Please Harder, Professor

Chapter 108

Bellamy’s POV

The city lights spread out below me like scattered embers, cold and distant.

I lean against the balcony railing, cigarette burning between my fingers—a habit I thought I'd kicked years ago, resurrected by stress and proximity to a woman I shouldn't be thinking about.

I hear him before I see him.

Adrian moves with that controlled deliberation that tells me this isn't a casual conversation. His footsteps are measured, purposeful. The sliding door clicks shut behind him with quiet finality.

"Bellamy."

"Adrian." I don't turn around. "Little late for a social visit."

"This isn't social."

I take a drag, exhale slowly. "Didn't think so."

He moves to stand beside me, but not too close. We both stare out at the city, neither willing to be the first to make eye contact. The silence stretches, uncomfortable, heavy with things neither of us wants to say.

Adrian breaks first.

"Something's shifting." His voice is ice wrapped in silk. "Between you and Sophie."

I keep my expression neutral. "Is it?"

"Don't play stupid. It doesn't suit you."

"I'm not playing anything." I flick ash over the railing, watching it scatter in the wind. "I'm doing my job—watching her, protecting her, making sure she doesn't do something reckless. That's what you're paying me for."

"I'm not paying you."

"Figure of speech."

Adrian turns to face me. I feel his gaze boring into the side of my head, demanding I meet it. I don't.

"The way you look at her," he says quietly. "The patience you show. That softness that wasn't there before—do you think I'm blind?"

"I think you're paranoid."

"Am I?"

Now I turn. His eyes are cold, calculating—the Adrian I knew fifteen years ago, not the polished professor he pretends to be.

"She's pregnant with your child. She's exhausted, isolated, scared, and dealing with a scandal that would break most people." I say flatly.

"So yes, I show her patience. Yes, I'm softer than I was when I walked in the door. That's called doing my job properly."

"That's not what I'm seeing."

"Then maybe you should get your eyes checked."

The air between us turns caustic. Old wounds ripping open, scars we both pretend don't exist.

"I'm warning you." Adrian's voice drops, dangerous. "Whatever you think is happening, whatever you're feeling—stop it, now. Before it becomes something neither of us can control."

"You don't get to warn me about feelings." The bitterness surprises me, slipping through cracks I thought I'd sealed. "You don't get to stand there and lecture me about appropriate boundaries after everything—"

"After everything what?"

"You know what."

Silence. The kind that cuts.

Adrian steps closer, invading my space, forcing me to either hold my ground or retreat. I hold.

"Let me remind you why you're here." His voice is barely above a whisper now, but somehow more threatening than if he'd shouted. "You owe me. Do you need a refresher on why?"

I meet his gaze. "No."

"Are you sure? Because I'm starting to wonder if you've forgotten."

"I haven't forgotten a goddamn thing."

The memories surge up unbidden—fifteen years ago, both of us young and reckless and convinced we were untouchable. Adrian by blood, me by circumstance. Two men drowning in Marcus Lewis's empire, pretending we knew how to swim.

"Three days." Adrian's voice is soft, relentless. "That's how long they had you. Three days in that warehouse while my father negotiated."

"Adrian."

"Negotiated." He laughs, but there's no humor in it. "That's what he called it. Buying time. Running cost-benefit analyses. Calculating whether one man's life was worth the exposure of recovering him."

I remember. I remember all of it—the darkness, the pain, the certainty that I was going to die in that warehouse, surrounded by men who enjoyed their work.

"My father decided you weren't worth the risk." Adrian's words land like blows. "Acceptable losses, he said. The organization came first. Always."

"I know."

"But I wasn't willing."

He steps back, finally giving me space to breathe.

"I went against his orders. Walked into enemy territory alone with nothing but leverage I'd been secretly gathering for months. Information that could destroy both organizations. A dead man's switch."

"I know what you did."

"Do you? Do you really understand what it cost me?"

I don't answer. I don't have to. I've carried the weight of that debt for fifteen years—every day, every moment, a reminder of what Adrian sacrificed to pull me out of that hell.

"My father never forgave me." His voice cracks, just slightly. "The organization fractured. People died in the chaos that followed—people I knew, people who trusted me. To protect my mother, my family, I had to sever all ties. Disappear completely. Rebuild myself from nothing."

"Adrian…"

"You walked free because I burned my entire world down."

He meets my eyes, and for a moment I see the young man he used to be—not cold, not calculated, but desperate and determined and willing to sacrifice everything for a friend.

"That debt doesn't expire, Bellamy. It doesn't fade with time or dissolve with convenience."

The words hang between us, heavy and unavoidable.

"I know." My voice comes out rougher than I intended. "I've never forgotten. I never will."

"Then I'm asking you for professional distance." Adrian straightens, composure sliding back into place. I want to argue. Want to tell him he's seeing things that aren't there, projecting fears that have no basis in reality.

But the words won't come. Because some part of me—the part I've been trying to ignore, trying to suppress, trying to bury beneath fifteen years of walls—knows he's right.

"Fine." The word tastes like ash. "Professional distance. That's all this ever was."

Adrian studies me for a long moment, searching for cracks in my armor. Whatever he finds, or doesn't find, seems to satisfy him.

"Good."

He turns and walks away without another word. The sliding door opens, closes. I'm alone again with the city lights and the cigarette burning down to my fingers.

I stub it out on the railing. Light another.

Sophie is a job. A pregnant woman I'm paid—obligated—to protect. She's carrying another man's child, tangled up in another man's darkness. There's no room in that equation for whatever Adrian thinks he saw.

So why does his warning feel like a threat to something I can't name?

I think about her face when she held Noah at the lake. The way she looked at me when I told her about Olivia. The moment on the couch when our faces were inches apart and neither of us moved.

I think about the way she challenges me. The fire in her eyes when she's angry. The stubborn tilt of her chin that reminds me so much of—

No.

I crush that thought before it can fully form. Professional distance that's all this is, all it can ever be.

I stay on the balcony until my cigarette burns down to nothing, watching the city lights flicker in the darkness.

I don't have an answer to Adrian's accusation. And that terrifies me more than anything.