Please Harder, Professor

Chapter 60

I lie on my bed with a cool washcloth pressed to my forehead, trying to will the nausea away through sheer determination.

The familiar weight of our old comforter around me should be comforting, but instead everything feels wrong—the colors too bright, the smells too strong, my own body suddenly foreign and untrustworthy.

When I hear Cleo's key in the lock, followed by the rustle of what sounds like multiple pharmacy bags, I know she's been thinking the same impossible thought that's been circling my mind since I stopped throwing up.

"Okay, I got three different brands," she announces, appearing in my doorway with a determined expression that doesn't quite hide the worry in her eyes. "Because if we're doing this, we're doing it right."

She dumps the contents of the bags onto my dresser—pregnancy tests in different boxes, each one promising accuracy and discreteness, as if there's anything discrete about your entire world potentially shifting on its axis.

"Cleo, you didn't have to give up your plans for me."

"Ayden will understand. This is more important than dinner and a movie.” She makes a pause. “And even the best sex I ever had that usually follows after."

“You finally admit he’s your best sex you ever had?” I force a smile.

“Shush.” She picks up the first box, reading the instructions with the same intensity she brings to studying for finals. "He's been acting weird lately anyway. Probably good to give him some space to figure out whatever's going on in his head."

The pregnancy tests feel surreal in my shaking hands, like props from someone else's life. How did I get here? How did I become the girl who needs to take pregnancy tests because she's been reckless with her body and her choices?

I follow the instructions mechanically—pee on stick, wait three minutes, face whatever comes next. The clinical simplicity of it feels absurd given how monumentally this could change everything.

We sit on the cold bathroom floor in tense silence, backs against the bathtub, watching the timer on Cleo's phone count down with excruciating slowness. Each second feels like an eternity, and I can hear my own heartbeat thundering in my ears.

"Whatever happens," Cleo says quietly, "we'll figure it out, okay? You're not alone in this."

I nod, not trusting my voice to remain steady. Two minutes and thirty seconds. Two minutes and fifteen seconds. The numbers blur as my eyes fill with tears I'm trying desperately to hold back.

When the timer finally beeps, the sound cuts through the silence like a knife. I can't bring myself to look at the test sitting on the counter, can't face whatever truth is waiting there.

"Two lines," Cleo says quietly, her voice carefully neutral.

I stare at the plastic stick, and the pink lines are undeniable. Clear as day, bold as a declaration, impossible to misinterpret.

Pregnant. The word bounces around my skull like a pinball, refusing to connect to my body or my life or the complete fucking disaster my situation has become.

"How?" Cleo asks carefully, and I know she's not asking about the mechanics of reproduction. "I mean, who...?"

"Adrian." The answer comes without hesitation, automatic and certain. "We didn't use protection. Not once."

The admission hangs in the air between us, evidence of just how thoroughly I've lost control of my own life.

What kind of person has unprotected sex with someone whose emotional availability is questionable at best? What kind of person risks this kind of consequence for a few moments of feeling claimed and desired?

Cleo closes her eyes, her nostrils flaring as she clearly fights the urge to lecture me about safe sex and poor life choices. When she opens them again, her voice is carefully controlled.

"Are you going to tell him?"

I laugh, but the sound comes out broken and bitter. "Tell him what? 'Hey Adrian, remember how you can't commit to anything deeper than a BDSM scene? Well, surprise, you're going to be a father'?"

The words taste like ash in my mouth. Adrian Lewis, the man who'd made it crystal clear he doesn't do relationships, doesn't do feelings, doesn't do anything that resembles normal human connection beyond physical dominance, is the father of my unborn child.

"Oh god," I whisper as the full reality crashes over me in waves. "He's going to run. The second I tell him, he's going to disappear again, and this time it'll be permanent."

I think about this morning, about the way he'd laughed in his kitchen, the playful chase through his house, the gentle way he'd kissed me in the shower.

For a few hours, I'd glimpsed the man he might be underneath all that careful control, and now I'm about to destroy it all with news he'll see as the ultimate trap.

"Sophie," Cleo says softly, but I can't stop the spiral of panic that's building in my chest.

"He told me once that he doesn't do forever."

I continue, my voice rising with each word.

"For him commitment is a cage, he'd rather be alone than tied down. And now I'm carrying his child, and he's going to think I did this on purpose, that I'm trying to force him into something he's spent his entire adult life avoiding."

The sobs come suddenly, violent and overwhelming. I dissolve into exhausted tears, my body shaking with the force of emotions I can't control or categorize. Fear, grief, anger, love—they all blend together into something that feels like drowning.

Cleo immediately pulls me down to lie on the cold bathroom tiles, stroking my hair with infinite patience while I fall apart on her shoulder.

"Hey, listen to me," she says softly, her voice cutting through my hysteria. "You said it yourself—you two have been making progress. Maybe it's not as hopeless as you think."

"But what if it is?" I whisper against her shirt. "What if this is the thing that finally proves to him that I'm more trouble than I'm worth?"

"Then he's an idiot," she says fiercely. "And you and this baby will be better off without him."

The word 'baby' makes it real in a way the test couldn't. There's a life growing inside me—Adrian's child, half of him and half of me, created from those moments when he'd let his guard down enough to be gentle.

"I don't know how to do this," I admit. "I don't know how to be pregnant, how to be a mother, how to tell the father that he's about to become everything he's terrified of being."

"Nobody knows how to do this at first," Cleo says, still stroking my hair. "But you're stronger than you think, Sophie. And whatever Adrian's reaction is, whatever he chooses, that's about him, not about you or your worth or your ability to handle this."

I want to believe her, want to find that strength she thinks I have hidden somewhere inside me.

But right now, lying on the bathroom floor with positive pregnancy tests scattered around us, all I can think about is Adrian's face this morning, relaxed and almost happy, and how I'm about to change everything.

The question isn't whether I'm strong enough to handle his reaction.

The question is whether he is.