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“Those eyes. They talk.” Theo strokes the space beneath my eyes.
He sees through me. In fact, there’s very little he misses. He engulfs my palms in his, plastering them to his chest.
To his beating heart. “Do I look like a man who’ll tell you you’re mine, and ask you out to fuck with your head?”
“No.” I’m too vulnerable around him. Too open and raw. Incapable of lying. “You… I didn’t understand, Theo.”
“I know, and I apologize for that too. And for not waiting to fuck you hardafterwe had the talk.” His fingers squeeze mine. “About our relationship.”
“What…” My whisper is broken. This isn’t like me.
No matter how emotional I am, I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m not desperate for scraps of affection. The man who wants to be with me needs to know that outside the bedroom, he and I are on even ground.
Theo said he’ll treat me as such. I don’t blame him for the annoyance simmering in me. But I need to solidify it with my actions.
I blink away the lump of excitement about ourrelationship, narrowing my eyes.
And I start over. “What is it? I mean, how bad can it be when everyone around you adores you?”
On the rare occasions I snuck glances into his clinic, I witnessed a couple of women leaving his clinic. Wide smiles, telling his administrator how they feel safe under his care.
We were interrupted twice on our lunch breaks by pregnant women who work in our building. Random women asking for his advice. And he’s only been there for aweek.
He doesn’t say anything, and it gets me thinking.
Something from his past, the reason why he needed to talk…
“You told me there haven’t been others on your exam table.” I hate the hurt slithering to my voice. “Did you lie, Theo?”
“Never.” The swift grip he has on my chin is as strong as it’s surprising. His tenacious gaze penetrates and scalds, glowering and loving all at once. “Never in my fourteen years of practice have I looked, imagined, or touched a patient inappropriately. You’re the exception, Prue. The exception to pretty much everything in my life.”
He leaves no room for doubt, and I believe him. Oh, I believe him hard. My soul, my bones, my head, and my heart combined are confident I’m not being manipulated or lied to.
“What then?”
“Ten years ago, nearing the end of my OB-GYN residency at a hospital in Seattle, a few women approached me.” Theo’s jaw firms, his teeth grinding as fury overtakes his features. “Patients complaining about the director of my department, Professor Jason Fox. I don’t know how two decided to come forward to me one after the other. I only know they trusted me since I was the oldest resident, and, as they said, I didn’t look like a pervert,” he growls. “Likehewas, abusing one woman after the other.”
“What?” My shriek is loud. And furious. “His patients? Without their permission?”
“They claimed he did. Accused him of crossing a line, grazing his fingers on their breasts too long, had his head way too close to their vulvas, so close that they could feel his breath on them. Rubbed them instead of examining them. Both of their stories sounded eerily and disturbingly similar. Too similar to think they made it up.”
“Theo,” I whisper after hearing the disgust in his voice. “I consented. Every step of the way.”
“I know. Thank you for reminding me, but that isn’t the worst of my issues.”
Rage and disappointment in himself roll off of him as if it happened yesterday. He rakes a hand through his thick hair. I stay silent, absorbing his feelings, allowing him to go through them.
“I had a hard time believing them, despite everything pointing out that I should. I didn’t want to believe it.” For the second time today, Theo’s regret rises to the surface. A staggering amount of it. “I promised them I’d investigate it, and I did goddamn nothing other than study Dr. Fox on our morning rounds. I thought perverts should have a look, a tell giving them away. When he showed none, I…fuck. I dropped it.”
My hands on his chest resume stroking him, soothing the beast in him.
“Stop.” He grabs me again, pulling my hands away, pressing them to my breastbone. “I don’t deserve your pity or mercy. I went against the Hippocratic Oath, have been a horrible man, and caused harm to women who asked for my help. To women who were hurting in the department I worked in.”
“You wanted to trust your…Was he your mentor?” My need to find the logic in it, of what took the man I—Ilove, I can’t hide it anymore—so long to stand by these women. “Is that what it was?”
“Yes, he’d been my mentor since I’d started my residency.” His thumbs stroke my wrists, the last bit of tenderness in him. And he saves it for me.
“His place in my life shouldn’t have played a part in my reaction.” Theo closes his eyes, inhaling through his nose. When those onyx pupils land on me again, he steals my breath with the intensity in them. “The third woman, Kris Chapman, came to see me crying. Broken. She was fucking broken because that sick fuck drew a forced orgasm out of her. When she accused him of it, he had the audacity to tell her she wanted it. That it was the word of a director against hers.”
