Although the food smells wonderful, I am merely poking at it as I sit at the same table with Teresa, my mother, and Sunghoon and eat dinner. While Teresa and my mother just continue to live their lie, it is unbearable for me to even sit at the same table with them and watch them do it. It's hard for me to hide from them the anger and disappointment that has been building up inside me, and I'm sure it won't take much for all those emotions to burst out of me.
"Don't you like it?", Teresa asks when she notices that I have barely touched my food. With my lips pressed together, I clutch the fork in my hand a little tighter. How could they lie to my face all my life and not even begin to feel bad or ashamed about it?
"I'm not hungry," I reply in a shaky voice. "Is it the salmon? You didn't like salmon when you were a kid," Teresa reminds me, winking across the table at me. "Actually, it's because I've been lied to all my life by the very people I trusted with the most," it bursts out of me, as I can't hold it in any longer.
The smile on Teresa's lips fades, while I see pure panic in my mother's gaze, if you want to call it that. "What are you talking about?" asks Teresa, as if she doesn't quite know what I'm talking about. I am sitting directly across from her and yet she has the audacity to lie to my face.
Suddenly I feel Sunghoon's hand reaching for mine under the table and squeezing lightly, as if to symbolize not saying anything to me. But I am too angry to remain silent now and continue to watch myself being lied to.
"What I'm talking about?", I repeat Teresa's question and laugh in disbelief. At that, I shake off Sunghoon's hand and shoot up from my chair. "I'm talking about you being my birth mother and daring to keep lying to my face."
"You told her?", Teresa now asks Sunghoon, who is sitting next to me with his eyes lowered, massaging the bridge of his nose. "He didn't have to," I reply, ignoring the fact that the woman who has been pretending to be my mother for the past 20 years has burst into tears. "I heard your conversation last night."
Now Teresa rises from her chair as well. "Believe me-," Teresa puts in and goes to reach across the table for my face, but I take a step back. Shaking my head, I look into Teresa's green eyes, which I inherited from her. So does the brown hair she wears pinned up.
"Believe you?", I interrupt her, snorting contemptuously. "We can see where that's gotten us now." My voice trembles and my chest rises and falls erratically. Since I can't stand being in the same room with them any longer, I throw my fork on the table and storm out of the dining room.
I run up the stairs to my guest room, where I throw myself on the four-poster bed and pull my legs up against my body, crying. Inwardly, I hoped that all of this would turn out to be just a big misunderstanding. However, after this conversation with Teresa, I now have the unwanted certainty; I am not my mother's daughter, but Teresa.
Sunghoon knew and didn't tell me, but I don't blame him anymore. It was her responsibility to tell me the truth after I was raised to be honest all my life. Now it's out. Now it's real.
A soft knock sounds at my door and Teresa pokes her head into my room. "Go away," I whisper, averting my gaze from her. "At least let me explain, Lola," Teresa pleads with me. But I'm tired of hearing how complicated everything is, or that it's just for my protection. It doesn't make up for anything.
"What's there to explain?", I want to know and raise my eyes to glare disappointedly at Teresa. "You've been lying to my face all these years with no remorse." "We didn't mean to lie to you... It's just so damn-," Teresa continues. "Complicated?", I interrupt her. She nods and a snort escapes my lips.
Crossing my arms, I look at Teresa, who is trying to meet my gaze with obvious nervousness. "I don't think it's that complicated; my father cheated on her with you." "It wasn't like that," Teresa replies, visibly affected. Tears well up in her eyes and instantly she averts her gaze from me. "Then what was it like?", I want to know.
Tears run down her cheeks and suddenly I am overcome by this frightening thought that my father could have done something to Teresa that she didn't want. Anyone who beats his daughter to hospital and is about to sell her to a strange man is surely capable of much more.
"It wasn't..." Teresa's voice trembles and before she can even finish the sentence, she finally loses it completely. "Teresa," I say in shock, holding my hands over my mouth. Now tears are welling up in my eyes as well.
She doesn't even have to finish the sentence for me to realize that my father is a fucking monster. I remember the accusations I made to her a few days ago; that she wouldn't care so much if it was her own daughter.
"Why didn't you run away?", I want to know. "I couldn't leave you behind," Teresa replies quietly. "For him, there was no question of me taking you with me, and he gave me an ultimatum: either I leave without you, or I continue to be your family's maid so I can continue to see you."
"Why didn't you report him?", I ask in shock. She shakes her head and a snort escapes her lips. She wipes tears from her face with the back of her hand. "You forget how much influence he has," Teresa reminds me. "Your father hired people to fake your birth certificate so it wouldn't have my name on it, but that of.... Her. So who would have believed me if I showed up and claimed I was your birth mother when there was so much to the contrary? They would have dropped it before a DNA test was even an option."
"And what about her?", I ask Teresa, referring to the woman I believed to be my mother until last night. "She could have corroborated your testimony." "No," Teresa replies, shaking her head. "She's always been very afraid of your father. He's always been a terrible man, Lola."
"I'm so sorry, Teresa...", I whisper with tears in my eyes. Before I know it, we're falling into each other's arms. I feel terrible for blaming her. Teresa herself must know as well as my so-called mother and I what a monster my father is. And yet she has stayed all these years out of love for her daughter.
"It's not your fault, Lola," she replies, breathing a kiss on my temple. She then breaks away from the embrace again. "If you'll excuse me, I'd like to be alone right now to process all of this a bit," Teresa tells me, and I nod in understanding. She rises from the edge of my bed and leaves the guest room with a brief, tired smile in my direction.
Only a moment later, my door then opens again and Sunghoon enters the room. "Can I come in?" he wants to know, looking anxiously in my direction. "You already are," I reply, still in tears, and feel the corners of my mouth twitch up into a brief smile before they immediately lower again and I avert my gaze from him with my lips pressed together.
Sunghoon closes the door behind him and joins me at the edge of the bed. For a moment, he merely looks at me in silence before hesitantly reaching for my face. The heart in my chest skips a beat as I look into his eyes and he gently wipes the tears from my face with his thumb. "I can't bear to see you cry," he says, barely audible.
Briefly, I think I see in his gaze that he regrets saying those words out loud. But Sunghoon can't take them back now either. "I still wanted to thank you for what you did for me today," I change the subject.
"I thought it would do you good to see her again," Sunghoon says sweetly, his thumb still gently stroking my cheek. "It did," I assure him with a smile on my lips, returning his gaze. "Thank you, Sunghoon." I lose myself in his brown eyes, which bore deeply into mine.
As if of my own accord, I reach out to him to close the small gap between us and place my lips on his. For a moment Sunghoon sits motionless before he carefully returns the kiss. As he does so, he places his other hand at my waist and slides a little closer to me. It's a brief, loving kiss that sparks a tingling sensation inside me that spreads throughout my body, befuddling my senses.
"Dolores," Sunghoon breathes into the kiss as I place myself on his lap and wrap my arms around his neck. He pulls away from my lips and places his hands on my hips. "I have a very important business conference call in ten minutes... You should get some rest."
"Okay," I reply understandingly, but I can't deny that I would prefer it if Sunghoon could still stay with me. I feel better when he's there. Carefully, Sunghoon pushes me off his lap. "Good night, Dolores," Sunghoon wishes me before. He gives me one last, longing look before he leaves the guest room and pulls the door shut behind him.
A/N: CEO Sunghoon is busy again... but what do we think about this chapter?