Please Harder, Professor

Chapter 114

Sophie’s POV

The room is quiet when Adrian finishes. I don't speak.

The weight of fifteen years presses down on me—violence and sacrifice, betrayal and redemption, a man I thought I knew revealed as someone far more complicated than I ever imagined.

Adrian sits on the edge of my bed, shoulders hunched, hands clasped so tight his knuckles have gone white.

He won't look at me. His gaze is fixed on some point on the floor, as if meeting my eyes might shatter whatever fragile composure he's managed to maintain.

He's waiting for the verdict. For me to recoil. To see him as the monster he believes himself to be.

I reach for him instead.

"Adrian."

He flinches at the sound of his name, but doesn't pull away when I take his hands. I uncurl his fingers—one by one, gentle but insistent, and hold them between my own. His palms are cold, trembling slightly.

"Look at me."

He doesn't. "Sophie, you don't have to…"

"Look at me."

Finally, his gaze lifts. Those storm-gray eyes are raw, exposed, stripped of every wall he's spent years building. I've never seen him like this. Vulnerable. Terrified. Waiting for the blow he's convinced is coming.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"You should." His voice is hoarse. "After everything I just told you."

"I'm not going anywhere," I repeat, squeezing his hands. "Not because what you did was right. Some of it wasn't—you know that, I know that. But I understand now."

"Understand what?"

"You." I shift closer, ignoring the protest from my aching back. "The walls, the control, the way you hold everything so tight it might shatter if you loosen your grip for even a second. I couldn't make sense of it before. Now I can."

Adrian shakes his head slowly. "You're not listening. I hurt people, Sophie. I was part of something that destroyed lives. I made choices that…"

"You were surviving." The words come out fierce, certain. "You were twenty-three and broken and drowning, and you did what you had to do to keep your head above water. That doesn't make it right, but it makes it human."

"Human." He laughs—a bitter, hollow sound. "Is that what you call it?"

"What would you call it?"

"Weakness. Cowardice. Letting someone else's abandonment turn me into a weapon." He pulls one hand free, dragging it through his hair. "I had choices, Sophie. I could have walked away. Found another path. Instead, I let my father shape me into exactly what he wanted."

"And then you walked away anyway. When it mattered most."

"I destroyed my entire family to save one man."

"That man is downstairs right now." I catch his hand again, refusing to let him retreat. "Watching over us. Protecting me because you asked him to. Whatever you did, Adrian, whatever you were—it wasn't for nothing. Bellamy is alive because of you."

His composure cracks.

It starts small—a tremor in his jaw, a hitch in his breathing. Then something breaks behind his eyes, and the man who's always been so controlled, so untouchable, falls apart in front of me.

"How can you still want me?" The question comes out ragged, desperate. "After everything I've done. Everything I am. How can you sit there and hold my hands like I'm not…"

"Like you're not what?"

"A monster." The word tears out of him. "The things I did for my father. The people I hurt. The man I became. You should be running, Sophie. You should be taking our daughter and getting as far away from me as possible."

"Is that what you want?"

"No." His voice breaks completely. "God, no. I want—" He stops, struggling for words. "I want to deserve you. I want to be the man you see when you look at me, not the one I know I really am."

I pull him toward me.

He resists at first—old instincts, old walls trying to reassert themselves. But I don't let go, and eventually he folds. His arms wrap around me carefully, mindful of my belly, but there's desperation in the way he holds on. Like I'm the only thing keeping him from drowning.

He buries his face in my hair. His shoulders shake.

I hold him while he breaks apart.

"You rebuilt yourself," I murmur against his temple. "You walked away from that world and became someone different. You're trying to be better. That counts, Adrian. It has to count."

"Does it?" The words are muffled, barely audible. "Does trying count when you've already done so much damage?"

"Yes." I press my lips to his hair. "It counts. It's the only thing that counts."

We stay like that for a long time—tangled together in the darkness, his body shaking with sobs he's probably been holding back for fifteen years.

I don't try to stop him. Don't offer empty reassurances or meaningless platitudes. I just hold on.

Eventually, the trembling subsides. His breathing evens out. He doesn't let go.

"I don't know how to do this," he says quietly, his lips moving against my shoulder. "Be what you need. What the baby needs."

His hand finds my belly, palm spreading across the swell. "I wasn't built for softness. Wasn't taught how to love without controlling, without breaking things."

"Then we'll figure it out together."

"What if I can't? What if I'm too damaged to…"

"Adrian." I pull back just enough to see his face—tear-streaked, exhausted, more open than I've ever seen it. "I'm not asking you to be perfect. I'm not asking you to magically transform into someone you're not."

"Then what are you asking?"

"Try." I cup his face in my hands, thumbing away the wetness on his cheeks. "That's all. Just try. Show up. Be present. Let me see you—the real you, not the mask you think you need to wear."

He's quiet for a long moment, searching my eyes for something—doubt, hesitation, the rejection he's still waiting for. Whatever he finds makes his expression shift, soften into something almost like hope.

"I want to try." His voice is rough but steady. "I want to be what you need. What our baby needs. I don't know if I can—I don't know if I'm capable of being the man you deserve. But I want to."

I kiss his forehead. Soft and gentle. A benediction he doesn't believe he's earned.

"That's enough."

"Is it?"

"For now." I settle back against the pillows, pulling him with me. He curls around me carefully, his hand never leaving my belly, his breath warm against my neck. "For now, it's enough."

It's not a promise. Not a guarantee that everything will be fine, that his past won't catch up to us, that we'll somehow transform into the family neither of us knows how to be.

But it's more than he's ever offered.