"I'm fascinated by everything you do. Your smile, your touch, your laughter. Believe me or not, I have spent my entire life waiting for this moment."
"Was I in your dreams?"
"I rarely sleep. My mind has this scary capability of being dark and twiste...
"Never have I dealt with anything as difficult as my own soul."
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I kept taking steps backwards until my back hit a tree. Taehyung prowled towards me, his eyes never leaving mine like a cat watching on a laser pointer. He put one hand over my head and lurched over me.
Suddenly I grew aware of all the sounds that surrounded me. The rustle of roosting birds, the splash of water from a distant stream, an owl hooting, the light wind stirring.
"Valerie, I just told you the truth," Taehyung said dejectedly. The expression on his face was capable to melt even the coldest of hearts. "You don't believe me?"
It wasn't that I doubted his credibility – well, that too – but I was also still reeling from the fact that Julian would really hide something like this from me. It was a little hard to process. It all came back to me now all over again – the hurt and the disappointment from being so... insignificant to him that he'd keep me in the dark like some kind of immature teenager.
I had looked up to him so much, I admired him and worshipped the ground he walked on. Because to me, he was the first person ever to make me feel worthy of anything; my mother had failed miserably in that department and unknowingly, he had acted as her replacement.
If what Taehyung was telling me were true, why would Julian lie and tell me that the necklace was from him? What else had he kept from me? Why would he keep every letter Taehyung would send to me? Why wouldn't he talk about me with his brother?
I knew why. Because he never cared about me.
"I'm sorry," I mumbled, quivering orbs piercing through Taehyung's warm browns. "I'm just a little overwhelmed."
"Of course," he stepped back, giving me the space I desperately needed at that moment. "You don't have to say anything right now. I just wanted to be up and front with you."
Splaying my palms against the damp tree and resting my backside on them, I stared down at my shoes. So this was why Taehyung was staring at me like that on the day of Julian's funeral. And it was why he was so taken with me, always wanting to know something about me.
Because he knew about me long before I knew about him. He had eagerly anticipated the day we meet. Maybe he was just nervous and that's why he came across as kind of strange.
Taehyung rubbed his eye with his forefinger and took a couple steps away from me. It was then that I felt the tension from my body release and my shoulders dropped.
"I realize you and Julian were incredibly close," he said while staring off somewhere in the distance. "I can't begin to imagine getting this close to you in such a short amount of time, but all I'm asking is for a little faith in me."
I was confused as to what he meant. He wanted us to have the same emotional connection that Julian and I had? Because that would be ludicrous. Julian was like a father to me. Whereas Taehyung had been behaving anything but fatherly and some of his reactions had been quite questionable.
