Please Harder, Professor

Chapter 69

Adrian’s POV

"You can't even hug her in public," I repeat, the words tasting like poison and satisfaction in equal measure.

Cassian's face darkens further, and I can see his control fracturing at the edges. Good. Let him feel what it's like to want something he can't have, to be trapped by circumstances beyond his control.

But the impulse to push further overwhelms whatever rational thought I have left. The need to prove something, to Sophie, to Cassian, to myself, burns through my chest like acid.

"Like this," I say, and before anyone can react, I slide my arm around Sophie's shoulders and pull her against my side.

Her body goes rigid against mine, but for one perfect second, she fits exactly where she belongs. The familiar warmth of her, the way her head naturally tilts toward my shoulder despite her resistance—it's everything I've been craving for six days of hell.

The reaction is instantaneous and devastating.

Security officers surge forward like a tide of navy uniforms and radio static, their hands rough as they twist my arm behind my back with practiced efficiency.

The pain shoots through my shoulder, but it's nothing compared to the sound that tears from Sophie's throat.

"Wait, no!" she cries out, stepping forward instinctively. "Don't hurt him!"

For a moment, hope flickers in my chest. She still cares. She still—

But then I see her eyes sweep the gathering crowd, the phones held high like weapons, the eager faces of students ready to capture every second of our public destruction.

Her expression shifts, closing off, becoming hollow in a way that cuts deeper than the officer's grip on my wrist.

"I don't want to press charges. Just..." Sophie's voice turns flat, emotionless, "Take him away."

The words land like physical blows, each one precisely calculated to inflict maximum damage. She's not protecting me—she's disposing of me with clinical efficiency.

I meet her eyes over the officer's shoulder as they start to drag me toward the exit, searching for some flicker of the woman who used to look at me like I was worth saving. Instead, I see only pain—raw, exhausted pain that mirrors the ache in my own chest.

We're destroying each other in public, performing our dysfunction for an audience of strangers with smartphones, and I can't seem to stop. Even now, being arrested like a common criminal, part of me wants to fight my way back to her.

"Adrian, please," Sophie's voice cracks as they lead me down the hallway, and I hear something broken in it that makes me stumble. "Just leave me alone."

The plea hits me like a sledgehammer to the chest. After everything we've been through, all the intimacy we've shared, she's begging me to disappear from her life like I'm some kind of stalker.

Then, quieter, barely audible over the shuffle of feet and murmur of voices: "Peaches."

The word stops me cold.

Everything stops. My breathing, my heartbeat, the desperate struggle against the officers' grip. Even the world seems to pause as that single word, our word, sacred and inviolate, cuts through the chaos like a blade.

Peaches.

Our safe word. The one boundary that has never been crossed, never been questioned, never been weaponized. The word that means stop, that means no, that means you've gone too far and need to step back immediately.

She said it knowing damn well I can't go against it. She used the one command I can never ignore, no matter what I want, no matter how desperate I am. She took something pure between us and turned it into a weapon.

The betrayal is so complete, so devastating, that I stop fighting entirely. My body goes limp in the officers' hands as they continue dragging me away, but my mind is reeling with the implications.

Sophie didn't just tell me to leave her alone—she invoked the one principle I've never violated. She crossed a line I didn't even know existed, consciously and deliberately, knowing it would destroy something fundamental between us.

She knows I can't fight that word. She knows I won't.

And that knowledge, that calculated use of our most sacred boundary, tells me exactly how far gone we really are.

***

Hours later, I sit in the back of Lolita's car while she navigates traffic with the kind of deadly calm that means she's furious.

The bail bondsman's office is behind us, my brief stint in a holding cell nothing but a humiliating blur of concrete walls and fluorescent lighting.

"When I said fight for her," Lolita says finally, her voice clipped with barely contained frustration, "I didn't mean staging a public spectacle. The whole internet is buzzing about your little performance."

"So be it." My jaw feels wired tight, every muscle in my face locked against the emotions threatening to spill over. "She won't talk to me. She blocked my number, she runs every time she sees me, she—"

"So you decided to get yourself arrested?" Lolita's laugh is sharp and humorless. "Brilliant strategy, Adrian. Really showing her your emotional maturity."

I stare out the passenger window at the city passing by, at normal people living normal lives without destroying everything they touch. "She won't even look at me."

"I figured that out." Lolita sighs, her anger softening into something that sounds like pity. "The question is, what are you going to do now? Because whatever happened back there, it wasn't fighting for her—it was self-sabotage with an audience."

"She said her safe word." The admission comes out broken, barely audible. "At the end, when they were taking me away, she said 'peaches.'"

Lolita goes quiet, absorbing the significance. She knows what that word means to us, what it represents.

"She weaponized it against me," I continue, my voice cracking slightly. "She used the one thing I've never violated, the one principle I've never broken, and she turned it into a command to stay away from her."

"Oh, Adrian." Lolita's voice is soft with understanding and regret.

"I can't betray that principle too," I whisper, more to myself than to her. "I can't become the kind of man who ignores safe words when they're inconvenient. That's the one line I've never crossed."

Lolita reaches over, her fingers gentle as she ruffles my hair like she used to when I was eighteen and the world felt like it was ending. The gesture is so familiar, so achingly reminiscent of simpler times, that I have to close my eyes against the flood of memory.

"Everything will work out somehow, Adrian," she says quietly. "But you need to be smarter about this. You need to think instead of just reacting."

"How?" The question comes out raw and desperate. "How do I fight for someone who's erected every possible barrier against me? How do I prove I've changed when she won't give me the chance?"

"I don't know," Lolita admits. "But storming her classroom and getting arrested isn't the answer. You're better than that."

I stare out the window at the darkening sky, wondering if I really am better than that, or if this is exactly who I've always been—a man who destroys everything he touches, including the one person who ever saw past the performance to something worth saving.

Sophie used our safe word to tell me to stay away. And God help me, I'm going to have to respect it, even if it kills me.

Even if there's no way back from the damage I've caused.