Page 12 of Riggs (The Maddox BRAVO Team #2)

Vanessa

Morning arrives loud and bright. It’s the kind of Denver sun that doesn’t ask permission. I wake to the shape of him in the chair by the window. Riggs. Long legs, forearms like hewn wood, phone to his ear, voice low as river gravel. He must have moved there after I fell asleep on his chest. After.

“Copy,” he says, and it’s all business. “We’ll use the alley ingress. Two exits on the north wall. I want a body at each. Push the box to the vendor door by eleven.”

The space between last night and copy gapes wider than I want to admit. The way he held me. The way we laughed over soup and cake and kissed. The way he moaned my name when he came. And now he’s by-the-book, every edge burnished to professional , and a small, traitorous part of me panics.

I slide up on my elbows, watching him. He glances over. It’s one quick scan that takes all of me in. He sees I’m awake. I’m still breathing. I’m whole. He nods once before refocusing on the window.

That’s not good.

“Yeah,” he tells whoever he’s on the phone with, “and run Steven’s last four purchases through Turner. If craft stores pop again, I want timestamps.”

Stevens. Kellan. The note in the coffee sleeve. Right. Reality.

Riggs ends the call, sets his phone on his thigh, and finally really looks at me. The mask doesn’t crack so much as soften at the edges. “Morning.”

My throat is suddenly dry. “Morning,” I echo, trying for breezy and landing somewhere near small. “You slept in a chair?”

His mouth tilts. “I’ve slept in worse places.”

“I liked you better in the bed,” I blurt, then want to crawl under said bed. Way to be smooth, Van.

Something like hunger flickers in his eyes and is gone a second later. “We’ve got a pop-up at eleven,” he says gently, like he heard the worry tucked inside the comment and is choosing the safer reply. “I’ll brief you after coffee.”

There it is… the distance. Panic scratches again.

I throw on leggings and a soft oversized tee, knot it at my waist to pretend I have it all together, and follow him to the table where he’s already laid out breakfast like he’s been doing this a decade.

He’s got yogurt, fruit, coffee exactly the way I take it, ginger ale just in case.

He hands me the mug without looking away from his notes.

“Today is the Mateo Fry pop up kitchen,” he says. “We’ll keep it tight. Side door only, no front-of-house. Rae’s got the network. Jaxson dropped a box overnight. Lucas’s on driver. Brice will whine.” He meets my eyes over the steam. “I’ll handle him.”

I wrap both hands around the mug because it’s the only thing steady in me. “About…last night,” I start, and flame burns my face. “Do you—are you okay? With what happened?”

He sets his pen down, straightens it, then spoils the symmetry by reaching across and hooking a finger under my chin so I’ll look at him.

“Vanessa,” he says quietly, and my name in his voice turns my bones to warm glass.

“I don’t regret a second of you. I’m just not going to let what I want make you less safe. ”

My lungs forget how to do their job. “Okay,” I whisper. “Copy.”

That earns me the ghost of a smile. “Copy,” he repeats, and the word becomes ours again, not just his.

We’re a machine after that. Lucas pulls us through the back lanes.

Brice texts seventeen messages about how the “vibe” should be “urban-whimsy-meets-harvest-core.” Lina double-checks pins and batteries with the focus of a NASA launch.

Outside the pop-up, string lights zigzag over a courtyard of mismatched tables, crates, and potted herbs.

The smell hits first. It’s green chile, charred corn, something smoky-sweet that reaches inside my soul and switches on a new appetite.

The chef—tattooed forearms, kind eyes, a laugh like a drum—greets us in a flurry of towels and tongs. “You must be Vanessa. I’m Mateo. We’re honored. Also—” he glances at Riggs “—we’ve got a side gate for your guy’s plan.”

Riggs nods, pleased when people listen, pleased when doors behave. He sweeps the perimeter.

Fans gather fast at the front fence—curious locals, a bachelor party already on their second beer, two girls in matching beanies who might actually vibrate into the air.

Denver’s like that—friendly, blunt, less performative than Saint Pierce, but the phones still come out.

Brice wants the energy. I want a line between the work and the watching.

“Fifteen for BTS,” Brice announces, clapping like he’s calling ducks. “Then outfit change into the skirt—Vanessa, we’ll do the signature bite at the pass, maybe two?—”

“Three exits,” Riggs counters, dead calm. “Vendor door covered. Vanessa never alone. We control the angle on the fence.”

“Fun police,” Brice sings under his breath.

“Alive police,” Riggs corrects, not even looking.

We start with a walk-and-talk. I riff about pop-ups and creativity and neighborhoods that make space for people to make something.

Mateo drizzles something green over charred elote and hands me a bite.

I take a bite and my eyes roll back in my head.

The crowd cheers like I just won a medal.

The fence creaks as bodies press in. Phones rise like a field of flowers.

“Want to flip them something?” I ask Riggs between takes, chin tilting toward the fence. “Give them what they came for so we can work?”

He glances at the crowd, his eyes narrowing and I’m sure he’s probably calculating angles, risk, optics. The little curve he gives me is the opposite of a no.

Before he can grab me, sweeping me into his arms and planting a big, passionate kiss on my lips (because I’m sure he was planning on doing that) we’re cut off by Mateo.

“Ready?”

I try to hide my disappointment. “Yep.”

The next setup is the pass. An open kitchen with the heat shimmering, and Mateo tosses something in the pan that smokes in a way chefs consider foreplay.

I lean into the counter, laugh at his joke, and feel Riggs arrive like a shift in weather.

He’s behind me, hand at my waist, and the crowd’s volume nudging up a notch just from the shape of him.

A teenage boy at the fence yells, “Kiss her, Beard-Mountain!”

I choke on a laugh. So does Mateo. Riggs doesn’t.

Two beats pass, and then his palm curves fully at my hip, and he steps close enough that my shoulder blades press to his chest. “You good?” he asks, voice low.

“Very,” I say, and I am. And it’s the safest kind of very I’ve ever felt.

He tips my chin, an invitation and a question, not a command.

The crowd hushes—phones poised, mouths open—and I answer by rising on my toes.

He meets me there, mouth warm and sure, not a peck for strangers but not the kind of kiss we give away either.

It’s…perfect. Long enough for the phones to get it, short enough that only we feel the aftershock.

The fence explodes in a cheer that hits absurdly sweet.

Mateo whoops. Brice makes a strangled noise like metric gold fell out of the sky.

Riggs steps back half an inch, eyes on mine, crowd already a blur. “Wow,” he says.

“Yeah. Wow,” I echo, breathless, and the way the word sits in my chest makes me stupid-happy. The bystanders begin to chant something mildly obscene and delighted. Lina fans her face with the shot list. Brice clutches his headset like it’s a rosary.

We work. Riggs holds the line. The chemistry becomes part of the light instead of a distraction, and the whole shoot hums because of it.

He intercepts a delivery guy before the man crosses the threshold, checks the bag, hands it to Mateo with a warning about chain-of-custody that somehow doesn’t kill the vibe.

He moves me a foot left when a reflection in the metal sculpture threatens to catch too much.

He leans in between takes to murmur, “Water,” and I drink without making a face because he’s right and I like being alive.

During a reset, the beanie girls call out, “We love you, Vanessa! Is he good to you?”

I don’t look at them. I look at him, at the steady profile, the watchful eyes, the mouth that just kissed me in a crowd and felt like privacy anyway. “Yeah,” I say, smiling so hard my cheeks ache. “He is.”

Next, I change looks. I’m in a silver skirt that sparkles just right, a white tee knotted at the waist, and a denim jacket we all pretend is casual and not curated within an inch of its life.

The bystanders go feral for the spin. I play to them, to the camera, to the man who stands behind both like a promise.

“Confessional?” Brice suggests, and I nod, sliding onto a stool by a mural of a chili pepper with fangs.

I talk into Lina’s handheld. I talk about food and pop-ups and community and how public attention can be fuel or a match depending on who’s holding it.

I don’t mention Kellan. I don’t mention glue sticks pretending to be ransom notes.

I don’t have to. The shot is stronger when the threat is implied and the answer— we’re still here —is the point.

We’re wrapping when a folded paper flutters out from under a stack of branded coasters by the POS.

My stomach dips. Riggs sees it at the same time I do.

It doesn’t belong, the way it’s been placed where my hand would slide if I weren’t me.

His palm is on my wrist before I can reach, and he lifts the coaster with his multitool and reveals the note like a magician revealing a trick with contempt.

Block letters again. No signature this time. YOU MAKE IT TOO EASY.

Cold tries to climb my spine. Riggs’s heat blocks it. He bags the paper, gives me one look— breathe —and nods to Mateo. “Sorry about the coaster,” he says, so polite it’s hilarious.

Mateo’s jaw hardens. “Get him,” he says. “Then come back hungry.”

“Plan,” Riggs says.