Adrian’s POV
It’s late evening, and for the first time in weeks, Sophie and I are truly alone.
I find her in the kitchen washing the teacups Derek and Emma used, her movements slow and deliberate. She looks different tonight. Some of the brittleness that's defined her for weeks has eased.
Emma's visit did something, opened something in Sophie that's been locked tight since Amelia was born.
I lean against the doorframe, watching her. She must sense my presence because she glances over her shoulder, meets my gaze. Doesn't look away.
"They can wait until morning." I say, my voice coming out lower than usual.
Sophie sets down the cup she's holding, dries her hands on a towel with careful precision. "I should check on Amelia first."
"She's asleep." I push off the doorframe, crossing the kitchen in three steps. "And I'm asking you to come here. To me."
Something flickers in her eyes—not the automatic resistance I've grown accustomed to, but consideration. Possibility.
When I reach for her, she doesn't pull away. Lets me draw her close, my hands settling on her waist. The familiarity of her body against mine—curves I memorized months ago, softness that's changed but is still fundamentally her, sends heat through my chest.
I kiss her tentatively at first, testing, waiting for her to flinch or retreat. But she doesn't. Instead, she leans into it, her lips parting beneath mine with a small sound that goes straight through me.
The kiss deepens, grows urgent. Months of distance and frustration and longing pouring into this reconnection. My hands move up her back, tangling in her hair, pulling her closer.
She responds the way she used to—fingers gripping my shirt, body pressing against mine with need that matches my own.
This. This is what I've been craving. Not just the physical act but the connection, the proof that we still exist beneath the exhaustion and anger.
That Sophie and Adrian—the people we were before pregnancy and scandal and sleepless nights—are still here, still capable of this consuming desire.
"Bedroom," I murmured against her mouth.
She nods, breathless, and I guide her down the hallway with my hand on the small of her back. The bedroom door closes behind us with a soft click. I turn her to face me, backing her against it, my body caging hers.
"Adrian—" Her voice carries uncertainty mixed with want.
"I'll be careful." I kiss her neck, the sensitive spot below her ear that always makes her gasp. She does, tilting her head to give me better access. "I know you're still healing, but I need this. Need you."
My hands find the hem of her shirt, slip beneath the fabric to feel warm skin. She's softer now, her body changed by pregnancy in ways that should feel foreign but don't. Just different. Still her. Still mine.
I lift the shirt over her head, dropping it somewhere behind us. She's not wearing a bra—hasn't been lately, the nursing making traditional undergarments impractical. The sight of her bare breasts, fuller than before, nipples darkened, makes my mouth go dry.
"Beautiful," I breathe, hands cupping the weight of them carefully. "You're still so fucking beautiful."
Sophie's breath hitches. "They're not… I'm not—"
"You are." I cut off her protest with another kiss, deeper this time, possessive. My thumbs brush over her nipples gently, mindful of sensitivity. She arches into the touch despite herself, a small moan escaping.
We move to the bed in a tangle of limbs and desperate kisses. I lay her down carefully, hovering over her as I work at the button of her jeans. She lifts her hips to help me slide them down, taking her underwear with them.
The sight of her fully bare beneath me—this woman I've been living with but haven't touched in months—makes something primal surge in my chest.
Mine. She's mine.
I strip off my own clothes with less care, letting them fall wherever they land. When I settle between her thighs, feeling her warmth against me, Sophie's hands come up to grip my shoulders.
"I've missed this," she whispers, eyes dark with desire and something more vulnerable. "Missed you."
The words hit harder than they should. I capture her mouth again, one hand sliding between us to touch her where she's already wet. She gasps into the kiss, hips rolling against my hand instinctively.
"Still so responsive," I murmur, stroking her with practiced precision. I know exactly how to touch her—the pressure she needs, the rhythm that makes her fall apart. "Still mine, aren't you?"
"Yes," Her answer comes out breathless, desperate. "Yes, please…"
I work her higher, feeling her body tense and climb beneath my touch. When she's close, trembling on the edge, I position myself and push inside slowly. Carefully. Mindful of her healing body but unable to deny myself this reconnection any longer.
Sophie's back arches, fingers digging into my shoulders hard enough to leave marks. "Adrian…"
"I've got you." I start moving, keeping the rhythm slow and controlled despite every instinct screaming to take her harder, faster. "Just feel me. Feel us."
And for a moment, it works. She responds the way she used to—gasping my name, fingers tangling in my hair, pulling me down for kisses that taste like desperation and need.
Then Sophie’s hand comes up against my chest, not pulling me closer. "Wait. We need to check on Amelia."
I don't wait, keep kissing the line of her throat. "It's okay. She's sleeping. We have time."
"Adrian. Stop for a second."
I pull back reluctantly. Sophie's eyes are on the baby monitor across the room—the green light steady, no red spike of sound—but her expression has already shifted.
That inward listening look I've learned to recognize. The one that means half her mind is always in the nursery even when her body is here with me.
"She's fine," I say.
"She was fussy an hour ago. She barely ate."
"And now she's asleep."
"I just want to check on her."
I exhale, frustration edging through. "Sophie, she's asleep. The monitor is right there. You'd hear her."
"That's not…" She sits up, pulling the sheet with her. "That's not what I'm asking. I want to see her, make sure she's okay. It'll take two minutes."
"And then what? We lose the moment and you come back and we try to remember what we were doing before you needed to verify our daughter is still breathing?"
The words come out meaner than I meant them. I see the exact second they land.
Sophie goes very still. "Excuse me?"
"It’s just…" I reach for her. "I mean we haven't had this in months. Don't I get to have you for ten minutes without her being the center of it?"
"She's our daughter, Adrian."
"I know what she is."
"Do you?" Sophie is off the bed now, pulling her shirt back over her head with jerky, angry movements. "Because it sounds like you want me to choose between wanting to check on her and having sex with you."
"That's not—"
"It sounds like you think she's an inconvenience." Her voice is rising now, trembling with something that isn't quite anger yet but is getting there. "Like she's something interrupting your real life instead of being your real life."
"That's not what I said and you know it."
"It's what you meant." She yanks her jeans on, fingers fumbling with the button. "Ten minutes without her being the center. She's three months old, Adrian. She is the center, she's supposed to be the center."
"Don't lecture me about what fatherhood is supposed to look like."
"Then don't give me a reason to!"
I sit up, pulling on my own clothes now, anger replacing the warmth that was there a minute ago. "You were the one who wanted this too, Sophie. Don't rewrite history to make yourself the saint and me the villain."
"I wanted you. I wanted my partner. I didn't want someone who acts like our daughter is a furniture he has to walk around to get to what he actually wants."
"That's not true."
"Isn't it?"
She's at the door now, pausing, looking back at me. Her face is flushed, eyes bright with something worse than anger. Disappointment.
"When was the last time you held her just because you wanted to? Not because I handed her to you. Not because someone was watching. Just because you wanted to."
I don't have an answer.
She doesn't wait for one. The bedroom door closes behind her with a soft click, and I'm alone on the edge of the bed, half-dressed, listening to her footsteps fade down the hall toward the nursery.
Toward our sleeping daughter who wasn't crying, who didn't need anything. Who Sophie went to anyway, because that's what being a parent means, and I…
I sit in silence and try not to think about what it means that I resented a baby who wasn't even making a sound.