Please Harder, Professor

Chapter 81

Sophie’s POV

The room feels smaller with all four of us in it. I sit propped against the hospital pillows, Adrian a solid presence beside me on the edge of the bed.

My father and Emma have taken the chairs opposite—close enough that I can see every emotion that crosses their faces, far enough that the distance between us feels like a chasm.

The silence stretches until it becomes unbearable. The monitors beep their steady rhythm. Someone's shoes squeak in the hallway outside. I watch Emma's hands twist in her lap, watch my Dad’s jaw work like he's chewing on words he can't decide whether to swallow or spit out.

Then the questions begin.

"How long?" Emma’s voice is barely above a whisper, but it carries the weight of every sleepless night she's spent since this started. "How long has this been going on, Sophie?"

I take a breath. Force myself to hold her gaze. "Since last fall. It started... it's complicated. But months. It's been months."

"Months." She repeats the word like it's a foreign language. "You've been involved with your professor for months, and you never said a word. Not one word, Sophie! We’re family. I thought we told each other everything."

The accusation cuts deeper than any anger could. I've spent my entire life being the responsible one, the dependable one, the daughter who held the family together when everything threatened to fall apart.

I've never kept secrets from her—not because I didn't want to, but because there was never room for my own chaos when I was too busy managing everyone else's.

Until Adrian. Until I found something that was mine alone, something I couldn't share without losing it.

"I wanted to tell you." The words feel inadequate. "I just... I didn't know how. I didn't know what this was, at first. And then it became something I couldn't explain."

My father leans forward, his elbows on his knees. His questions are sharper than Emma's, more pointed—the kind of questions I should have asked myself months ago.

"He was your professor. He had authority over your grades, your academic future. Did you understand what you were getting into? Did you understand the power imbalance?"

I feel Adrian tense beside me, but he doesn't speak. This is my interrogation of the weather.

"I understood. I knew the risks. I knew what people would say, what they'd think."

My voice is steadier than I expected.

"But it wasn't... he didn't coerce me. He didn't promise me grades or threaten my future. What happened between us—I chose it. Every step of the way."

"You were twenty-two." Dad’s tone isn't cruel, but it's relentless. "He's what, nearly forty? He's been teaching for over a decade. You're telling me a man with that much experience didn't know exactly what he was doing when he started pursuing a student?"

"He didn't pursue me." The defense comes automatically, even though I'm not entirely sure it's true. "We pursued each other. It was mutual. It was—"

"Sophie." Emma’s voice cracks, and the sound of it stops me cold. "We were worried sick. We had no idea what was happening in your life. And then suddenly you're unconscious in a hospital, pregnant, your face plastered across the entire internet…"

She presses a hand to her mouth, fighting for composure.

"Your sisters have been asking about you constantly. Madison cried for hours when she saw the video. She didn't understand what was happening, just that her big sister was hurt and people were saying terrible things about her."

Madison—fourteen years old, still young enough to believe I have all the answers. The thought of her watching that footage, reading those comments, trying to make sense of the chaos—it guts me.

"I'm sorry." The words are wholly inadequate, but I say them anyway. "I'm so sorry. I never meant for any of this to touch you. Any of you."

The conversation continues, exhausting in its thoroughness. They ask about the pregnancy—planned or accidental, what I intend to do, whether Adrian is prepared for fatherhood.

They ask about Lisette, about Cassian, about the scandal and its fallout. I answer as honestly as I can, watching their faces shift through shock, hurt, anger, confusion, and back again.

They're trying to be gentle. I can see them holding back, mindful of my condition, of the monitors tracking my vital signs, of the baby growing inside me who didn't ask to be born into this mess.

But the devastation is clear in the set of Emma's shoulders, in the furrow of my father's brow.

The betrayal of being kept in the dark for so long. The fear of discovering their daughter's secret life through a viral video instead of a conversation over the kitchen table.

I did this to them. No matter how I justify it to myself, I did this.

But slowly, something shifts. Emma reaches across the space between us and takes my hand. Her fingers are cold, trembling slightly, but her grip is firm.

"We have a lot to process," she says quietly. "I won't pretend I understand all of this, or that I'm not... hurt. Frightened. But you're my daughter, Sophie. That doesn't change because you made choices I wouldn't have made."

Dad exhales heavily, and some of the hardness drains from his posture. "Whatever happens next, you have our support. That's what family does. We show up, even when showing up is complicated."

The resolution isn't perfect. The tension hasn't dissolved, and the questions hanging in the air will need answers I'm not sure I have. But it's real. It's something to build on.

Then Dad turns to Adrian. His gaze is unflinching—the steady assessment of a man who's spent years protecting a family that wasn't his by blood but became his by choice.

When he speaks, his voice carries an authority that makes even Adrian straighten slightly.

"What are your intentions with my daughter?" The question lands like a stone in still water. "Are you planning to propose?"

"Dad!" My face burns. I want to disappear into the hospital bed, sink through the floor, evaporate entirely. "You can't just—"

"I can." He doesn't look at me. His eyes stay fixed on Adrian. "She's carrying your child. She's been through hell because of her relationship with you. The least you can do is give me a straight answer."

Adrian doesn't flinch. His expression remains composed, his voice steady and measured when he responds.

"I'm not playing games, Mr. Harrison. If I were, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't have stayed by her side through every moment of this. What exists between Sophie and me is real—more real than anything I've experienced in my adult life."

He pauses, choosing his next words with visible care.

"But decisions like that can wait. Until Sophie recovers fully. Until the court situation is resolved. Until we're not making choices under duress."

He doesn't say no. He doesn't say yes.

I know that kind of answer. I've heard Adrian deploy it before—calculated, careful, revealing nothing while appearing to reveal everything. The kind of response you give when you're hiding something, when you need to buy time without committing to a direction.

My parents leave with promises to return tomorrow. Emma kisses my forehead, Dad squeezes my shoulder, and then they're gone—back to a house full of my younger siblings, back to a life that's been upended by my choices.

Adrian squeezes my hand once they've left. "That went better than expected."

I nod, but I'm not really listening. My mind is already spiraling, picking apart his careful non-answer, searching for the truth he buried beneath measured words.

Will this work, me and Adrian? Can it possibly work?

Or am I walking toward another failure—another man who won't commit, another future built on foundations that were never solid enough to hold?