Adrian’s POV
I wake on the study couch as gray dawn light filters through the blinds. My head pounds from the whiskey. My mouth tastes like ash and regret and something that might be despair.
For a moment, I just lie there. Stare at the ceiling where a water stain has formed into a shape that looks vaguely like my father's face. Let myself consider abandoning the decision I made in the dark hours of night.
Maybe I could try harder. Maybe tomorrow would be different. Maybe if I just pushed through one more day, one more failure, one more moment of watching my daughter scream in my arms…
Then I hear it through the walls. Amelia's morning cry. Not distressed, just awake and hungry. Then Sophie's footsteps—soft, practiced, the sound of a mother who's learned to move quietly.
The refrigerator opens. Bottle preparation. The sounds of a routine I'm not part of, have never successfully been part of.
The decision solidifies. Becomes real instead of abstract.
I sit up slowly, waiting for the room to stop spinning. My phone reads 4 AM. Sophie will sleep for another two hours if Amelia settles quickly after the feeding. That's enough time. Barely, but enough.
I move to my desk on unsteady legs. Pull out paper and pen.
Writing the note feels impossible. How do you summarize the complete destruction of your life in a few sentences? How do you explain to the woman carrying your failures that you're choosing to leave rather than keep drowning her?
The first version comes out defensive, sprawling across the page in handwriting that looks drunk because I still am:
‘I know you think I'm abandoning you, but you don't understand what it's like to fail every single day, to watch you and Bellamy build the family I should be part of but can't, to see my own daughter choose anyone over me—‘
I crumple it before finishing. Too many excuses. Too much self-pity. She doesn't need my justifications. She needs me gone so she can breathe.
The second attempt tries for tender, tries to soften the blow: ‘My love, I'm so sorry for everything I've put you through. You deserve better than what I can give right now. I need to find myself again before I can be the father Amelia needs, the partner you deserve—‘
I read it back and hear Lolita's voice in my head, mocking the manipulation disguised as an apology. The cowardice dressed up as a noble sacrifice.
I tear it up.
The third version tries explanation, tries to make her understand. Still too much, still trying to control how she'll feel about my abandonment.
Finally, I settle on brutal simplicity.
‘I need time to think. Alone. I'm sorry. - A’
The entire destruction of our family condensed into a sentence fragment and an apology that means nothing.
I stare at the words for twenty minutes. Watch the minutes tick by on my phone. The paper sits on my desk, accusing me. Giving me time to change my mind. To tear it up and crawl back into our bed and wrap myself around Sophie's warmth and pretend I can be the man they need.
But I can't. The pretending is killing all of us.
I'm drowning and pulling them down with me. Sophie's hope dying incrementally with each failed attempt I make at basic fatherhood.
Amelia learning to fear my touch, to cry harder when I try to soothe her. The family forming around Bellamy while I watch from doorways like a ghost haunting my own life.
Every day I stay, I damage them more. I fold the note carefully. Set it aside.
Move to the closet and pull out my old duffel bag—the one I used when I left my father's world, when I reinvented myself as Professor Lewis. How fitting that I'm using the same bag to leave this failed reinvention behind.
I pack with mechanical precision. Clothes for a week—jeans, shirts, underwear, socks. My laptop because I can't exist without it. Charger. Wallet with credit cards I'll probably max out. Phone charger. Toothbrush.
The book I've been pretending to read for three months, its bookmark still on page thirty-seven.
Enough to survive but not enough to suggest permanence. Because this isn't permanent. I won't let it be permanent. Just temporary. Just until I can breathe without feeling like I'm suffocating everyone around me.
I don't know where I'm going. Haven't thought that far ahead. Haven't made hotel reservations or mapped routes or planned anything beyond the simple act of leaving.
Just away. Somewhere without Sophie's disappointed eyes. Without Amelia's cries I can't soothe. Without Bellamy's presence reminding me every day of everything I'm failing at.
The apartment is still quiet except for the white noise machine in the nursery. I move through it like a thief, gathering what I need.
Toiletries from the bathroom—I take my razor but leave my cologne because Sophie bought it for me and seeing it every morning will hurt her. My good jacket from the hall closet. The charger for my electric toothbrush.
Small decisions that feel monumental. What do you take when you're abandoning your family? What stays and what goes?
Then I stop at the nursery doorway.
The door is cracked open the way Sophie always leaves it so she can hear Amelia better. I can see my daughter in her crib, tiny chest rising and falling with peaceful sleep.
She's on her back, arms thrown up beside her head in that surrender position all babies sleep in. Looks so vulnerable. So perfect. So completely unaware that her father is about to walk out on her.
I should go in. Should hold her one last time. Should memorize the weight of her in my arms, the baby smell of her hair, the way her fingers curl around mine when I touch her palm.
But I can't make myself cross the threshold. Can't risk waking her. Can't face the screaming that would follow, the proof of my inadequacy one more time before I leave.
Can't watch her face scrunch up in fear when she realizes it's me picking her up instead of Sophie or Bellamy.
Instead, I whisper into the darkness. "Maybe you'll be better off without me."
The words hang in the air. No one answers. Amelia sleeps on, oblivious.
I don't let myself believe it's permanent. Just temporary. Just until I figure out if I can fix what's broken inside me.
Or until I accept that some men are simply incapable of what family requires. Until I know whether I'm Adrian Lewis or Marcus Lewis's son or some third thing that hasn't been invented yet.
I turn away from the nursery. Can't look anymore.
Place the note on the kitchen counter where Sophie will find it in the morning. Position it carefully next to the coffee maker—the first place she'll look when she staggers out to start another day of single parenting while her partner hides in his study.
Take one last look around the apartment. This life I built and destroyed simultaneously. The nursery where my daughter sleeps. The bedroom where Sophie lies alone even when I'm here.
The study where I've been hiding from both of them. The living room where Bellamy and Sophie laugh together while I watch from doorways.
My hand rests on the doorknob. One turn and I'm gone. One turn and I'm free.
One turn and I become my father—the man who chose himself over his family when things got hard.
The comparison should stop me. Should send me back to the bedroom to wake Sophie and confess everything and beg for another chance.
But maybe I was always going to become my father. Maybe Lolita and Marcus Lewis succeeded in shaping me into exactly what they intended.
A man fundamentally incapable of love. Of commitment. Of staying when staying gets difficult.
I turn the knob anyway.