somewhere beneath her ribs, resisting the conclusion despite all evidence supporting it.
For the first time, the correct answer did not feel like relief.