Please Harder, Professor

Chapter 250

Sophie’s POV

Days pass in strange limbo.

Bellamy is making arrangements, he says. Talking to Marie, figuring out logistics. I don't push for details, don't demand a specific timeline. I just exist in this weird space between captivity and freedom, waiting.

He seems different after our conversation. Quieter. More distant. Not cold, exactly, but removed. Like he's already started the process of letting go.

I catch him staring into space sometimes. Looking at his phone with an expression I can't quite read. Lost in thoughts he doesn't share.

We still cook together, still sit on opposite ends of the couch in the evenings. But there's a new quality to the silence between us. Something heavier, more final.

Like we're both mourning something that never really existed.

***

One evening, I emerge from my room to find Bellamy on the couch in the dim light. He's staring at his phone, scrolling slowly, his face illuminated by the screen's glow.

I almost retreat back to my room and give him privacy. But something about his posture—the slump of his shoulders, the tension in his jaw—makes me pause.

I walk over, sit beside him. Not close enough to touch, but close enough to see.

He doesn't pull the phone away, doesn't hide what he's looking at. Just shows me without my asking. Photos of Olivia.

His wife was beautiful. Dark-haired, like he mentioned. Bright eyes. That kind of smile that transforms a whole face. In every photo, she's laughing or smiling or looking at Bellamy with obvious love.

"She looks happy," I say softly.

"She was." Bellamy's voice is rough. "We both were. Before hard labours, before everything fell apart."

He scrolls through more photos. Their wedding—young and hopeful and completely in love. Vacations somewhere tropical, both of them sunburned and grinning.

A whole life captured in digital snapshots. A whole love story that ended too soon.

"I miss her so much it feels like dying sometimes," Bellamy says quietly. "Like there's this hole in my chest that nothing can fill. I keep trying to fill it—with work, with Noah, with..."

He trails off. Doesn't finish that sentence. Doesn't need to.

With me. He tried to fill it with me.

My throat tightens. "I know. I see it in you every day."

And I do. I've seen it from the beginning, even when I was too angry and scared to acknowledge it.

The grief that drives every choice he makes. The desperation to not feel that hole anymore. The frantic grasping for something, anything to make the pain stop.

Bellamy scrolls to another photo. Olivia in a hospital bed, bald from chemo but still smiling. Still trying to be strong even though she's clearly dying.

"She fought so hard," he says. "Right up until the end. Even when the doctors said there was no hope, she kept fighting. For me. For Noah. She wanted to stay so badly."

"I'm sorry." The words feel inadequate.

"I've been trying to bring her back." Bellamy's voice cracks. "That's what all this was, wasn't it? Trying to recreate what I lost, trying to fill that hole with someone who reminded me of her in some way. Someone who could be what she was—partner, mother, companion."

"You can't bring her back." I keep my voice gentle. "No matter how hard you try."

"I know that now." He looks at me. Really looks at me. "Do you think she'd hate me for this? For what I've done to you?"

The question hangs in the air between us. Heavy and painful and impossible to dodge.

I could lie. Could tell him what he wants to hear. Could soften the truth to spare his feelings.

But he asked for honesty. And maybe honesty is what he needs.

"Yes," I say quietly. "I think she'd be heartbroken."

Bellamy's face crumples slightly. Like I've confirmed something he already knew but was hoping wasn't true.

"Not just angry," I continue. "Heartbroken. Because she loved you, and she wouldn't recognize the person you've become. The choices you've made in her name."

"I know." The words are barely more than a whisper.

"But," I add, because it feels important to say, "you've made the right choice eventually. That's what matters. You could have kept running. Kept justifying. Kept holding onto the fantasy. Instead, you're choosing to let me go. To face what comes next. That means something."

"Does it?" He looks at me. "Does it really matter that I'm doing the right thing now when I've already done so much wrong?"

"I think so. I think Olivia would want you to do the right thing, even if it's late. Even if it doesn't undo the harm. Because the alternative is becoming someone she wouldn't recognize at all."

Bellamy nods slowly. Like he's trying to make himself believe it.

He scrolls through a few more photos. Pauses on one—Olivia and Noah, maybe a year before she died. She's thin, obviously sick, but she's holding Noah on her lap and they're both laughing at something off-camera.

"She was such a good mother," Bellamy says. "Even when she was dying, she made sure Noah felt loved. Made sure he knew she wasn't leaving by choice. That if she could stay, she would."

"Noah knows he was loved." I think about the little boy I've spent weekends with. The way he talks about his mother even though he barely remembers her. "You've made sure of that."

"Have I?" Bellamy's voice is bitter. "Or have I just fucked him up in new and creative ways by doing this to you? By letting him get attached to someone who was never meant to stay?"

"You're not perfect. You've made catastrophic choices. But Noah still knows he's loved. That's not nothing."

We sit in silence for a while, the apartment is quiet around us. The Old Town streets outside are settling into evening stillness.

"I used to talk to her," Bellamy says eventually. "After she died. I'd sit in our room and just... talk. Tell her about my day, about Noah, about how much I missed her. How lost I felt without her."

"Do you still do that?"

"No." He shakes his head. "I stopped. Because talking to her meant acknowledging she was gone. And I didn't want to accept that. So I stopped talking and started..." He gestures vaguely. "This. All of this."

"Maybe you should start again." I keep my voice soft. "After I'm gone. After you've faced the consequences. Maybe talking to her, really grieving her properly, would help."

"Maybe." He doesn't sound convinced.

He locks his phone, the screen goes dark. For a moment, we just sit there in the dim light from the street outside.

Something shifts between us. Something subtle but unmistakable. An understanding, maybe. Or an ending beginning.

We're not friends. We'll never be friends. What he did to me is unforgivable, and we both know it.

But in this moment, we're just two people who've been caught in an impossible situation together. Two people who've hurt and been hurt. Two people trying to find a way through to whatever comes next.

"Thank you," Bellamy says quietly. "For being honest. For not hating me completely, even though you should."

"I do hate you." The words are gentle. Honest. "But I also understand you. Those two things can exist at the same time."

He nods, seems to accept that.

"A few more days," he says. "I'm getting everything arranged. Then I'll take you home."

"Okay."