Updated Apr 20, 2026 • ~10 min read
Chapter 7: Don’t Stop Believin’
Nadia
Three days into their friends-with-benefits arrangement, Nadia discovers that Riot Hawke is a terrible cook who nevertheless insists on attempting dinner every night because “you need actual nutrition, not just coffee and protein bars,” and watching him burn pasta while shirtless in her borrowed cabin kitchen is doing dangerous things to her carefully maintained emotional distance.
“You’re supposed to watch the water,” she says from her position on the couch, where she’s been pretending to work on code while actually watching him move around the kitchen like a particularly lethal domestic fantasy. “Boiling pasta is not a set-it-and-forget-it situation.”
“I’m a Navy SEAL, not a chef,” Riot says without turning around, poking at the smoking pot with a wooden spoon like it might explode. “We ate MREs in the field. Anything that doesn’t come in a vacuum-sealed pouch is gourmet to me.”
“The bar is so low it’s actually underground,” Nadia says, but she’s smiling despite herself, and when Riot glances back at her with that half-grin that makes her stomach do complicated things, she has to look away before he sees too much on her face.
Because this is supposed to be just physical—they agreed, they set boundaries, they established rules specifically designed to keep things simple—but it turns out that living in forced proximity with someone means you can’t actually maintain purely physical when you’re eating meals together and sharing a bathroom and waking up tangled together every morning.
You start learning things.
Like the fact that Riot hums while he showers, always the same melody that Nadia finally identified as “Don’t Stop Believin'” after the fifth rendition.
Or that he does exactly one hundred push-ups every morning before coffee, and if she times her wake-up right, she gets to watch the show from bed.
Or that he reads—actual physical books, usually dense military history or philosophy that he brings with him on assignments—and he dog-ears pages with absolutely no shame despite Nadia’s horror at the book abuse.
“What are you thinking about?” Riot asks, and Nadia realizes she’s been staring at him for long enough that he’s noticed.
“That you’re going to give us both food poisoning if you don’t stop burning things,” she lies, closing her laptop and standing up because sitting still while her brain spirals into dangerous territory seems like a bad plan. “Move over. I’ll do it.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t have to. But I also don’t want to spend tonight with my head in a toilet because you can’t tell the difference between al dente and charcoal.” She hip-checks him away from the stove, surveys the damage, and sighs. “This is unsalvageable. We’re starting over.”
“Yes ma’am,” Riot says with amusement in his voice, and when Nadia glances up at him, he’s watching her with an expression she can’t quite decode but that makes her chest feel too tight.
“Stop that,” she says.
“Stop what?”
“Looking at me like that.”
“Like what?” He’s grinning now, the bastard, clearly enjoying her discomfort.
“Like you’re thinking things that violate our agreement about keeping this physical,” Nadia says, dumping the burnt pasta in the trash and starting fresh water. “We have rules.”
“Rules you established,” Riot points out, leaning against the counter close enough that she can feel the heat of him even though they’re not touching. “I just agreed to them.”
“And you’re already trying to break them.”
“I’m not trying to break anything. I’m just appreciating the fact that you’re beautiful when you’re cooking, and apparently that’s not allowed.” He says it lightly, casually, like it’s not a compliment that hits her directly in the chest and lodges there.
“Compliments weren’t in the agreement,” Nadia says, focusing very hard on the pasta water and not on the way her heart is beating too fast.
“Then we should amend the agreement, because I have a lot of them.” Riot steps closer, close enough that she can smell cedar and gun oil and him, and when his hand finds the small of her back, Nadia has to resist the urge to lean into the touch. “You’re brilliant when you code—I’ve watched you solve problems that would take normal people hours. You hum the same four bars of music when you’re concentrating, and you don’t even realize you’re doing it. You burn toast but you make perfect coffee, which I think says something about priorities. And you’re braver than you think you are, because most people who’ve been through what you’ve been through wouldn’t still be fighting.”
Nadia freezes with the pasta box in her hand, her throat suddenly too tight to speak, because this is exactly what she was afraid of—the intimacy that comes from actually knowing each other instead of just knowing each other’s bodies.
“Riot,” she says quietly, still not turning around because she’s not sure what her face is doing and she doesn’t want him to see. “We said no feelings.”
“I know what we said.” His hand is still on her back, steady and warm and grounding. “But you asked me to stop looking at you like I’m thinking things, and I’m telling you I can’t. Because I am thinking things, and pretending I’m not just because we made an agreement isn’t working for me.”
“Then make it work,” Nadia says, and she hears the desperation in her own voice, the fear. “Because this is all I can give you. The physical stuff, the proximity, the—whatever this is. But not feelings. Not expectations. Not plans for after Viktor’s dead and I go back to my real life.”
“Why not?” It’s a simple question, asked simply, but it cuts right through all her defenses.
“Because everyone I love dies,” Nadia says, finally turning to face him with the pasta box still clutched in her hands like a shield. “My parents, my friends from before witness protection, everyone I’ve ever let myself care about. Viktor takes them, or life takes them, and I’m left alone. So I don’t do love anymore. I don’t do feelings. I just do survival.”
Riot’s expression does something complicated, shifting from frustrated to understanding to determined in the space of seconds. “Nadia—”
“I testified against Viktor when I was sixteen,” she continues, needing him to understand why she can’t give him what he’s asking for. “My father worked for his organization, and when he saw what they were really doing—the people they were hurting—he went to the FBI. Wore a wire, got evidence, agreed to testify. And Viktor found out.”
She can still see it, even twelve years later—the blood, her mother’s empty eyes, her father’s last words telling her to run, to hide, to survive.
“They came at night. Killed my parents in front of me. I watched my mother die, Riot. Watched her bleed out on our kitchen floor while my father begged them to let me go. And they would have killed me too, but my father’s handler got there in time, pulled me out, put me in witness protection with a new name and a new life and orders to never look back.”
“Jesus,” Riot breathes, and his hands are on her shoulders now, grounding and steady. “Nadia, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
“I built my company from nothing,” she talks over him, can’t stop now that she’s started. “Taught myself to code, worked three jobs to put myself through college, created software that governments pay millions for. I made myself powerful, made myself important, made myself into someone who could never be victimized again. And it still wasn’t enough, because Viktor came back anyway, and now I’m right back where I started—hiding, running, waiting to die.”
“You’re not going to die,” Riot says fiercely, pulling her close despite the pasta box between them. “I won’t let that happen.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“Watch me.” He cups her face, makes her look at him. “I know you’re scared. I know you think everyone you love dies. But Nadia, you have to understand—I’m significantly harder to kill than most people. And I’m not leaving you. Not until Viktor’s dead and you’re safe and you tell me to go.”
“And when I do tell you to go?” She needs to know, needs to understand what happens when this ends. “When the threat’s neutralized and there’s no reason for you to stay?”
“Then I’ll go,” Riot says, and there’s something painful in his expression that he’s trying to hide. “Because those were the rules you set, and I agreed to them. But Nadia—if you ever change your mind about those rules, if you ever want something more than just physical, you tell me. Okay?”
She should say no, should reinforce the boundaries they established, should make it clear that there’s no scenario where she’s going to want more because wanting more means risking more and she’s already risking everything just by letting him close.
But what comes out instead is: “Okay.”
It’s not a promise, barely even an agreement, but Riot’s face does something that looks like hope, and Nadia realizes with stunning clarity that she’s already in deeper than she intended to be.
Because she knows things about him now too—learned them in the spaces between sex and sleep, in the quiet moments when he thought she wasn’t paying attention.
She knows he left the Navy after a mission went wrong and men died under his command, men whose names he still carries in a battered notebook he doesn’t think she’s seen.
She knows he became a bodyguard because saving people is penance for the ones he couldn’t save, and he takes every job personally even when he pretends it’s just professional.
She knows he’s been protecting her for weeks and hasn’t slept more than four hours a night because he’s paranoid about missing a threat, and the shadows under his eyes are there because he cares more than he should about keeping her alive.
And knowing all of that, understanding him the way she’s starting to, is dangerous in ways that have nothing to do with Viktor and everything to do with the fact that Tobias Hawke is exactly the kind of man she could fall for if she let herself.
Which she won’t.
Can’t.
Refuses to do no matter how good he feels or how safe she is when he’s near or how much she wants to believe that maybe this time, loving someone won’t end in loss.
“The pasta water’s boiling,” Riot says quietly, breaking the moment, and Nadia realizes she’s been staring at him with her emotions probably written all over her face.
“Right,” she manages, pulling away and turning back to the stove because looking at him is too much right now. “Pasta. Food. Normal things.”
“Normal things,” Riot agrees, but his hand finds hers for just a second, squeezes once, and Nadia has to blink back tears she has no business crying because this is exactly what she was afraid of.
She’s getting attached.
Starting to care.
Beginning to hope that maybe when this is over, she won’t have to tell him to go.
And that kind of hope is the most dangerous thing in the world.
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