Page 23 of Riggs (The Maddox BRAVO Team #2)

VANESSA

Saint Pierce smells like salt, rosemary, and fresh paint.

Our little bungalow sits three blocks from the water, pale blue with white trim because I got sentimental about turquoise and Riggs said “paint it” like it was a mission he could complete in a weekend.

We hung string lights over the back patio, planted herbs in mismatched pots, and put a dented metal tub by the grill that he insists is “operational cold storage” and I insist is cute.

It’s been months since Austin. Months of quiet mornings and slow coffee and choosing when to be seen.

I took time off from tours, off from airport doors and ring-light mobs, and learned how to make a schedule that includes reading, walking to the market, and kissing a man in a kitchen that creaks the same way every night.

He still works—of course he does—but the jobs are quieter: protective runs for authors on book tours, a tech founder who needed a shadow for a board retreat, a museum gala where the only thing that exploded was a champagne cork.

He takes the low-profile assignments and comes home and wedges our door anyway, then gives me that look like a habit he doesn’t want to break and I tell him I’m not asking him to.

Tonight the house buzzes. Music low, screen door smacking and squeaking, laughter pinging off stucco.

Rae is perched on the deck rail with a sparkling water and a smirk, Hayes is turning my grill into an engineering diagram, Camille is barefoot in my kitchen cutting limes like a goddess, and Sawyer is exactly where you’d expect him—standing between the hallway and the living room, telling a story with one hand while keeping an eye on the sliding door like the born sentry he is.

Riggs moves through it all like he built the place as he salts the steaks with that unbothered competency that makes my knees consider dramatic choices, pausing to adjust a bulb, to pluck a leaf from my hair, to tap the thermostat with the back of his knuckle and pronounce it “fine.” He catches my gaze across the deck and tips his chin toward the horizon where the sky is pretending to be a watercolor again.

I mouth later and he mouths always and that’s the whole story.

“You’re glowing,” Camille says, hip-bumping me as we heap chips into a bowl.

She’s wearing a sundress the color of ripe peaches, and she looks…

happy. She and Sawyer have that same seasoned softness around them now, like people who rebuilt a house together and learned how to argue about paint without burning the floor.

“How does it feel to be a part-time recluse?”

“Delicious.” I steal a chip. “Quiet is underrated.”

“Don’t tell your follower count,” Rae calls from the doorway, because of course she hears us. “They’ll revolt.”

“They already did,” I say, grinning. “In a nice way. Turns out everyone is willing to let you breathe if you ask them to be part of it.”

Rae lifts her can. “To boundaries,” she says solemnly. “And to love.”

The side gate creaks. Jaxson slides in backwards with a case of Topo Chico balanced on one shoulder and a complaint already loaded. He looks windblown and irritated and like he hasn’t slept enough, which is to say: normal.

“You’re late,” Rae says.

“I stopped to be morally compromised,” Jaxson replies, dropping the case. “Somebody was selling puppies out of a truck by the pier.”

“Please tell me you didn’t—” Riggs begins.

“I didn’t,” Jaxson promises. “I bought the guy dinner and saved the number for a sting. Also I might have pre-named one of them in my head, but that’s not legally binding.”

He’s halfway to the cooler when he remembers to hug me. I get a quick squeeze that smells like sun and road dust and trouble. “You look good, V,” he says, softer.

“So do you,” I tell him, and mean it even if he’s scowling at a lime like it owes him rent.

He pops a bottle, leans against the post, and eyes the string lights like they’ve personally offended him. “I have to leave tomorrow,” he announces to the group, using his I’m-not-complaining tone that means he’s absolutely complaining. “My buddy Seth called in a chip.”

“Seth who can bench-press a snowmobile?” Hayes asks without irony.

“The one,” Jaxson says. “His sister’s gone missing with her kid.

Single mom. Ex is a grade-A nightmare with a savior complex and a very dumb credit card trail.

I’ll find him even if she doesn’t want help, Seth wants her found, and I apparently…

care about people?” He makes a face. “Hate that for me.”

“You love that for you,” Rae says, kicking his ankle with affection. “You’ll find her in, like, seventeen hours and then spend the rest of the week pretending you’re annoyed.”

“Where?” Sawyer asks, switching without effort into the map in his head. “City? Rural?”

“Starts near Valor Springs,” Jaxson says, then glances at Riggs. “If you breathe the word backup , Dean’s going to assign me a partner just to watch me be mad.”

Riggs holds up both hands. “Wouldn’t dream of it. But you’re taking a sat phone. And Rae on your shoulder. Gunner too.”

Rae salutes. “Already ghosting the ex’s apps. He thinks private means ‘company can read it.’”

Jaxson tips his bottle to me, resigned. “Welcome to domestic bliss,” he says, gesturing at the whole backyard with its roses and its ridiculous tub full of ice. “We’ll be using your house for debriefs no matter what you say.”

“Bring snacks,” I say. “And don’t bleed on my rug.”

“Noted,” he grunts, and then his mouth softens. “Happy for you both.”

His words land somewhere tender. I glance at Riggs, who is cheffing with the laser focus of a man who would wrestle a dragon for me and then apologize for getting soot on the porch.

He catches me watching him and gives me that small, private smile—the one I learned to read in airports and alleys and motel rooms and now get to keep in my kitchen.

We eat outside, plates balanced on knees, Hayes presiding over the steak distribution like a benevolent tyrant. The sun slides down behind the cypresses, and the lights click on as the whole yard goes cozy and golden. Someone puts on a playlist that’s half Motown, half Texas, and all memory.

“Toast,” Camille announces, lifting her glass of lemonade because she’s on a break from wine. “To found family.”

I give her a look, and all she does is smile at me. Yep. She’s pregnant, just not telling anyone… so I keep her secret.

Sawyer adds, “To clean exits and quiet nights.”

Rae says, “To routers that actually do their jobs.”

Hayes, after a beat, says, “To accurate thermometers.”

Jaxson rolls his eyes. “To single mothers who text back. And to Seth not naming his next child after me if I pull this off.”

Laughter breaks across the deck. I lift my glass last, throat tight and happy. “To maps,” I say. “The ones we follow, the ones we make, and the people who teach us how to leave breadcrumbs.”

Riggs’s thumb skims the inside of my wrist under the table, exactly once.

Heat arcs up my arm, familiar and brand-new all at once.

Later, when everyone drifts to the front for impromptu street basketball and to argue about the merits of Hayes’s “exactly-right” s’mores method, he tugs me into the kitchen with the excuse of more napkins.

We’re alone for a breath. The house hums. The ocean pushes a soft hush through the open window. He braces a hip against the counter, wraps an arm around my waist, and brings me in close enough that the quiet tightens.

“You good?” he asks, because he always does, because even on our easiest days he takes my pulse without looking like he’s counting. It’s not paranoia anymore. It’s attention.

I nod. “Happy,” I say. “Like, obnoxiously so.”

He leans down and kisses me—slow, sure, no cameras, no cover. When he lifts his head, his mouth curves. “Me too.”

“Still wedge the door?” I tease, because habits don’t vanish and I don’t want them to.

“Always,” he says. “And I turn the deadbolt with my left hand because you like to make fun of me for being predictable.”

“I love you for being predictable,” I correct, and he gives me that look that made me say yes to buying a plant we both knew I’d forget to water.

The screen door bangs. Rae’s voice floats in. “If you two are making out over napkins, at least bring the napkins.”

“On it,” I call, laughing, and grab the stack.

Back outside, the party leans into twilight.

Sawyer teaches Hayes a trick shot while pretending not to; Camille has her feet in my lap, laughing while sipping her cherry wine.

Tomorrow she’ll probably paint this exact scene because she can.

Rae and Jaxson stand shoulder-to-shoulder over a tablet, already building a net.

Riggs drops down beside me and laces our fingers like a habit he’ll never break.

Later, after the last glass is rinsed and Sawyer has wrangled Jaxson into promising to text when he hits Valor Springs and Rae’s threatened to bug our toaster just because she can, the house goes soft and sleepy.

We do the rounds—deadbolt, wedge, back light, stove check—like a ritual we both like performing.

In the bedroom, he pulls me in under the window where the ocean is more sound than sight and we count breaths for no reason except that it’s ours.

“Home,” he says into my hair.

“Home,” I echo.

The world is still loud out there—hungry, humming, always ready to write your life for you if you let it. But here, in Saint Pierce, with string lights and a door that creaks the same way every night, we write our own.

Tomorrow I’ll post a picture of Rae dominating the grill and call it girl math.

I’ll tag Hayes as “thermometer daddy” and make him scowl.

I’ll pretend I don’t know Jaxson left at dawn and then text him anyway.

Camille will paint the way the sky turned copper just before the lights flicked on.

I’ll clean and laugh, and read as I wait for Riggs to get home from whatever quiet corner of the world he went to keep safe.

And he’ll kiss me in the kitchen and wedge the door and count my breaths until his match.

We’re happy. We’re home. And for the first time in too long, I’m finally at peace .

Thank you so much for reading Riggs and Vanessa’s story. I really enjoy writing these fast-paced security romances.

I can’t wait for you to read Jaxson’s story and keep reading for a sneak peek into his story.