Please Harder, Professor

Chapter 124

Sophie’s POV

Three weeks. Twenty-one days of existing in a loop I can't escape. Diaper. Feed. Burp. Rock. Repeat. My hands move automatically now—muscle memory taking over where conscious thought has abandoned me.

I don't remember the specific moments anymore, just the endless cycle. The wet diapers blurring together with the dry ones. The bottles prepared at midnight and three AM and six AM blending into one continuous act of sustenance.

Adrian finds me in the kitchen after putting Amelia down. It's eleven PM—late enough that exhaustion makes everything feel surreal, early enough that the night still stretches ahead with all its potential disasters.

The apartment is finally quiet, no crying, no chaos. Just the two of us standing in opposite corners of our own life, the kitchen island between us like a demilitarized zone.

"We're failing," I say. No preamble, no softening. The truth sits between us like something we've both been circling for weeks, too afraid to name.

Adrian's shoulders tense. He sets down the water glass he was filling, the sound of it hitting the counter too loud in the silence. "Sophie…"

"No." I cut him off before he can deflect or make excuses or do whatever he's been doing for three weeks.

"We need to talk about this. Really talk. Not just—" I gesture vaguely at the space between us. "Not just existing in the same apartment and pretending everything's fine when it's clearly not."

He leans against the counter, arms crossed defensively. The overhead light casts harsh shadows across his face, making him look older than he is, worn down. "What do you want me to say?"

"I want you to be honest." My voice comes out sharper than intended.

"I want you to stop hiding in your study, in work emails, in that phone that's apparently more important than your daughter crying in the next room.”

I didn't take a pause, kept on going. “I want you to show up for this, for us, instead of treating us like some obligation you're performing."

Adrian's jaw tightens. "That's not fair. I'm trying."

"Are you? Because from where I'm standing, you're doing the bare minimum."

I laugh, bitter and exhausted.

"You change diapers when I force you. You hold her when I hand her to you. But you disappear the moment things get difficult. Every time Amelia cries for more than five minutes, you suddenly have urgent emails to answer."

"And what about you?"

His voice rises, frustration finally breaking through his careful control.

"You act like you have it all figured out, like you're this perfect mother who knows exactly what she's doing. But I see you, Sophie. I see how you look at her sometimes. Like she's some puzzle you can't solve."

The accusation hits harder because it's true. I grip the edge of the counter. "At least I'm trying to connect with her. At least I'm not—" I stop myself, but Adrian catches it.

"Not what? Say it."

"At least I'm not completely emotionally absent." The words come out quieter than I intended, but they land with devastating precision. "You look at Amelia and feel nothing. Don't deny it—I've watched you. You hold her like she's a stranger's baby you're obligated to babysit."

Adrian's face goes carefully blank. That mask he wears when he's been hit somewhere it actually hurts.

"And you look at me and see what exactly? A stranger? Because that's what it feels like. I look at you and I don't recognize the person standing in front of me."

"Good. Because I don't recognize myself either. I'm just… I'm just a vessel now. A food source."

I say, surprised by the venom in my own voice.

"Something that exists to keep another human alive while slowly dying inside. Every day I wake up and there's less of me, less of the person I used to be. And I don't know how to get her back."

The silence that follows is devastating. Adrian stares at me like he's seeing me for the first time in weeks. Maybe he is.

"Do you regret it?" His voice is careful, controlled, but I hear the fear underneath. "All of it—the pregnancy, Amelia. Us."

I should lie. Should offer reassurance, say of course not, how could I regret our daughter. But we've built our relationship on dangerous truths, on saying the things other people are too afraid to voice. And I'm so tired of pretending.

"Sometimes.” I whisper. “Sometimes I regret everything. Sometimes I lie awake at three in the morning while she's screaming and I think about the girl I used to be."

The admission feels like betrayal, like the worst thing I could possibly say. But it's true.

"The girl who walked into your lecture hall with her whole life ahead of her. Who had plans and dreams and a future that didn't involve being trapped in an apartment at twenty-two with a baby and a man who can barely look at her."

Adrian flinches like I've slapped him. "Sophie."

"But other times," I continue, needing him to hear all of it, not just the painful parts, "other times I look at Amelia and I think maybe it was worth it. Maybe all of this—the scandal, losing my old life, becoming someone I don't recognize—maybe it's worth it because she exists.”

I swallow hard, forcing myself to keep going.

“Because she's ours. Even when I don't know what I'm doing, even when I feel like I'm drowning, there's this small part of me that thinks maybe we can survive this."

We stand together in our broken kitchen, and neither of us knows how to save the other. The honest conversation we needed has only revealed how deep the damage goes. How far we've drifted from the people we used to be.

"I don't know how to fix this," Adrian says finally, his voice barely above a whisper. "I don't know how to be what you need. What she needs."

"Neither do I." The admission should feel like defeat, but there's strange relief in it too. In finally acknowledging that we're both lost, both failing, both terrified we've made irreversible mistakes.

A sound from the nursery breaks the moment. Not crying—just a small whimper, Amelia shifting in her sleep. Both of us tense automatically, waiting to see if it escalates. It doesn't. The whimper fades back into silence.

"I should check on her," I say, needing to escape from this conversation, from the weight of everything we've just admitted. "Make sure she's okay."

I walk toward the nursery on legs that feel unsteady. After a long moment, I hear Adrian's footsteps behind me. Following. Not abandoning me to face this alone, at least not tonight.

We stand side by side in the doorway, watching our daughter sleep. Amelia looks peaceful in the dim glow of her nightlight, tiny chest rising and falling with perfect rhythm. Innocent. Unaware of her parents' crisis happening just feet away.

‘Maybe I'm broken,’ I think, staring at Amelia's sleeping face. ‘Maybe this is why my own mother eventually walked away—discovered too late that some women simply aren't built for this. That maternal love isn't guaranteed just because you give birth.’

The thought terrifies me more than anything has in months. The possibility that I'm fundamentally flawed, that I'll repeat my mother's mistakes, that one day I'll look at this beautiful child and feel nothing but resentment for everything she cost me.

Adrian's hand finds mine in the darkness—tentative, uncertain, but still there.

I squeeze back, hold on because it's all I know how to do right now.

It's not hope, not healing. But it's something—a contact, a connection. An acknowledgment that we're both drowning but at least we're drowning together.

Maybe it's enough to survive another night.