Bellamy’s POV
Adrian called me on Wednesday, two days before the symposium. I knew before I answered what he was going to ask.
"Bellamy, I need you to accompany Sophie to Yale this weekend. Security in an unfamiliar city, and if word gets out that she's presenting, there might be media."
Every instinct screamed at me to refuse.
Two days alone with Sophie—driving there, overnight stay, driving back—was asking for trouble.
"Sure," I heard myself say. "When do we leave?"
"Friday morning. I'll text you the details. Thanks, Bellamy. I know this is above and beyond, but Sophie trusts you. That matters."
The guilt was a living thing in my chest.
Friday morning, I picked Sophie up at eight. She slid into the passenger seat with her overnight bag and laptop case, her expression carefully neutral.
"Adrian told you?" she asked.
"He did. You okay with this arrangement?"
"Do I have a choice?" Her tone was flat. "He's convinced there'll be media, and he doesn't want me going alone."
We pulled out into traffic, and silence settled over the car like fog. Sophie immediately pulled out her phone, checking it obsessively.
"Amelia's fine," I said after she'd checked it for the fifth time in ten minutes. "Eleanor's raised a child before. She knows what she's doing."
"I know. I just… I've never left her overnight before. What if something happens and I'm three hours away?"
"Then Eleanor will handle it, or your father will help, or in the absolute worst case, we turn around and drive back. But nothing's going to happen, Sophie. She's safe."
She nodded but kept the phone in her hand anyway.
After about forty minutes of silence broken only by road noise, I decided conversation was better than this suffocating quiet.
"How's Noah doing?" Sophie asked before I could speak, as if reading my mind. "I haven't seen him in a while."
"He's good. Asking about you, actually. Wondering when we're going to visit 'Miss Sophie and baby Amelia' again."
A small smile crossed her face. "He's sweet. You're lucky to have him."
"I know." I merged onto the highway. "Some days he's the only thing keeping me sane. Single parenting is… It's harder than I ever imagined."
"How do you do it?" Sophie's voice was quiet. "Raise him alone, I mean. Without losing yourself completely."
"Who says I haven't lost myself?" I glanced at her briefly. "Some days I look in the mirror and don't recognize the person staring back. But Noah needs a father, so I show up. That's all any of us can do, right? Show up even when we don't know what we're doing."
Sophie was quiet for a moment. Then: "Can I ask you about her? About Olivia? Not the facts—I know those. But what it was actually like. Loving someone that completely and then losing them."
I gripped the steering wheel tighter, surprised by the question but also strangely relieved. No one asked me about Olivia anymore. They avoided the topic like it might hurt me, when the truth was not talking about her hurt more.
"You learn that love doesn't protect you from anything, It just gives you something unbearable to lose. Olivia and I—we were good together. Not perfect, but good. Real."
I said finally.
"And then one day she was there, and the next day she wasn't, and I had this baby who needed me, and I couldn't fall apart because he was depending on me. So I didn't. I just kept moving forward because stopping meant drowning."
"I'm sorry," Sophie said softly.
"Don't be. I had two years with her. Some people never get that. And I have Noah. He's the best part of both of us."
The silence that followed felt different—companionable rather than tense.
Then Sophie asked the question I'd been dreading: "Is that why you kissed me? Because I reminded you of what it felt like to have something to lose?"
I could have lied. Should have lied. But we were alone in this car for hours, and I was so goddamn tired of pretending.
"No," I said. "I kissed you because you made me feel something I swore I'd never feel again. And it terrified me."
Sophie's breath caught audibly. She didn't respond, just turned to stare out the window, and I let the silence stretch because what else was there to say?
We arrived at the hotel mid-afternoon. Separate rooms, two floors apart, professional boundaries carefully maintained. I helped carry her bags up, checked her room for any security concerns, then left before the proximity could become dangerous.
That evening, I knocked on her door at six. "Have you eaten?"
"I'm not hungry."
"That wasn't the question. You need to eat something before tomorrow."
Sophie emerged reluctantly, and I took her to a quiet restaurant two blocks away. Made her order something substantial, talked her through her spiraling anxiety about the presentation.
"What if my argument falls apart under questioning? What if someone in the audience knows about the scandal and calls me out? What if I freeze and can't remember anything I prepared?"
"Then you'll handle it," I said calmly. "You've survived worse than a room full of academics, Sophie. You can survive this."
We walked back to the hotel slowly, neither of us eager to end the evening. The night air was cool, the streets relatively quiet for a Friday.
Sophie stopped on the sidewalk suddenly. "I don't know if I can do this, Bellamy. I don't know if I'm ready."
I turned to face her, caught by the vulnerability in her voice.
"Yes, you can. You're the smartest, strongest person I know. You survived things that would have destroyed most people—public humiliation, abandonment, trauma. This symposium? You're going to destroy them with your brilliance."
Her eyes filled with tears. "Why do you believe in me more than I believe in myself?"
“Because I see you. Not who you were before the scandal. Not who people think you are because of headlines and gossip.”
I stepped closer without meaning to, drawn by something I couldn't resist.
"I see who you actually are—brilliant, resilient, stronger than you know. And that person is going to walk into that room tomorrow and remind everyone why they should have been paying attention all along."
The moment stretched between us, charged with everything we couldn't say. Sophie's lips parted slightly. I was close enough to see the flecks of gold in her eyes, close enough to catch the scent of her shampoo.
One step forward and I could kiss her. One movement and professional boundaries would shatter completely.
Instead, I stepped back. Forced myself to break the moment before it became something we couldn't take back.
"Get some sleep," I said, my voice rougher than intended. "Tomorrow you're going to be incredible."
I turned and walked toward the elevators before I could change my mind. Felt her watching me go but didn't turn around.
In my room, I stood at the window staring at nothing, trying to convince myself I'd made the right choice.
But all I could think about was the look in Sophie's eyes when I told her I saw her. The way she'd leaned toward me, just slightly. The way my entire body had screamed to close that distance.
Tomorrow she'd present her paper. Sunday we'd drive home. And I'd go back to being her bodyguard, nothing more.
I just had to survive the next thirty-six hours without destroying everything.