Please Harder, Professor

Chapter 137

Adrian’s POV

Amelia won't stop crying. I've been in the nursery for twenty minutes trying everything I can think of—rocking, bouncing, offering the pacifier she keeps spitting out. Nothing works. The crying just escalates, drilling into my skull until I can barely think straight.

"Come on." My voice comes out harsher than intended. "What do you want? What the hell do you want from me?!"

She screams louder, face purple with rage or discomfort or whatever infants feel when they're making your life hell.

The frustration mounts with each passing second, building into something dangerously close to actual rage. My hands shake as I hold her.

My chest tightens with a failure of it. The helplessness. The private, shameful understanding that I don't know how to reach her—that she's a language I haven't learned to speak.

I want to call for Sophie. Want to put the responsibility in hands that know what they're doing.

And beneath that—quieter, uglier—a flicker of something I can't quite name. Not rage, not toward her, but the old, familiar impulse to step back, to let distance solve what presence can't.

The impulse my father made into a lifestyle.

The door opens. Mom enters, takes one look at the scene, and crosses to me with quick steps.

"How long has she been crying?" she asks.

"I don't know. Twenty minutes? Half an hour?" I'm losing track of time. "I can't get her to stop."

"Let me." Mom reaches for Amelia without waiting for permission.

I hand her over, relief and humiliation flooding through me in equal measure.

Mom adjusts her hold with practiced ease—the angle I never get right, the support that looks effortless. She rocks gently, humming something soft and rhythmic. Within seconds, Amelia's crying drops to whimpers. Within a minute, silence.

The contrast is devastating.

"How do you—" I start.

"Practice." Mom settles into the rocking chair with Amelia against her shoulder. "And not being wound so tight you transfer all your anxiety straight to her. Babies sense tension."

I lean against the changing table, exhausted. "Sophie went for coffee."

"Did she?" Mom sounds pleased. "Good. She needs to get out more."

"With Lolita."

The temperature in the room drops ten degrees. Mom's entire demeanor shifts, face hardening into something I rarely see from her.

"What?"

"Lolita invited her. Said they should talk." I watch Mom's reaction carefully. "Two women who care about me or something like that."

"And you let her go?" Mom's voice is tight with barely controlled fury.

"I didn't 'let' her do anything. Sophie makes her own decisions." I push off the changing table. "Why are you looking at me like that? We already discussed this. I know you know about Lolita, I know you blame her for—"

"Ubeliavable." Mom's voice carries disbelief. "You still think she did nothing wrong."

"She gave me—"

"She groomed you, Adrian!" Mom's voice rises, startling Amelia who whimpers but doesn't fully wake. "She manipulated a seventeen-year-old boy into believing psychological abuse was education."

I don't want to have this argument again, can't face the possibility that everything I believe about myself is built on lies Lolita taught me to tell.

"There's more you don't know," Mom says quietly. "About Lolita and me. About what happened after she left."

I straighten. "What do you mean?"

Mom adjusts Amelia against her shoulder, gathering herself.

"When Lolita disappeared without warning, I was devastated. She wasn't just a friend—she was my closest confidante. I spent months trying to understand why she'd just vanish."

"And?"

"Eventually I tracked her down. Confronted her, demanded answers." Mom's eyes are distant now, lost in the memory. "She told me she'd gotten bored. That our friendship had served its purpose, that I was redundant."

The clinical dismissal sounds exactly like Lolita. "She's always been blunt."

"I didn't believe her." Mom's voice strengthens. "I told her I remembered what our friendship was like: the late nights talking about art and literature, the real conversations, the genuine connection. Those moments couldn't have been manufactured. I refused to believe I meant nothing to her."

"What did she say?"

Mom's laugh is bitter. "She looked surprised, actually shocked, like no one had ever called her bluff before. Like she'd finally met someone who saw through her performance."

She pauses. "And then it all came spilling out. The truth about what she'd done to you."

My chest tightens. "What truth?"

"Everything. The psychological manipulation. The training she put you through starting when you were seventeen. How she'd been grooming you, shaping you into…"

Mom's voice cracks. "She told me all of it, Adrian. Described it like an art project, like you were clay she'd molded into something more interesting."

I feel the ground shift beneath me. "She told you? Herself?"

"She seemed almost proud of it." Mom's eyes glisten with unshed tears. "Explained her techniques, her methods. How she'd worked it all right under my nose while I thought I was watching my son develop a mentorship with a brilliant older woman."

The betrayal hits from an unexpected angle. Not that Lolita did it—I've made peace with that, or convinced myself I have. But, that she confessed to my mother. That she took pride in it, turned my adolescence into a story she told for shock value.

"What did you say?" I ask quietly.

"I told her I could forgive a lot." Mom's voice is steady now, resolved. "The abandonment, the lies about our friendship, even using me to get close to you. But not—" She stops, breathes. "Not what she did to my son."

"So you left."

"I left. We haven't spoken since. Until she showed up here the other day, making herself at home in your apartment like no time had passed." Mom's expression hardens. "That's why I can't stand watching her around this family. Especially around Amelia."

"She won't touch Amelia." The words come out more defensive than certain.

"Won't she?" Mom looks at me directly. I have chills running down my spine. We both know what Lolita’s capable of. It’s just that when one prefers to remain blindfolded, the other sees through it all.

"She won't get the chance," I say firmly. "I won't let her."

"How, if you're barely present enough to soothe your daughter when she cries?"

Mom's voice softens into something like pity.

"When you can't even keep your relationship with Sophie intact? How are you going to protect Amelia from Lolita when you can't manage the basics of being her father?"

The accusation lands like a physical blow. "I'm trying to…"

"Your father said the same thing." Mom stands, moving to place Amelia in her crib with gentle precision. "When you were born. He struggled to connect, felt nothing at first. Would stand over your crib looking at you like you were a stranger's child he was obligated to care for."

I recoil physically. "Don't compare me to him."

"I'm not comparing who you'll become. I'm saying the struggle to bond isn't unique to monsters."

Mom turns to face me fully.

"Good men experience it too. What matters is what you do with that struggle. Your father chose to let it harden into indifference, then cruelty. You can choose differently."

"Then help me." The plea escapes before I can stop it. "Tell me how."

"I can't teach you to love your daughter, Adrian. That's something you have to figure out yourself." Mom's expression is gentle but firm. "But I can tell you this—you're running out of time."

"For what?"

"To save your family." She crosses her arms. "You're losing Sophie. I can see it. The distance growing between you every day, the way she's stopped fighting for this relationship and started just surviving it."

My jaw clenches in understanding of what she’s referring to. "Nothing's happening between Sophie and Bellamy."

"Not yet." Mom's eyes hold mine. "But when it does, you'll have no one to blame but yourself."

The words hit like shrapnel. Multiple wounds, all true. Not if, but when.

"I don't know how to fix it," I admit quietly. The confession costs everything. "I don't know how to be what they need."

Mom crosses to me, places her hand on my cheek like she used to when I was a child seeking comfort.

"Then figure it out. Fast." Her voice is gentle now, maternal. "Before you lose them both."

She leaves me standing in the nursery, alone with my sleeping daughter and the devastating truth I can no longer avoid.

I'm losing Sophie to my own absence. To my inability to show up when it matters.

And I have no idea how to stop it from happening.