Deep Waters

♡ ~ Welcome to the very first page! 🌟 I hope you love this world. Let’s go!🚀

Third Person POV,



Being a light sleeper was a curse disguised as a blessing.

Riot’s thoughts practically dripped with heavy sarcasm as he stared up at the dark, silent ceiling of his bedroom. There was absolutely nothing blessed about being wide awake so early in the morning when his entire body was aching for rest. It was supposed to be the sweetest, most uncomplicated time for sleep—especially when he had just spent half the night handling back-to-back emergencies in the trauma bay. His eyelids felt as heavy as lead, yet he found himself awake exactly an hour after hitting the pillow because his internal circadian clock stubbornly refused to let him rest.

Then, the slight weight on his chest shifted.

Automatically, Riot’s arm tightened around her. His hand instinctively found the small of her back, anchoring her securely against his chest. Sofia let out a soft, sleepy sigh, burying her face deeper into the warm crook of his neck, completely dead to the world.

A low, involuntary rumble of satisfaction settled deep in Riot’s chest as he looked down at her. The world outside this bedroom required him to be strong, to be the unyielding chief resident who kept his walls up and stayed perfectly controlled. But here, in the quiet, gray haze of the morning? He was just a man entirely possessed by the sleeping woman in his arms.

“Don’t run away,” he whispered into the quiet room, his voice a gravelly, early-morning rasp.

Carefully, so he wouldn’t risk waking her, Riot brushed a stray lock of dark hair away from her face. My thumb gently traced the soft slope of her cheekbone, treating her with a profound tenderness he didn’t accord to anyone else alive. He sighed quietly, closing his eyes for just a second to breathe her in. Maybe being awake early wasn’t a total curse after all. It just meant he got an extra hour of watching over her, keeping her safe, before the rest of the world tried to claim their time.

By 5:30 in the morning, Riot was downstairs in the kitchen, staring intently at a whistling copper kettle.

He was making tea. He personally preferred coffee—dark, strong, and bitter enough to jumpstart a dead man’s heart—but his love for his wife exceeded all personal boundaries. When it came to Sofia, Riot was completely, shamelessly wrapped around her little finger. He didn’t care about the total surrender of his autonomy; he did it gladly, purely because she was his wife.

And now, she was carrying his baby.

A soft smile tugged at the corners of his lips as he poured the steaming water into her favorite porcelain cup. If the medical world allowed it, he would have happily carried her on his back everywhere she wanted to go, ensuring her feet never touched the cold floor and forbidding her from lifting a single finger for the next seven months.

“You’re getting soft, FoxRyder,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head.

Tray in hand, Riot walked back up the stairs and slipped into their sunlit bedroom. He set the tea down on the nightstand, leaned down, and pressed a soft kiss against her warm forehead.

Sofia let out a soft, sleepy hum, her long eyelashes fluttering open as she squinted at the morning light. “Riot... what time is it?” she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep.

“Time for your tea,” he murmured gently, sliding his arm behind her back to help her sit up against the pillows. She was only two months pregnant, but she was already throwing every textbook mood swing his way. Honestly? He loved every single bit of it.

“It’s too hot,” she complained, staring down at the porcelain cup, though she still wrapped her hands around it for warmth.

“I’ll blow on it for you if you want,” Riot teased, offering a quiet laugh.

They drank in a comfortable, domestic silence. The exact second her cup was empty, Sofia rolled right back over, pulled the duvet over her head, and buried herself back into the mattress. Riot carefully pulled the heavy sheets up over her shoulders, kissed the crown of her head, and tiotipped downstairs to prepare breakfast. He was running on pure fumes, his eyes burning with exhaustion, but sleep was officially a lost cause.

As he cracked eggs into a sizzling pan, his phone blared to life on the kitchen counter, the screen flashing with a FaceTime call from his buddy, Kyle. Riot swiped the screen, hitting the speaker button without looking up from his spatula.

“Riot! My boy! The absolute anchor of my soul!” Kyle’s voice boomed through the quiet kitchen, loud enough to wake the dead.

“Bark,” Riot replied smoothly, flipping an egg.

And right on cue, the explosion happened. Kyle went completely off the deep end, launching into a furious, high-speed rhapsody about his new girlfriend. He called her a gold-digger, a liar, and a cheat, screaming into the camera about how he had caught her red-handed with another guy.

“And you want to know what she said to my face, man?!” Kyle shrieked through the speaker, his face turning an aggressive shade of purple on the screen. “She looked me dead in the eye and lied!!! She said the guy was just teaching her self-defense! Self-defense! In a dimly lit cocktail lounge at midnight! Does she take me for an absolute fool?!”

While Kyle’s breathless rant went on, Riot kept his eyes on the eggs, calmly trying to shush him. “Kyle, lower your volume. Sofia is sleeping upstairs.”

But Kyle’s volume only went up, his dramatic outrage reaching a deafening crescendo. “I am out here bleeding emotionally, Riot! My heart is in literal pieces on the floor, and you’re worried about a nap?!”

“Tone it down,” Riot said, his voice dropping into a dangerously calm, flat register as he finally looked directly at the screen. “Tone it down right now, Kyle, or I will literally reach through this phone and cut your throat.”

Kyle stopped dead, his mouth hanging open. Then, his face puckered up dramatically and he started fake crying, sniffing loudly into the microphone. “You don’t care about me anymore, bro. You only care about your wife. You’ve completely forgotten about me! I am out here suffering, I need my best friend, and you’re threatening my life over scrambled eggs!”

Riot let out a heavy, defeated sigh, shaking his head at his friend’s absolute theatrics. “I’m off at six today. Come to the restaurant near the hospital. You can text the group chat and carry out your monologue over dinner.”

Instantly, the fake tears vanished. Kyle squealed in absolute joy, shouting a rapid barrage of obnoxious kisses and hugs over the line. “You’re the best! I’ll bring the drama, you bring the wallet!”

“Get lost,” Riot muttered, cutting the call before Kyle could blow him another kiss.

Breakfast finished, Riot went back upstairs. Sofia was awake, silently scrolling through her phone. He helped her out of bed, guiding her into the bathroom, and told her he would pick out her outfit while she showered. By the time she stepped out, he had set up a small breakfast table right beside the glass doors of their bedroom balcony, the morning breeze rustling the curtains.

As she ate, her eyes never left her screen, her fingers typing furiously as she muttered about various clients and ongoing projects. She was a powerhouse, completely dedicated to her career. Riot leaned over, systematically feeding her bites of toast and eggs while she worked.

“Sof,” he murmured gently, using his thumb to wipe a stray crumb from the corner of her lip. “You know you can stop working for a while if you want to. I can easily take care of this family. You don’t have to carry all this stress right now.”

Sofia paused, looking up at him with a firm, unyielding expression. “I love my work, Riot. It keeps me busy, and I’m not giving it up just because I’m pregnant.”

Riot held her intense gaze for a second, then simply nodded. He didn’t intervene after that. If her career brought her fulfillment, he would be the foundation that supported it, not the wall that blocked it.

Once breakfast was cleared and the dishes were scrubbed, Riot changed into his crisp medical scrubs and prepared to leave. Standing by the front door, he looked at her. “Do you want to ride with me today? I can drop you off right at your office.”

“No, I’m fine. I’ll drive myself,” she declined smoothly, her tone detached but polite as she grabbed her briefcase.

Sofia always liked doing everything by herself, keeping a meticulous, unyielding boundary between her life and his. But that didn’t mean Riot was ever going to stop caring, and it certainly wasn’t going to stop him from trying. He gave her a parting smile and headed out into the morning.

The city hospital was its usual buzzing hive of activity when Riot arrived. As he walked through the main lobby, he crossed paths with Matt Sterling, an orthopedic surgeon and one of his closest colleagues—and his absolute childhood best friend.

“Hey man,” Matt greeted, giving him a brief nod as they fell into step together, their strides perfectly matched. “How’s everything going at home? Sofia surviving the first trimester?”

“Good so far,” Riot replied, adjusting the stethoscope around his neck. “She’s as stubborn as ever. Still trying to run the corporate world from the couch.”

Matt chuckled, shaking his head. “Would you expect anything less from her?”

They immediately launched into a clinical discussion about an incoming trauma case from earlier that morning, trading notes as they walked down the bright, sterile hallways. They waved hello to passing nurses, greeted familiar patients, and acknowledged the floor staff, eventually parting ways as they headed toward their respective offices.

Safely inside his private cabin, Riot immediately pulled out his phone and called Sofia to make sure she had arrived at her office safely. The call was brief, her answers short and professional before she hung up to enter an executive meeting.

A second after he put his phone down, it rang again.Mom.

“Hey, Mom,” Riot answered, leaning back in his leather chair.

“Riot, dear! Just calling to check on you,” her voice filtered through the line. “How are you holding up? How is my upcoming grandbaby doing? Are you getting enough sleep?”

“I’m doing okay, Mom. The baby is fine. Everything is fine,” Riot replied smoothly, his tone practiced.

They had a brief, pleasant chat before she had to run, but the underlying subtext did not go unnoticed by him. It was a regular pattern now. Ever since the massive, painful ordeal that had unfolded between Sofia and his family prior to our marriage, his parents never—not even once—asked how Sofia was doing. They asked about him, and they asked about the baby, but her name was completely erased from their vocabulary.

Sometimes, Riot sat in the quiet of his office and wondered how an arranged marriage could even come to a point like this. His parents had been the ones driving the arrangement in the beginning, pushing fiercely for the alliance, but now that the dust had settled, the entire situation was fractured. Yet, despite the cold shoulder from his family, he had fallen entirely, helplessly in love with the girl they had chosen for him.

Shaking off the heavy thoughts, Riot grabbed his metal chart and headed out for morning rounds.

Lunch was spent catching up with a few colleagues in the crowded cafeteria, punctuated by a quick phone call to Sofia’s assistant to remind his wife to actually eat her lunch on time. By the afternoon, his scheduled patient visits began, a steady stream of appointments that kept his mind entirely occupied.

His very last patient of the day was a little girl named Olive...

♡ That’s a wrap on Chapter 1! 🏁💕 Thank you for reading! Drop your first thoughts in the comments! 💬✨♡