Updated Apr 20, 2026 • ~12 min read
Chapter 11: Cabin Fever
Nadia
The days after Riot’s confession blur together in a haze of sex and silence and the kind of domestic intimacy that Nadia keeps telling herself doesn’t mean anything even though she knows it means everything.
They’re waiting for Marcus to arrange transport and security details and all the tactical pieces that need to fall into place before they can leave Montana, which means more time in the cabin, more time in this strange limbo where they’re lovers with an expiration date and both pretending that’s fine.
Their routine settles into something that feels dangerously close to real life: Riot wakes her with his mouth between her thighs until she’s gasping his name and clinging to the headboard, then they stumble to the kitchen for coffee that he makes wrong and she fixes without comment because correcting him feels like caring and caring feels like admitting things she’s not ready to admit.
She codes while he trains—watching him do pull-ups on the beam he installed in the doorway has become her favorite kind of procrastination, all that controlled strength and sweat-slicked skin doing absolutely nothing for her productivity and everything for her very unprofessional thoughts.
Afternoon sex happens wherever they happen to be when the wanting gets too intense to ignore—against the kitchen counter, on the couch, once memorably on the porch when they were supposed to be checking perimeter sensors and ended up christening the outdoor furniture instead.
They cook dinner together, Riot chopping vegetables with military precision while Nadia handles anything that involves actual heat and seasoning, and they’ve developed an unspoken choreography where he reaches for ingredients at the same moment she needs them and she steps into his space without thinking because apparently her body has decided he’s safe even when her brain knows better.
Evening sex is slower, thorough, the kind where Riot maps every inch of her skin like he’s memorizing a battlefield and Nadia lets him because pretending this is just physical becomes impossible when he’s looking at her like she’s the only thing in the world that matters.
And then they fall asleep tangled together, Nadia’s head on his chest and his arms around her like she’s something precious he’s determined to protect, and she tells herself this is all just proximity and convenience and temporary and absolutely not the kind of domestic bliss that people build entire lives around.
She’s lying, of course.
She knows she’s lying.
But admitting the truth—that she’s fallen completely in love with Tobias Hawke despite her best efforts not to—feels like setting herself up for the kind of loss she’s spent twelve years avoiding.
“You’re doing it again,” Riot says from his position on the floor, mid-push-up, and Nadia realizes she’s been staring at him instead of working on the security algorithm she’s supposed to be debugging.
“Doing what?” She tries for innocent and lands somewhere around defensive.
“That thing where you look at me like you’re trying to solve a problem you can’t figure out.” He finishes his set, stands up in one fluid motion, and crosses to where she’s sitting on the couch. “What are you thinking about?”
*You. Us. How I’m supposed to walk away from this when Viktor’s dead and you go back to your life and I go back to mine and we pretend these weeks never happened.*
“Work,” Nadia lies, closing her laptop because continuing to pretend she’s productive is futile when Riot’s standing there shirtless and sweaty and looking at her like that. “Just work.”
“Liar,” he says mildly, but he’s smiling, that half-grin that makes her stomach do complicated things. “You’ve been staring at the same function for twenty minutes. Either you’re stuck, or you’re thinking about something else.”
“Maybe I’m stuck.”
“Want help?” He’s teasing—they both know he can’t code beyond basic scripting—but there’s genuine offer in his voice that makes Nadia’s chest tight.
“I don’t think ex-Navy SEALs are qualified to debug encryption algorithms,” she says, aiming for light and landing closer to fond than she intended.
“Probably not,” Riot agrees, settling onto the couch next to her, close enough that their thighs press together. “But I’m qualified to notice when you’re overthinking something and need a distraction.”
“I don’t need a distraction.”
“No?” His hand finds her knee, slides up her thigh with clear intent. “So if I offered to take you to bed and make you forget whatever’s making you look like that, you’d say no?”
Nadia should say no, should establish some kind of boundary between them that isn’t constantly being breached by physical intimacy and emotional vulnerability.
But she’s learned over the past three-and-a-half weeks that saying no to Riot when he’s touching her like this is basically impossible, and pretending otherwise is just wasting both their time.
“I wouldn’t say no,” she admits, already shifting closer. “But I’m starting to think we might have a problem.”
“What kind of problem?” Riot’s hand keeps moving, teasing, and Nadia’s brain is having trouble forming coherent thoughts.
“The kind where we have sex approximately five times a day and it’s still not enough.” She’s straddling him now, when did that happen? “That seems excessive.”
“Excessive would be if we weren’t both extremely enthusiastic about it,” Riot points out reasonably, his hands finding her hips and pulling her flush against him. “This is just…thorough compatibility testing.”
“We’ve been testing for three weeks. I think we’ve established compatibility.”
“Science requires extensive trials,” he says with completely false seriousness, and Nadia laughs despite herself, despite the fact that they’re having this ridiculous conversation while she’s grinding against him and his hands are under her shirt.
“You’re ridiculous,” she says, but she’s kissing him anyway, and when he stands with her legs wrapped around his waist and carries her to the bedroom, she thinks: *This isn’t real. It’s just proximity and sex and the forced intimacy of hiding together. It’ll end the moment we leave Montana and I’ll be fine.*
It’s a lie so obvious that even she doesn’t believe it anymore.
🔥
The problem with falling in love when you’ve spent twelve years avoiding exactly that is you don’t know how to process the feelings when they finally arrive.
Nadia lies awake that night with Riot asleep beside her, his breathing deep and even and safe-sounding, and tries to identify exactly when “just physical” became “completely in love with him” without her noticing.
Was it the first morning he made her terrible coffee and she drank it anyway because the gesture mattered more than the taste?
The time he talked her through a panic attack triggered by nightmares about Viktor without making her feel weak?
The way he listens when she talks about code like what she’s saying is fascinating instead of incomprehensible?
How he’s memorized the way she takes her eggs and which side of the bed she prefers and the fact that she needs exactly seven hours of sleep or she’s impossible to deal with?
Or maybe it was just the cumulative weight of weeks spent in proximity to someone who sees her—actually sees her, not just the successful CEO shell she presents to the world, but the scared sixteen-year-old underneath who watched her parents die and never quite healed from it.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Riot murmurs without opening his eyes, and his arm tightens around her waist. “Stop it.”
“Can’t stop thinking just because you ordered me to,” Nadia says, but she’s smiling despite herself.
“Can try.” He’s awake now, turning toward her, and even in the darkness she can feel the weight of his attention. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Nadia.” He says her name like a reprimand and a request all at once. “We agreed you’d stop deflecting. So tell me—what are you thinking about at—” He glances at the clock. “—three in the morning that has you wound tight enough to snap?”
And here’s where Nadia should lie, should deflect with sex or jokes or anything that maintains the carefully constructed boundaries that are supposed to protect her from exactly this situation.
But she’s tired of lying, tired of pretending, tired of keeping walls up when Riot systematically demolished them anyway.
“I’m thinking that this isn’t real,” she admits quietly. “What we have here—it’s cabin fever and forced proximity and trauma bonding. We’re not actually compatible. We’re just two people stuck together who happen to have good chemistry.”
Riot’s silent for a long moment, and when he speaks, his voice is very careful. “Do you actually believe that?”
“I want to,” Nadia says honestly. “Because if this isn’t real, if it’s just circumstances, then when it ends it won’t hurt as much. But if it IS real—if what I’m feeling is actually love and not just extended Stockholm syndrome or whatever—then losing you is going to destroy me.”
“So you’re already planning for it to end.” It’s not a question.
“Of course I’m planning for it to end. That was always the plan. Clean break when Viktor’s dead, remember? You said it yourself.” She’s sitting up now, needs distance to have this conversation without breaking. “You go back to protecting other clients, I go back to running my company, and we pretend these weeks never happened.”
“And if I don’t want to pretend?” Riot sits up too, and there’s something intense in his expression that makes Nadia’s chest ache. “If I want this to be real? Not just cabin fever or proximity—actually real?”
“Then you’re setting yourself up for disappointment,” Nadia says, hating how her voice cracks on the words. “Because I don’t know how to do real, Riot. I don’t know how to trust that someone won’t leave or die or be taken from me. Everyone I’ve ever loved has been ripped away, and I can’t—I won’t survive going through that again.”
“So you’d rather end it preemptively?” He sounds hurt and frustrated and trying very hard to understand. “Cut me out of your life before I have a chance to leave on my own?”
“Yes,” Nadia says, because it’s the truth even if it’s a terrible one. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do. Because controlling when it ends means I get to survive it. And survival is the only thing I’ve ever been good at.”
Riot reaches for her, pulls her close despite her resistance, and when he speaks, his voice is rough with emotion. “What if I told you that survival without living isn’t actually surviving? It’s just existing. And you deserve more than that.”
“What if I told you that existing is all I know how to do?” Nadia’s crying now, she can’t help it, years of carefully controlled emotion spilling out in the darkness. “I don’t know how to be the person you want me to be. The one who’s brave enough to try, who trusts that good things can last, who isn’t constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. That’s not who I am.”
“Yes it is,” Riot says fiercely, holding her tighter. “You’re the bravest person I know, Nadia. You testified against the mob at sixteen. You built an empire from witness protection. You’re facing Viktor instead of hiding forever. That’s not someone who just exists—that’s someone who’s fighting to actually live.”
“That’s different—”
“It’s not different. It’s the same thing. You’re just scared to apply that bravery to your personal life because that’s where the real risk is.” He tips her face up, makes her look at him. “But I’m asking you to try. Not to promise me forever—I know that’s not something you can give. Just to try. Stay open to the possibility that maybe this doesn’t have to end when Viktor’s gone. Maybe we could actually see what this is in real life, not just cabin life.”
Nadia wants to say yes, wants to promise she’ll try, wants to believe that maybe love doesn’t have to end in loss this time.
But the fear is too big, too overwhelming, and all she can manage is: “I don’t know if I can.”
“Then just don’t say no yet,” Riot says, and kisses her forehead with devastating gentleness. “That’s all I’m asking. Don’t close the door before you’ve actually thought about whether you want to walk through it.”
It’s such a small ask, such a reasonable request, that Nadia finds herself nodding even though the fear is still there, still screaming that letting him close is dangerous and letting herself hope is worse.
“Okay,” she whispers. “I won’t say no yet.”
“That’s all I need,” Riot says, and pulls her back down to the bed, holds her until she falls asleep feeling safe and terrified in equal measure.
Because the truth Nadia’s been avoiding for three weeks is this: she’s already in love with him, already planning a future she knows she can’t have, already imagining what it would be like to keep him when this is over.
And that kind of hope is the most dangerous thing in the world.
Because when you hope, you have something to lose.
And Nadia’s lost too much already.
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