Deep Waters

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

Riot’s POV,

Being a light sleeper is a curse disguised as a blessing. My thoughts dripped with heavy sarcasm as I stared up at the dark ceiling. There was absolutely nothing blessed about being wide awake so early in the morning when my entire body was aching for rest. It was the sweetest, most uncomplicated time for sleep, especially when you have spent half the night handling back-to-back emergencies at the hospital. My eyelids felt as heavy as lead, yet I found myself awake exactly an hour after hitting the pillow because my internal circadian clock refused to let me rest.

Then, the slight weight on my chest shifted.

Automatically, my arm tightened around her. My hand instinctively found the small of her back, anchoring her securely against me. Sofia let out a soft, sleepy sigh, burying her face deeper into the crook of my neck. A low, involuntary rumble of satisfaction settled in my chest as I looked down at her. The world outside this bedroom required me to be strong, to be the man who kept his walls up and stayed controlled. But here, in the quiet, gray haze of the morning? I was just a man entirely possessed by the sleeping woman in his arms.

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

By 5:30 in the morning, I was downstairs staring at a whistling kettle. I was making tea. I personally preferred coffee dark, strong, and enough to jumpstart a dead man’s heart; but my love for my wife exceeded all boundaries. When it came to Sofia, I was completely, shamelessly wrapped around her finger. I didn’t care about the surrender of my autonomy; I did it gladly, purely because she was my wife.

And now, she was carrying my baby.

A smile tugged at the corners of my lips as I poured the steaming water into her favorite porcelain cup. If the medical world allowed it, I would have happily carried her on my 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.

Tray in hand, I walked back up the stairs and into our sunlit bedroom. I set the tea 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. I gently slid my arm behind her back, helping her sit up against the pillows. She was only two months pregnant, but she was already throwing every textbook mood swing my way. Honestly, I loved every single bit of it.

I handed over her tea, then poured a cup for myself. We drank in a comfortable, domestic silence. The moment her cup was empty, Sofia rolled right back over and buried herself under the duvet. I carefully pulled the sheets up over her shoulders, kissed the crown of her head, and tiptoed downstairs to prepare breakfast. I was running on pure fumes, my eyes burning with exhaustion, but sleep was a lost cause.

As I cracked eggs into a sizzling pan, my phone blared to life on the kitchen counter. It was a FaceTime call from my buddy, Kyle. I swiped the screen, hitting the speaker button.

“Riot! My boy!” Kyle’s voice boomed through the quiet kitchen, loud enough to wake the dead.

“Bark,” I replied smoothly, not looking up from my spatula.

Right on cue, the explosion happened. Kyle went completely off the deep end, launching into a furious rhapsody about his new girlfriend. He called her a gold-digger, a liar, and a cheat, screaming 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 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, I kept my eyes on the eggs, calmly trying to shush him. “Kyle, lower your voice. Sofia is sleeping.”

But his volume only went up, his dramatic outrage reaching a deafening crescendo.

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

Kyle stopped dead. Then, his face puckered up and he started fake crying, sniffing loudly. “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 eggs!”

I let out a heavy, defeated sigh, shaking my head at his 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 barrage of obnoxious kisses and hugs over the line.

“Get lost,” I muttered, cutting the call before he could blow me another kiss.

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

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. I leaned over, systematically feeding her bites of toast and eggs while she worked.

“Sof,” I murmured gently, wiping 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 this stress right now.”

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

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

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

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

Sofia always liked doing everything by herself, keeping a meticulous boundary between her life and mine. But that didn’t mean I was ever going to stop caring, and it certainly wasn’t going to stop me from trying. I gave her a parting smile and headed out.

The hospital was its usual buzzing hive of activity when I arrived. As I walked through the main lobby, I crossed paths with Matt Sterling, an orthopedic surgeon and one of my closest colleagues and my childhood best-friend.

“Hey man,” Matt greeted, giving me a brief nod as we fell into step together. “How’s everything going?”

“Good so far,” I replied, adjusting the stethoscope around my neck.

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

Safely inside my office, I pulled out my phone and called Sofia to make sure she had arrived safely. The call was brief, her answers short and professional before she hung up to enter a meeting. A second after I put my phone down, it rang again. Mom.

“Hey, Mom,” I answered, leaning back in my chair.

“Riot, dear! Just calling to check on you,” her voice filtered through. “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,” I replied smoothly.

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

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

Shaking off the heavy thoughts, I grabbed my chart and headed out for morning rounds. Lunch was spent catching up with a few colleagues in the cafeteria, punctuated by a quick phone call to Sofia’s assistant to remind my wife to actually eat her lunch on time. By the afternoon, my scheduled patient visits began, a steady stream of appointments that kept my mind occupied.

My 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! 💬✨♡