Chapter 5 Theo
Gemma.
Seven years later, and not a goddamn thing has changed.
The feigned innocence. That sinful mouth.
The predatory smile she disguises under playful grins.
The way she moves. Fuck, the way she moves.
She’s a master at masking her identity. No one would know the vixen that lies underneath those innocent, beautiful, spring-green eyes.
How dare she whisper I’m looking forward to working with you and your beautiful bride-to-be as she tugged in that juicy bottom lip?
She gets off on teasing and luring, on breaking people.
She knows exactly what she’s doing. She knew it back then, and she knows it now.
Gemma Welch may now be Lexie Welch, but that’s the only thing that’s changed.
I repeat Lexie’s name over and over in my head, so I don’t slip up and give myself away.
Lexie was always good at toying with people and I saw how it gnawed at her that I didn’t recognize who she was.
I fucking loved it. She hasn’t earned the right to know the depth of the marks she’d left me with all these years, how she hooked beneath my skin like barbed wire, ripping me open from the inside out.
I thought I’d done a good job of pushing her from my mind. From my soul. After everything that went down in Boston, I moved on. I graduated early, top of my class. Finished residency with the highest evaluations possible. Became the youngest attending physician in my clinic’s history. I was good.
So fucking good.
But then, six months ago I ran into her again by chance, on a random Sunday in an unfamiliar neighborhood.
She was sitting by the window of a coffee shop with her long, lush red hair piled on top of her head, reading a book, and sipping on a drink.
The sunlight beaming through the window haloed her like an angel and time stopped.
Suddenly everything I’d once buried came rushing back.
I thought I was hallucinating. I’d stared for so long, taking in the slope of that pale neck, the plush mouth, the way her eyes showed every emotion of whatever she was reading.
I’ve been unsteady ever since.
But I’m no longer the man I was back in Boston. All the pressure, the eyes, the family legacy weighing on my shoulders, has lifted. She has no idea what I’m capable of now.
I push my chair up to my desk and try to focus on reading lab results, but she’s distracting me again, just like she did back then.
I wanted to know everything about her. Her thoughts, her secrets, her mouth, the way she moved, how she tasted.
I wanted to know her dreams, her hates, what scared her, what made her laugh.
I could read everyone, but I couldn’t read her.
I couldn’t even get close enough to read her.
She was an impenetrable vault, and I was desperate to break in.
It comes in waves. Chronic pain is like that.
Good days and bad days, like I tell patients before I hand them off to the surgeon.
The bad days will overpower you to a point where you can’t breathe.
The good days, when it’s dulled and muted, you can breathe, you can function, but you still feel it festering beneath the surface.
Even on those days, it’s never forgotten.
Lexie is always there. She’s always been there.
As I give up the lab results review and instead open an email from the medical director, I flash back to the first day Lexie and I met.
Maybe it was the naturally bright red hair that struck me or that familiar doe-eyed expression of a first year out of their comfort zone.
I didn’t notice a lot of first years. They were young, immature, and uninteresting.
I was a senior then, elbow-deep into applying for medical schools and fighting the societal pressure of being the son of the great Dr. George K.
Astor. My father and I had just engaged in one of our frequent screaming matches, and I’d stormed out of his office, determined for the millionth time in my life to never speak to him again.
I was still burning with anger when a voice sounded behind me in the quad. “Excuse me!” I turned, irritated, probably growling, to find a girl holding out ear buds in her palm. “You dropped these back there,” she’d said, tossing her thumb behind her shoulder.
I don’t think I even bothered to look at her properly at first. I mumbled a half-assed thank you and turned to head towards my next class, when she stepped in front of me, blocking my way, and asked for directions to the library.
I remember specifically thinking, can she not fucking see I’m in a hurry?
I almost told her to check the goddamn campus app for a directory but decided not to be a complete dick and barked out something about taking a left at the science center and if she reached the freshman dorms she’d gone too far.
And then she placed her hand on my arm. The bravery of it caught me off guard, sparking a reluctant curiosity. I took my time studying her as she met my gaze with those innocent eyes, and I was certain she’d see the darkness in my soul. Then she asked, “Are you okay?”
I couldn’t remember the last time someone had checked in on me. Who genuinely wanted to know if I was okay. My family sure as fuck didn’t care. I was the only child, a prop to be used when they needed me and otherwise ordered to shut up and be grateful for “everything we do for you.”
I couldn’t answer. The way her simple question left me feeling raw and vulnerable was so terrifying that I stormed off. But the image of the sweet gap-tooth smile and pale cheeks flushed with nervous pink wouldn’t leave me.
Lexie saw me. She didn’t know who I was, nor what sat in my trust fund account nor the expectations that came with my father and family name.
She just saw me. Her momentary touch and those piercing green eyes haunted me until the vision of her shifted from me feeling exposed to putting me at ease in a way nothing else ever had—and it felt so damn good.
For a month, I looked for her, yearning, to the depths of my being, for that mental reprieve she provided.
I walked through the quad any chance I could.
I went to the library that she’d asked directions for, I spent my breaks roaming campus, craving that green-eyed dopamine hit.
A few weeks passed and I started to play off my initial reaction, convincing myself that I’d overreacted.
I was just exhausted from taking the max course load, weighed down by the pressure of being George Astor’s son. Something just set me off me that day.
But then, I finally saw her again and the spark from that first encounter sharpened into something lethal—a fire-pointed arrow that pierced me down to the bone.
Everything else fell away. The pressure.
The noise. Watching her across the library ignited a need I couldn’t escape.
Lexie became both my distraction and my purpose—the high that carried me through the day.
I memorized her class schedule, her study habits, her work shifts at the campus coffee shop.
When I couldn’t see her in person, I studied the photos I’d taken in secret, a substitute when I needed the fix.
And sure, I could’ve talked to her, maybe even asked her out, but things were complicated with Annabelle, my father, our parents, and my studies.
And Lexie became something else entirely.
A gift. A perfect doll-faced genie held behind this fragile glass wall.
Untouchable, but magic, my fucking magic—and no one else’s.
I knew one day I’d be able to touch her.
I’d get close enough to that skin, to taste it, to smell it.
But until then, I needed her in the box.
After spending the holidays without her, I happened to be walking one of the university corridors when I heard it—that golden-laced giggle, which I recognized instantly. I’d heard it a hundred times, wanted it to belong to me alone.
But it was for him.
When I stepped through the office door, the fogged plexiglass announcing, “Dr. George K. Astor, Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences,” Lexie glanced up, shock transforming her face before she nodded in greeting and looked away, like she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t.
She was my release, my drug, my angel. And there she was, doting on my father.
And my God, he saw her. The same pale cheeks, pouty lips, and soulful innocence that captivated me also captivated him. The moment my father introduced her as one of his brightest and most promising students, I knew. My father is a narcissistic piece of shit and no one impresses him.
Over the semester, I made a point of stopping by his office regularly.
I watched the attention Lexie gave my father—attention she never once spared for me—and I couldn’t understand it.
Why she’d offer that gift to him. He didn’t deserve it and I couldn’t stand watching her give it to someone who already had everything.
I needed to put an end to this torture. So, I asked her out.
She said yes.
And she didn’t fucking come.
No one stands me up. Ever. I paced outside the auditorium for an hour, convincing myself that maybe I gave her the wrong time, the wrong day, or even the wrong fucking address. Something.
But she didn’t just stand me up. She showed up at the same goddamn place on my father’s arm. It felt deliberate, like she’d played me, led me on because she knew exactly how much power she held. When she looked up at him with those soft, trusting eyes, I was ready to murder.
Because I would’ve given her the world.
But she wanted him.
Even in my humiliation, I couldn’t let her go. She had no idea what she was walking into by choosing my father. I told myself I wasn’t being selfish—that she needed protecting, that only I could keep her safe. Keep her mine. Because I needed her. Not him.
I’m an Astor, for Christ’s sake. We don’t beg. We don’t lose control. And yet she reduced me to something desperate, something I barely recognized.
Now I’m done being that boy. I’m going in with eyes wide open. I know what she’s capable of, and I refuse to let her affect me again. I have plans much, much bigger than her. So, I’ll keep her close until I’m done.
And if she fucks with me again, only God can save her.