Please Harder, Professor

Chapter 126

Adrian’s POV

I return home at seven PM, tie loosened, exhaustion carved into every muscle.

The meeting with the lawyers ran three hours longer than scheduled—another blackmail threat about the Masks & Submission footage, another parasite trying to extract money by threatening to release more damaging material.

I've been negotiating, deflecting, throwing money at ghosts from my past that refuse to stay buried.

The apartment is too quiet when I enter. No baby crying, no television murmuring in the background—just silence that feels wrong somehow, charged with tension I can't immediately identify.

Then I see them.

Bellamy is still here, well past his shift end. He's sitting beside Sophie on the couch, close but not touching, his hand resting on her shoulder as he guides her through what sounds like breathing exercises.

"In for four. Hold for four. Out for four." His voice is steady, calm, the kind of measured tone you use with someone on the edge of breaking.

Sophie is red-eyed, trembling visibly even from across the room. Her face is blotchy from crying, mascara smudged beneath her eyes.

She's staring at nothing, hands clasped so tightly in her lap that her knuckles have gone white. Clearly in crisis. Clearly destroyed by something.

My stomach drops. "What happened?"

Bellamy's gaze meets mine, and I read everything I need to know before he speaks.

‘Failure. Your failure.’

He explains with clinical efficiency, keeping his voice low and controlled. Sophie went to campus this afternoon to submit Independent Study paperwork. Paparazzi ambushed her in the parking lot.

Someone tipped them off—they were waiting, organized, ready. They swarmed her and Amelia the moment she exited the building. Cameras flashing directly in the baby's face despite Sophie begging them to stop.

Aggressive enough that Sophie was jostled in the crowd and nearly dropped the carrier.

"Nearly dropped—" The words stick in my throat.

"She didn't," Bellamy clarifies, but his jaw is tight. "But it was close. They had her surrounded, wouldn't let her through to her car."

He continues describing how he had to physically push through the crowd to get them to safety, how Sophie was crying and shaking by the time they reached the vehicle, how Amelia screamed the entire drive home.

My immediate reaction is fury—white-hot and consuming. At the paparazzi for their disgusting behavior. At whatever publications employ them. At the invasion, the harassment, the way they treat my family like entertainment instead of human beings.

I want names. Want to sue them into oblivion, make them pay for terrorizing a woman and her infant daughter. But beneath the anger is something worse—crushing guilt that sits in my chest like a stone.

I should have been there. Should have remembered Sophie had that appointment today—she mentioned it two days ago over breakfast, and asked if I wanted to come along. I said I'd check my schedule and never followed up.

Should have driven her myself, anticipated the threat, and protected them. Instead, I was across town in a lawyer's office, throwing money at problems Sophie doesn't even know exist, fighting battles in the shadows while she needed me in the present.

Sophie hasn't looked at me since I walked in. She's still staring at nothing, still reliving whatever trauma unfolded in that parking lot. Her voice comes out hollow when she finally speaks, barely above a whisper.

"They wouldn't stop. I kept begging them—the flashes were scaring her, she was terrified—but they wouldn't stop." Her hands tremble harder. "I almost dropped her, Adrian. Almost dropped our daughter on concrete while they took pictures."

The words cut through me like a blade. I move toward the couch, wanting to comfort her, needing to do something useful.

Bellamy stands, stepping back to give us space.

He and I exchange a loaded look across Sophie's head—silent communication that I interpret as both "I've got her covered" and "You should have been there." Accusation without words. Judgment I deserve.

He prepares to leave, gathering his jacket from the chair.

"I'll be back tomorrow. Earlier shift." The statement is directed at me, not Sophie. A reminder that he'll be here when I'm not. That he's proven more reliable than the man who's supposed to be Sophie's partner.

Bellamy exits without ceremony, door closing quietly behind him.

I sit beside Sophie, careful not to crowd her, reach for her hand tentatively. "Sophie, I'm so…"

She flinches when I touch her. Not violently, not like she's afraid of me specifically, just a full-body recoil from contact. From everything. She's retreating into herself, pulling inward to some protected space where nothing can reach her.

I withdraw my hand, try again with just words. "I should have been there, should have driven you myself. I'm sorry."

"It's fine." The automatic response, empty of meaning. Hollow forgiveness that costs her nothing because she's not really present enough to give or withhold it. "You were working. I know."

But I wasn't working—not the way she thinks. I was dealing with blackmail, with threats, with the consequences of decisions I made before she entered my life.

Fighting battles Sophie doesn't even know about because I've chosen to keep her in the dark about just how many people want to destroy us. Paying off parasites, negotiating settlements, protecting our future by throwing money at the past.

She needed me in the present, and I wasn't there.

The devastating truth settles over me with terrible clarity: Bellamy saw Sophie's crisis and responded.

Bellamy held her together while I was elsewhere. Bellamy is becoming the person she relies on because I keep failing to show up when it matters.

I'm losing her. Not to infidelity or betrayal, but to simple absence. To my inability to be present in the moments that count.

"I don't want to leave the house anymore," Sophie says quietly, still not looking at me. Her voice is flat, defeated. "Not for classes when they resume, not for appointments. Not for anything. I'll do everything remotely, virtual. I just… I can't go out there again. Can't face them."

I watch her retreating further into herself, becoming smaller right in front of me. She's becoming a prisoner of our choices—of the relationship we built in secret, of the scandal we created, of the life we thought we could have despite everything working against us.

And the man pulling her back toward safety, the one she trusts to protect her when the world closes in, isn't me.

It's Bellamy.

The realization sits heavy in my chest. I've spent weeks fighting external threats—paparazzi, blackmailers, the university administration, public opinion. Throwing money and lawyers and carefully worded threats at problems I thought I could control.

But I can't control this. Can't negotiate my way back into Sophie's trust. Can't pay someone to make her look at me the way she used to.

I failed her today in the most fundamental way possible. And Bellamy was there to pick up the pieces.

"We'll figure it out," I say, knowing the words are inadequate. "I'll make sure you're safe. That you both are."

Sophie nods mechanically, still staring at nothing.

I sit beside her in the quiet apartment, close enough to touch but unable to bridge the distance between us.

And I wonder how many more failures it will take before she stops letting me try.