Delayed Passion: Miss Lynch's Unrequited Love-Chapter 68: Want to Hear Your Voice

When she turned seventeen, Thea Lynch encountered a nightmare that would haunt her ever since.

In her memory, it was still summer in Westmere on that day.

Because she relied too much on sleeping pills, her grandmother, out of concern, tried stopping her medication for a day.

Whether it was psychological or not, she indeed found it hard to sleep without the pills that day.

Even though she closed the windows before bed and didn’t wear her hearing aid, the cicadas outside were still loud enough to hurt her eardrums. Even with the air conditioning on, she felt hot and restless, as if a hundred thousand tiny bugs were gnawing at her bones, causing her to toss and turn anxiously.

She didn’t dare turn on the lights, fearing her grandparents would see the light through the crack in the door and worry about her.

She lay with her eyes open until two in the morning, unable to sleep, and eventually fished her phone out from under her pillow. She tried watching some dull, lengthy documentaries and dramas, but an hour later, she was still wide awake.

She opened the WeChat page, thinking about messaging her brother, but gave up on the idea, knowing he couldn’t reply. Bored, her finger scrolled down, stopping at Silas Cheney’s chat box. Then she continued to scroll, hesitating again when her fingertip brushed over another familiar chat box.

She lingered there for quite some time, her inner balance swaying back and forth. In the end, logic lost out, and she couldn’t quite tell what feelings prompted her to click into Ian Preston’s chat box.

The content of their last chat lay before her: he had said he’d be out of town over the weekend and couldn’t make it back. But he promised to pick her up from school on Monday and bring her some famous local snacks.

Below was her obedient reply: she agreed, and he told her to rest early. The conversation ended there.

Taking a deep breath, she typed hesitantly in the chat box, a simple phrase she didn’t know how many times she had edited before sending it out.

"Ian, when are you returning to Coronet tomorrow?"

She hadn’t expected an immediate response, but she planned to wait for him.

After all, she was destined for another sleepless night, and she had plenty of time.

She remembered clearly that just as she exited WeChat to study some vocabulary, a new message notification popped up at the top of the screen.

It had only been two minutes since she sent her message.

And it was three ten in the morning.

Ian: "Landing around noon tomorrow. Can’t sleep now?"

He didn’t ask why she was still awake, nor did he lecture her.

She stared at the sentence for a while before replying truthfully.

"Did I wake you up, Ian?"

"How could one message wake me? I haven’t slept yet."

"Are you busy with work?"

"Yeah."

Seeing his response, she continued typing in the chat box, intending to quickly end the conversation so as not to disturb him further.

But he was quicker, sending a message before she could: "Are you free for a call?"

She was taken aback, "Is there something urgent?"

"Not really. I just want to hear your voice."

"..." She responded with an ellipsis, for she was most nervous when Ian asked her to speak; it was more nerve-wracking than an exam.

Ian: "We haven’t seen each other for nearly two days. Don’t you want to hear my voice?"

His words made her heart skip a beat, followed by a sudden thump like a heavy blow.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, not knowing which letter to press.

After a long while, she replied: "I do."

One word took five minutes.

Throughout, Ian didn’t push for her response nor changed the topic. He seemed particularly insistent on her answer.

Just two seconds after sending the message, "Put on your hearing aid."

At the instant she saw those words, she clumsily climbed out of bed, using her phone’s light to reach for her hearing aid on the bedside table.

She admitted, she was quite flustered at that time.

The hearing aid was stubbornly uncooperative, needing her to repeatedly adjust it. Once ready, she didn’t dare lie back down, choosing to sit at the edge of the bed, awaiting his call.

With each passing minute, she had never anticipated a phone call so eagerly, silently urging why he hadn’t called yet, over and over.

She also realized for the first time how impatient she could be.

Despite her self-contempt, she desperately wanted to urge him to call faster.

Fortunately, he didn’t keep her waiting too long.

When the call interface appeared, her instinct was to answer, but she hesitated, worrying acting too eager, so she deliberately waited before pressing accept.

She remembered it was around eighteen seconds; she was quietly counting all along.

"Thea, can you hear me clearly?"

The familiar voice, accompanied by a faint electric buzz, reached her ear, causing her breath to catch, and she had to pause before softly responding.

She held the phone tightly against her ear, even able to hear his clear breathing.

"Long-term use of sleeping pills isn’t good. Grandma’s right, you should obediently drink the calming tea she prepares next time."

"Okay."

"I’ll head straight back after buying the snacks tomorrow morning. I thought of buying them yesterday while passing by, but feared they wouldn’t be fresh today. Though snacks can last long, I can’t be careless if they’re for my dear Thea, especially since you have such a picky taste."

Back then, Ian did talk quite a bit.

In the many years she knew him, he rarely spoke at such length in one go, especially about such trivial, insignificant things.

Later, she understood, it wasn’t that he became more talkative or expressive.

He knew she didn’t want to talk, so he kept speaking, hoping for even a single response from her.

"Did you go to tutoring today?"

"No." Her responses were sparse, and their roles reversed that year.

The one who spoke little, appearing cold, was now her.

"Didn’t go out either?"

"No."

"Don’t you feel bored at home?"

She still replied with that single word.

Anyone unaware might think she wanted to end the conversation.

But Ian knew, despite the repetitive single-word replies, she was trying her best to respond.

Because her voice was trembling.

"Tomorrow night, let’s go out to eat. Remember to tell Grandma in the morning."

"Okay."

"Anything special you want to eat?"

He knew she was picky, and her appetite was poor while unwell, losing interest in foods she once loved.

Perhaps he thought it was too late and didn’t want to trouble her, so he kindly said, "No rush, let me know what you want to eat tomorrow."

He encouraged her to respond by text.

"I... I want to eat seafood..."

Ian seemed surprised by her sudden reply, and two to three seconds later, she heard his chuckling voice respond gently, "Alright, tomorrow we’ll go for seafood, Thea."