Sophie’s POV
The cramping starts in the middle of the night.
I wake gasping, hands flying to my belly, pain radiating through my abdomen like someone is twisting my insides with cruel, deliberate force.
For one terrifying moment, I can't breathe, can't think—I only feel the wrongness of my body rebelling against the life it's supposed to protect.
"Sophie." Adrian is beside me instantly, his voice cutting through the fog of panic. "Sophie, look at me. What's happening?"
"Cramps." The word comes out strangled. "Something's wrong. Something's—"
"I'm calling the doctor." He's already reaching for his phone, his other hand pressed against my belly, feeling for movement, for reassurance. "Just breathe. Stay calm."
Stay calm. As if that's possible when my body is contracting around our daughter, threatening to expel her weeks before she's ready.
Adrian speaks into the phone in clipped, precise sentences. I catch fragments—preterm contractions, thirty-four weeks, history of complications.
His voice is steady, controlled, calm in crisis. The professor disappears, replaced by someone harder, more capable.
"We're going to the hospital." He ends the call, already moving. "Bellamy!"
The door opens before he finishes shouting. Bellamy takes one look at me—pale, sweating, curled around my belly—and his face goes blank in that professional way I've learned to recognize.
"Car's out front in two minutes."
He disappears. Adrian helps me stand, wrapping a robe around my shoulders, guiding me toward the door with careful urgency. Every step sends fresh waves of pain through my abdomen.
"It's too early," I whisper. "Adrian, it's too early."
"The baby's strong. You're strong." His arm tightens around me. "We're going to be fine."
I want to believe him. I'm not sure I can.
***
The drive to the hospital is silent.
Bellamy's knuckles are white on the steering wheel, his jaw clenched tight as he runs every yellow light and takes corners faster than he should.
Adrian sits beside me in the backseat, my hand crushed in his grip, murmuring reassurances I can barely hear over the pounding of my own heart.
The hospital swallows us whole the moment we arrive. Wheelchair, triage, monitors strapped to my stomach, tracking the baby's heartbeat, tracking my contractions, tracking every vital sign that might indicate something wrong.
The examination takes forever—ultrasounds, blood pressure checks, fingers pressing against my cervix while I stare at the ceiling and try not to scream.
I watch the doctor's face for clues, any hint of what she's finding, but her expression gives nothing away.
"How bad is it?" I finally ask, unable to stand the silence. "Just tell me."
The doctor sets down her clipboard. "The baby's heartbeat is strong. No signs of distress."
"But?"
"But your body is under severe stress."
She pulls up a chair, sitting at my bedside with the kind of deliberate calm that tells me I won't like what comes next.
"You're experiencing preterm contractions. They're not active labor, not yet, but if we don't intervene, they could become active labor very quickly."
Adrian leans forward. "What kind of intervention?"
"Strict bed rest. No exceptions." The doctor's gaze shifts to me. "I mean it, Sophie. No getting up except to use the bathroom. No stress, no exertion, no anything that might push your body further than it can handle."
"For how long?"
"Until you deliver."
The words land like a prison sentence. Weeks. Possibly a month or more, trapped in bed, dependent on everyone around me, watching my independence drain away one hour at a time.
"And if I don't comply?"
"Then we risk early labor with potential complications. For you and the baby both."
I nod, promise to follow every order, meet every restriction, do whatever it takes to keep our daughter safe.
Inside, I'm screaming.
***
Back home, the apartment feels like a prison.
Adrian hovers—checking on me every fifteen minutes, adjusting pillows I don't need adjusted, bringing water I don't want to drink.
Bellamy maintains his post outside my door, a silent sentinel whose presence reminds me that even now, even confined to bed, I'm not trusted to take care of myself.
I lie against the pillows, staring at the walls, counting the cracks in the ceiling because there's nothing else to do.
Hours blur together. Morning becomes afternoon becomes evening. I sleep, wake, sleep again. The baby kicks against my palm, restless, reminding me why I'm enduring this. I press back, trying to communicate something I can't put into words.
‘I'm doing this for you. Please be worth it.’
The knock on my door comes late afternoon on the second day.
"Soph?" Cleo's voice, bright and determined. "You decent?"
Before I can answer, she bursts through the door with shopping bags hanging from both arms and a grin that refuses to acknowledge the gravity of anything.
"Moping is officially cancelled." She dumps the bags on my bed, narrowly missing my feet. "I have magazines, face masks, nail polish in colors that will horrify Adrian, and…" She turns toward the door. "Ayden! Stop lurking and bring the contraband!"
Ayden appears in the doorway, arms overflowing with snacks I definitely shouldn't eat—chocolate, chips, gummy worms, an entire sleeve of Oreos.
"The doctor said no stress," he offers with a sheepish grin. "Pretty sure sugar doesn't count."
"Sugar absolutely counts," I say, already reaching for the Oreos. "Give them here."
Cleo settles onto the bed beside me, kicking off her shoes and arranging herself against the headboard like she belongs there. Ayden takes the chair, immediately opening a bag of chips with zero regard for the crumbs.
"So." Cleo fixes me with a look. "How are you actually doing?"
"I'm fine."
"Liar."
"I'm managing."
"Better." She grabs a gummy worm, biting it in half. "Now, do you want to talk about it, or do you want me to distract you with the absolute disaster that was my date last Tuesday?"
Despite everything, I feel my lips twitch. "There was a date?"
"There was an attempt at a date." Cleo's expression shifts to theatrical horror. "Before Ayden and I figured our shit out, I was still trying to convince myself that other men existed. Spoiler: they do, and they're terrible."
"Hey," Ayden protests. "Not all of us."
"The jury's still out on you." Cleo waves dismissively before turning back to me. "So this guy—Marcus, stockbroker, supposedly very successful—takes me to this fancy restaurant downtown. White tablecloths, candles, the whole pretentious nightmare."
"That doesn't sound so bad."
"It wasn't. Until he started talking." Cleo shifts into what I assume is her impression of Marcus—deeper voice, exaggerated pompousness. "'I don't believe in tipping more than ten percent. The service industry needs to manage expectations.'"
"He didn't."
"He did. While the waiter was standing right there." Cleo shudders. "But wait, it gets worse. Halfway through dinner, he excuses himself to take a call. I'm sitting there, alone, picking at my overpriced salad—and his phone lights up on the table."
Ayden snorts. "Here it comes."
"A text. From someone named 'Gym Bunny' with three peach emojis." Cleo's voice rises with indignation. "Three! And the preview says, 'Can't wait to see you tonight, baby.'"
"What did you do?"
"I ordered the most expensive dessert on the menu, ate two bites, and told the waiter to put everything on Marcus's card because he'd insisted earlier." Cleo grins wickedly. "Then I walked out while he was still on the phone."
I laugh. "That's incredible."
"That's karma." She steals another gummy worm. "Your turn, Ayden. Tell her about the text."
Ayden's face immediately goes red. "Do I have to?"
"You absolutely have to."
He groans, sinking lower in the chair. "Fine. So last week, I'm texting Cleo, right? Being, you know, flirty."
"Aggressively flirty," Cleo clarifies. "Embarrassingly so."
"I thought I was being smooth." Ayden drags a hand down his face. "Anyway, I type out this whole message about how I can't stop thinking about her, how I want to see her later, maybe some... suggestive details."
"Very suggestive," Cleo adds helpfully.
"And I hit send." Ayden pauses for dramatic effect. "To my economics professor."
I choke on an Oreo. "No."
"Yes." He looks genuinely traumatized. "Professor Davidson. Sixty-three years old. Glasses. Cardigan collection. I sent him a text about how I wanted to—"
He cuts himself off, ears burning. "It was bad, Sophie. It was really bad."
"What did he say?"
"Nothing! He just looked at me in class the next day. For like three seconds too long." Ayden shudders. "I'm never recovering."
Cleo howls with laughter, the sound so loud and unrestrained that she actually snorts—which makes her laugh harder, which makes me laugh harder, until all three of us are gasping for breath and I've forgotten, just for a moment, everything waiting outside this room.
They stay for an hour. Cleo paints my nails a shade of electric purple that will definitely horrify Adrian. Ayden attempts a TikTok dance he saw online and fails so spectacularly that he nearly knocks over a lamp.
We eat too much sugar and talk about nothing important and pretend the world isn't falling apart.
When they finally leave, Cleo pauses at the door.
"Hey." She turns back, her expression softening into something serious. "Whatever happens—with the baby, with Adrian, with all of it—we're with you. You know that, right?"
My throat tightens. "I know."
"No matter what." She squeezes my hand, hard. "You're not alone in this, Soph. You never were."