I Heard His Thoughts Never His Love Chapter 02
Something inside me finally shattered.
Ten years together, reduced to settling accounts.
I swallowed the ache in my throat and turned toward my parents.
“Mom, Dad, please go home and bring everything Silas ever gave me.”
Silas’s face changed instantly.
No.
I didn’t mean it. I don’t want her to give anything back.
If she returns everything, there’ll really be nothing left between us.
His lips remained pressed together until my parents walked out the door.
Then he said,
“Don’t leave out a single thing.”
“Silas, stop saying things you don’t mean.”
A gentle female voice came from the doorway.
My cousin, Serena Bennett, walked inside pulling a suitcase behind her.
She had started piano at five, won a national junior competition at twelve, and received early admission to an Ivy League school at sixteen.
She finished both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees ahead of schedule and had supposedly returned after being invited by an internationally renowned professor to participate in a child psychology research project.
Her life had always looked flawless.
The moment Silas saw her, the tension visibly left his shoulders.
Serena walked over and gently scolded him.
“What did I teach you? You don’t speak to a woman like that. Apologize to Nora.”
Silas didn’t argue.
He lowered his eyes.
“Sorry.”
But his thoughts practically leaped with relief.
Thank God Serena’s back.
She’s giving me an out. If I apologize, Nora won’t leave.
I knew from his thoughts that he was only happy because Serena had given him a way to back down.
Still, memories surfaced against my will.
Whenever I tried to get Silas to eat, he would sweep the plate onto the floor and coldly tell me to get lost.
Serena only had to say, “Knock it off,” and he would silently pick up his fork.
When I worried he couldn’t sleep, I read stories to him.
He told me I was annoying.
But if Serena sent him a casual text, he would read it dozens of times.
Maybe I had never mattered to him as much as I thought.
My chest hurt.
Yet even admitting that pain felt pathetic.
After all, I’d spent my entire life in Serena’s shadow.
When she got straight A’s, my parents bragged to everyone that the Bennett family had produced a genius.
When I climbed from the middle of my class into the top ten, my father threw my report card at my face.
“What’s there to celebrate about tenth place? Serena has never been anything but first!”
My mother forced me to learn piano because Serena played it.
She made me wear white dresses because Serena liked them.
She even wanted me to speak the way Serena did.
“If you were half as accomplished as Serena, you wouldn’t embarrass us so much.”
But I wasn’t an answer sheet meant to be copied from her.
I was Nora Bennett.
When I was twelve, I finally broke under their criticism.
I climbed over the fence and ran away from home.
At an abandoned amusement park, I found Silas, who had run away too.
He was curled up beside an old carousel.
His heart was sobbing.
I’m scared.
Can that girl in the white dress take me home?
I linked my arm through his and walked him back to the Grey house.
That was how our bond began.
I secretly tested it afterward.
No one else could hear his thoughts.
I thought it was a privilege God had given only me.
And when I was with Silas, no one compared me to Serena.
So even when his moods swung wildly, I treated him as my only safe harbor.
It was much later that I learned the person Silas had depended on most as a child had always been Serena.
The day he ran away was the day Serena’s family was moving overseas.
What I had mistaken for destiny was nothing more than an empty place she had left behind.
“Marriage isn’t something you decide on impulse.”
Serena took my hand and smiled gently, though something almost taunting flickered in her eyes.
“Nora, think about it again. Silas can’t live without you.”
When I said nothing, she turned to Silas with a smile.
“Why don’t you fold her some paper stars to cheer her up? You make me a whole jar every birthday so I can make wishes.”
“Make some for Nora too. The jar in your study is almost full anyway.”
My entire body went rigid.
The glass jar filled with paper stars—the Jar of Wishing Stars—had always been kept on the highest shelf in Silas’s study.
Once, I accidentally knocked it down.
Stars scattered everywhere.
Silas’s eyes immediately turned red, and he shoved me away hard.
My arm slammed against the corner of the desk.
The bruise lasted two weeks.
Damn it. She saw them. What’s the point of hiding them now?
Did she get hurt? I shouldn’t have panicked like that.
Later, he silently treated my injury.
I was the one who comforted him.
“Everyone has something precious they don’t want anyone touching. I understand.”
So the treasure he had desperately protected had always belonged to Serena.
Silas jerked his head up.
His face went deathly pale.
No. Those stars were—
“Nora, we brought everything.”
My mother walked over.
She looked at me as though she wanted to say something, but in the end, she remained silent and set a cardboard box in front of me.
Inside were old hair clips Silas had casually given me, half-used paintbrushes, and books he had already read.
Things he’d tossed my way whenever he happened to be in a good mood.
Yet I had treasured every single one for ten years.
I stopped listening for Silas’s thoughts.
I wouldn’t listen anymore.
I closed the box and pushed it toward him.
“It’s all here.”
“Silas, starting today, neither of us owes the other anything.”
“And neither of us will bother the other again.”