Sophie’s POV
Morning light filters through the living room windows, too bright for how little I slept. My neck aches from the angle of the couch arm. My back protests when I try to sit up.
Amelia's cries cut through the apartment from down the hall. Not fussy crying, but the escalating kind, the kind that means she's been at it for a minute already and nobody has come.
Panic spikes through my exhaustion. I push off the couch, stumble toward the nursery in yesterday's clothes, hair flattened against one cheek from the throw pillow.
Then the crying stops. Not gradually. Cut off, mid-wail, the way it does when someone who knows what they're doing picks her up.
I slow down outside the nursery door. Push it open quietly.
Bellamy is already there. He has Amelia tucked against his shoulder, one hand cradling her head, the other pressing gently against her back.
He's swaying with that specific rhythm I've watched him use a hundred times. Humming low in his throat, something without a tune. Amelia's fist is curled into his shirt. Her eyes are closing again.
He glances up when he hears me, keeps his voice soft.
"She started up about a minute ago. I was already in the kitchen."
"You're early."
"Couldn't sleep." He shrugs one shoulder, careful not to disturb her. "Thought I'd get a jump on things."
I lean against the doorframe. The tension I didn't realize I was holding drains out of my shoulders all at once. My eyes burn, not from crying, but from the sudden, humiliating relief of not being alone in this.
"Thank you," I say. It comes out rougher than I meant.
"It's what I'm here for."
"It really isn't. Not at six in the morning. Not like this."
He doesn't answer that. Just looks at me over the top of my daughter's head for a long moment, something steady moving behind his eyes.
Footsteps in the hallway. Adrian.
He appears in the doorway freshly showered, shirt buttoned, hair combed. Looking put together in a way that makes my own disheveled reflection in the dresser mirror feel like an accusation.
"I heard her crying. Sophie, let me take her—I can do this, I can give her the bottle, I can…"
"Bellamy's already got her."
My voice comes out flatter than I intended. Adrian stops mid-sentence. "Oh."
"He's already got her," I repeat. "It's fine."
Adrian's eyes flick from me to Bellamy, back to me. Something in his jaw tightens. He opens his mouth, closes it. Tries again.
"I was going to make coffee. Do you want…"
"No."
He nods once, stiff. Then turns and walks back down the hallway. A few seconds later I hear his study door close with that deliberate softness that always sounds worse than slamming.
Bellamy doesn't comment, just keeps swaying.
I step further into the nursery, lower myself into the rocking chair like my legs have given out. Maybe they have. I press the heels of my hands against my eyes.
"Long night?" he asks quietly.
"I slept on the couch."
"I figured."
"We had another fight. A real one. The kind where you say things you actually meant and can't take back after."
I drop my hands. Stare at the ceiling. "And this morning he walked into the kitchen and said good morning like nothing happened. Like we could just—pour coffee and move on."
"Some people do that when they're scared."
"Yeah. Well." My laugh is thin. "I'm scared too. I'm just not pretending I'm not."
Bellamy transfers Amelia from his shoulder to the crook of his arm with practiced ease. She's fully asleep now, mouth slack, one tiny hand still gripping his shirt. He doesn't put her down. Just keeps holding her, keeps rocking.
"You didn't have to come in this early," I say.
"I know."
"You shouldn't have to. It's not your job to…"
"Sophie." His voice is gentle but it stops me. "I came in early because I had a feeling. That's it. You don't have to make it a bigger thing than it is."
"It is a bigger thing, though. That's the problem. You walked in here and she stopped crying before I even got out of the living room."
The words are out before I can decide whether to say them.
"Adrian walks in and offers to help like he's volunteering for community service, and it feels like I'm supposed to be grateful for the gesture. You don't do gestures. You just… Show up. And I don't know what to do with that."
He doesn't respond right away, just looks at me, steady, across the dim nursery.
"I'm not trying to do anything with it," he says finally. "I'm just here."
"That's what I mean." My voice cracks. I clear my throat. "That's the thing I don't know what to do with."
Amelia makes a small sound in her sleep. Bellamy looks down at her, adjusts her slightly, and keeps rocking.
"I'm supposed to be figuring this out with him. That's the whole point of the two of us being in this apartment together."
I wrap my arms around myself.
"That's the whole point of—any of it. And I'm sitting here at six in the morning, too tired to cry, and the only person in this house who's here with me is the one who's paid to be."
"I'm not here because I'm paid to be. Not today."
"I know." My eyes sting. "That's the other thing I don't know what to do with."
Silence settles between us. Not uncomfortable. Just heavy. The kind that says too much with nothing spoken.
"I shouldn't be saying any of this to you," I whisper.
"Probably not."
"I'm going to anyway."
"I know."
"I'm glad you're here, Bellamy, that's all. I don't mean anything else by it. I don't know how I would have gotten out of bed this morning if you weren't here, and I don't know what that means, and I'm too tired to figure it out, and I just…"
I swallow. "I'm glad you're here."
He's quiet for a long moment. Then, very softly: "I'm glad I'm here too."
The words hang in the air. Carrying more weight than either of us will acknowledge.
He walks to the crib, lowers Amelia in with the kind of precision Adrian has never quite managed. She stirs, doesn't wake. He adjusts the blanket.
"I'll make coffee," he says, turning toward the door. "Real coffee. Not whatever he was about to do."
"Okay."
He pauses in the doorway, doesn't look back.
"You don't have to have answers, Sophie. Not today."
Then he's gone, footsteps moving toward the kitchen.
I sit in the rocking chair a long time after that. Watching Amelia sleep. Listening to the distant sound of Bellamy in the kitchen—cabinets opening, the coffee grinder, small domestic noises that shouldn't feel like a lifeline but do.
From the other end of the hallway, Adrian's study door stays closed.
I don't go to him. I don't even think about it.