Sophie’s POV
I barely step through the hospital room door before I realize Adrian knows.
He's standing in the middle of the room, phone in hand, jaw tight enough to shatter. The monitors beep their indifferent rhythm. The fluorescent lights hum overhead.
And Adrian stands there like a statue carved from barely contained fury, watching me with eyes that could freeze fire.
The silence is worse than shouting. It stretches between us, filling every corner of the room with a pressure that makes my chest ache.
I've seen Adrian angry before—cold, controlled, dangerous. But this is something else. This is the silence of a man deciding exactly how much destruction he's willing to cause.
When he finally speaks, his voice is ice.
"You went to see him."
Not a question—a statement. An accusation wrapped in four words that land like blows.
I don't deny it, I can't—he clearly already knows, probably tracked my phone or got a call from someone at the detention center. So I lift my chin and meet his gaze, refusing to shrink under the weight of his disapproval.
"Yes. I did." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "I had to, Adrian. I needed answers, needed to understand why he did what he did before I could make any decisions about his future. And I'm not apologizing for that."
Adrian's composure fractures. The mask he wears so perfectly—the one that makes him untouchable, unknowable—cracks right down the middle, and what spills out is raw, unfiltered fury.
"You're not apologizing. You snuck out of a hospital where you're supposed to be on bed rest. You traveled across the city without protection, without telling anyone where you were going."
He repeats my words back to me like they're poison he's been forced to swallow.
"Paparazzi are camped outside this building, Sophie, they could have followed you, photographed you, surrounded you in a parking lot with no one to help."
His voice rises with each sentence, the control slipping further.
"Something could have happened to you, to the baby. And for what? For a man who helped orchestrate your public humiliation? A man who fed information to the woman who tried to destroy you?"
"I needed to understand…"
"You needed to put yourself at risk!"
He cuts me off, stepping closer, his presence filling the room until there's no space left that isn't saturated with his anger.
"Needed to make a decision that affected both of us without even consulting me. You needed to prove that my concerns, my fears, my desperate attempts to keep you safe mean absolutely nothing when weighed against your own stubborn determination to do whatever the hell you want!"
Something snaps inside me. The exhaustion, the fear, the weeks of being monitored and managed and treated like a fragile thing that might shatter—it all ignites into fury that matches his.
"I'm not a possession, Adrian!" The words tear out of me, loud enough to make the monitors spike. "I don't need your permission to make decisions about my own life. I don't need to consult you every time I want to leave a room or talk to someone or breathe in a direction you haven't pre-approved!"
"This isn't about permission."
"It's always about permission with you. It's about control, about you deciding what I can handle, what I should know, what's best for me without ever asking what I actually want."
I'm shaking now, weeks of suppressed frustration finally finding an outlet.
"I've spent my entire existence taking care of everyone else—my father, my sisters, everyone who needed me to be strong so they didn't have to be. I will not be managed like another responsibility on someone's list. I will not become one more person you handle instead of hearing!"
"I'm trying to protect you!"
"I don't need protection! I need a partner who trusts me to know my own mind!"
The words hang in the air between us, jagged and bleeding. We're both breathing hard, standing close enough to touch but separated by something far more dangerous than distance.
I see the hurt flash across his features—quick, unguarded, gone before I can fully register it.
I've wounded him. Some part of me wanted to.
The fight has burned hot and fast, leaving scorched earth in its wake. Words neither of us can take back. Truths we maybe shouldn't have spoken.
Then Adrian stops, his shoulders drop slightly. He exhales—a long, slow breath that seems to drain the fury from his body like water from a cracked vessel.
When he speaks again, his voice is different, quieter, controlled in a way that feels less like armor and more like exhaustion.
"You can't return to campus. It's not safe, Sophie. The harassment, the attention, the people who've decided you're entertainment—they'll eat you alive."
The words fall between us, heavy with finality.
"I've already spoken to the administration. You'll complete your degree through Independent Study. Remote coursework. No more lectures, no more walking across a quad where everyone knows your face."
"No." The refusal comes instantly, instinctively. "You don't get to decide that for me. You're overreacting, Adrian, underestimating what I can and can’t handle."
I straighten my spine, meeting his eyes with defiance I'm not sure I feel.
"I've survived worse than gossip and stares. I survived my mother leaving, my family falling apart, years of holding everyone together while I fell apart inside. I will return to campus when I'm ready. That's my decision to make, not yours."
Adrian watches me for a long moment. Something flickers in those storm-gray eyes—doubt, frustration, maybe even a grudging respect for the steel in my voice. I expect him to argue, to push, to insist on his version of reality until I'm too exhausted to fight back.
But he doesn't.
"Fine." The word is clipped, careful. "We'll revisit the campus discussion later. When you've had time to rest, when the situation has stabilized."
He's letting me believe what I need to believe, and some part of me knows it. Some part of me recognizes the tactical retreat for what it is.
But then his voice hardens again.
"I have one condition, Sophie. Non-negotiable."
He steps closer, close enough that I can see the shadows under his eyes, the tension in his jaw.
"You move in with me. You stay at my apartment, where I can ensure you're safe, where there's security and privacy and walls between you and the vultures circling outside. Full stop. This isn't up for discussion."
I hesitate. Every independent instinct in me screams to refuse—to prove I don't need his protection, his money, his carefully controlled environment.
The campus fight I'll win later, when I have more strength, more leverage, more time to build my case.
But this one... I'm too tired to wage this battle. Too drained from the detention center, from the fight we just had, from the weight of everything pressing down on me.
And maybe—a small, quiet part of me admits—maybe I don't want to fight this one.
Maybe the thought of being alone in a hospital room, surrounded by strangers who see me as a scandal instead of a person, is more terrifying than surrendering this particular piece of ground.
"Okay." The word comes out barely above a whisper. "I'll move in with you."
Adrian's expression doesn't change, but something in his posture shifts. Relief, maybe. Or victory. I'm too exhausted to tell the difference.