Sophie’s POV
Cleo arrives with coffee and a bag of my favorite snacks, but the lightness in her entrance doesn't match the weight in her eyes.
"Delivery for the most famous pregnant woman in the country," she announces, holding up the offerings like peace offerings at an altar.
The bag crinkles as she sets it on my bedside table—salt and vinegar chips, dark chocolate, the specific brand of gummy bears I've been craving since the second trimester started. She remembered everything.
But her smile doesn't reach her eyes. It hasn't since she walked through that door.
She kicks off her designer heels that cost more than my monthly grocery budget used to—and curls up in the chair beside my bed, tucking her legs beneath her like she used to do in our dorm room freshman year.
For a moment, we just exist in comfortable silence. The monitors beep their steady rhythm. Outside, the world continues its relentless spin.
I've missed this. The easy presence of someone who's known me since before I became a scandal. Before I became Sophie-who-slept-with-her-professor, Sophie-who-got-pregnant, Sophie-whose-face-is-everywhere.
With Cleo, I can almost remember who I was before all of this. Then she starts talking, and I realize this isn't just a social visit.
"I'm worried about you, Soph." Her voice is soft, but there's steel beneath it. "And not just the obvious stuff—the hospital, the baby, the trial. I'm worried about..." She pauses, searching for words. "About who you're becoming."
I stiffen against the pillows. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I've watched you change." Cleo meets my eyes, unflinching. "You used to be the most grounded person I knew. Stressed, sure. Overworked? Definitely. But stable. You had a plan, you knew where you were going."
She shakes her head slowly. "Now I look at you and I see someone who's lost in a storm she can't control. And Adrian…"
"Don't."
"I'm not saying he's evil, Sophie. I'm not saying what you feel isn't real." She leans forward, her dark curls falling around her face. "But I've watched you make choice after choice that pulls you deeper into chaos instead of out of it. The secrecy, the lies, getting involved with Cassian while you were still tangled up with Adrian..."
Her voice cracks slightly. "And now you're pregnant, trapped in a hospital bed, your life turned into entertainment for millions of strangers. This isn't where you were supposed to end up."
I want to argue, want to defend Adrian, defend myself, defend every decision that led me to this moment. But the words stick in my throat because she's not wrong.
I don't have easy answers.
Do I love Adrian? I think so. The way my chest aches when he walks into the room, the way his voice can calm me or ignite me with equal ease—that has to be love.
But it's tangled up with so many other things—fear, fependency. The intoxicating relief of surrendering control to someone else after a lifetime of carrying everyone's burdens.
Is that love? Or is it something else wearing a love's mask?
"I'm terrified," I admit, and the honesty of it surprises us both. "Of him, of myself, of what comes next. I don't know if I'm making the right choices, Cleo. I don't know if any of this will work out. But I can't go back, can't undo any of it."
Cleo's expression softens. She reaches across the space between us and takes my hand—the same gesture my mother made, but warmer. The touch of someone who's chosen to love me rather than someone obligated to.
"I know you can't go back. I just..." She sighs. "I want you to be okay. Really okay. Not just surviving."
We sit in that truth for a moment, letting it breathe between us.
Then Cleo pulls out her phone, and I watch her face shift—softness hardening into something grimmer.
"There's something else you need to see." She hesitates. "I wasn't going to show you, Adrian made me promise to keep you away from the news... But you'll find out eventually, and I'd rather you hear it from me."
She turns the screen toward me, and my stomach drops.
The scandal isn't dying down. It's metastasizing.
New articles have spawned like mushrooms after rain—think pieces about power dynamics in academia, exposés claiming to have "insider information" about Adrian's past relationships, opinion columns debating whether I'm a victim or villain.
Podcast episodes have appeared overnight, hosts dissecting "the professor and his student" with the gleeful enthusiasm of true crime enthusiasts picking apart a murder.
And the memes. God, the memes. My face froze in that moment before I collapsed, photoshopped into a hundred different contexts.
Sophie fainting becomes a reaction image. Sophie crying becomes a template. My worst moment, multiplied infinitely, stripped of all context and humanity.
But that's not the worst of it.
"Someone started a petition," Cleo says quietly. "To have Adrian permanently barred from academia. It has over fifty thousand signatures."
I scroll down, my hands beginning to tremble.
"And this morning, someone doxxed your family's address. Posted it on multiple forums. Your mom called me—they had to disconnect the doorbell because people kept ringing it."
The phone slips from my shaking fingers. Cleo catches it before it hits the floor.
"The world won't let this go," I whisper.
"No." Cleo's voice is gentle but honest. "It won't. Not for a long time."
The heaviness of that truth settles over me like a physical weight. I've known, on some level, that this scandal would follow me. But knowing and feeling are different beasts.
Feeling it—the relentless, grinding reality of being public property—threatens to crush something vital inside me. In the silence that follows, something crystallizes. A decision I've been avoiding, a conversation I've been putting off.
"I need to see Cassian."
Cleo's head snaps up. "Did I hear it wrong?"
"I need to talk to him, hear his side of things." I meet her eyes, willing her to understand. "I can't move forward without knowing why he did what he did. The police are still waiting for my answer about pressing charges. How can I make that decision when I don't understand?"
"Sophie, he helped Lisette." Cleo's face hardens, her protective instincts flaring. "He fed her information about you, about your relationship, about where you'd be and when. He doesn't deserve your time or your energy. And he sure as hell doesn't deserve your forgiveness."
"I'm not talking about forgiveness, I'm talking about closure."
"It's a terrible idea."
"Probably." I don't look away. "But I'm doing it anyway."
The standoff lasts several long seconds. Cleo's jaw works, arguments building behind her eyes. I can see her cycling through responses—more warnings, more reasons this is dangerous, more attempts to protect me from my own choices.
But she knows me, knows that when I set my mind to something, no amount of logic will move me.
Finally, she sighs—a long, exhausted exhale of surrender.
"If you're determined to do this," she says slowly, "you're not doing it alone. Ayden and I will help arrange it. But you're not walking into that detention center without backup. Understood?"
Relief floods through me, tangled with gratitude. "Understood."
Cleo shakes her head, something almost like a smile tugging at her lips. "You're going to be the death of me, Sophie Hale."
"I know." I squeeze her hand. "Thank you for dying anyway."