CHAPTER THIRTY- ONE “CONVINCED”

© Opeyemi Akintunde

Inspired by the Holy One

Teju’s POV

Imade’s father was the first to leave.

He didn’t look back.

He walked out of the room with the slow, deliberate steps of a man who had just buried something important and did not trust himself to linger beside the grave. Of course, the other three followed. They had been best friends for decades. They entered the room of destiny together years ago as allies, business partners, dream builders. Now they walked out together like men and women trying to salvage what remained of a collapsing legacy.

I knew where they were going.

They would talk to him.

They would plead with him.

They would remind him of promises, of history, of friendship, of the sacrifices they had all made to bring us to this point. They would try to convince him to give us another fighting chance, even if there was nothing left to fight for.

I was torn.

Part of me wanted it to work… to hold on to the last threads of something that had never truly been woven. Another part of me wanted to walk away immediately, while the door was open, before it slammed shut again and I found myself trapped in the same prison for another two years… or ten… or a lifetime.

Marriage was a covenant before God.

At least that was what I had always believed.

So I asked myself the question that had been hiding in the corners of my mind since everything started falling apart.

Did God want this union to break?

Or were our parents wrong from the beginning to have decided our future before we even knew ourselves?

And if they were wrong… was this God’s way of dissolving something He never approved?

I sat back on the bed, bowed my head, and tried to think… really think… not as a son, not as a husband, not as a man trying to survive embarrassment… but as someone standing at a crossroads that would define the rest of his life.

But Imade could not keep quiet.

“Please, Teju… the phone number.”

Her voice trembled. Tears streamed down her face. She sounded like someone begging for oxygen, not information.

I lifted my head slowly and looked at her.

And something strange happened inside my chest.

The anger I expected to feel… wasn’t there.

Instead, there was pity.

Deep, unsettling pity.

I wasn’t looking at a wicked woman. I wasn’t looking at an enemy. I wasn’t even looking at the girl who had humiliated me at the dining table.

I was looking at a child crying for candy that didn’t belong to her… candy she had convinced herself was hers simply because she had tasted the idea of it once.

Whoever this Daniel was… he had planted something in her mind. An idea. A possibility. A version of life that felt perfect because it was never tested by reality. He had shown her a picture and walked away, leaving her to chase the frame long after the painting was gone.

“Imade… come,” I said softly.

Not as a husband.

Not as a wounded man.

But as someone older… steadier… tired of watching her self-destruct.

She hesitated… then walked toward me.

And she obeyed.

The same girl who had rejected me for two years stood there quietly, waiting for my next words like a daughter summoned by her father.

“Will you listen to me?” I asked gently.

She nodded.

“I am not talking to you as your husband,” I continued. “I am talking to you as Teju… your childhood friend… your family friend… your brother.”

My voice cracked on the last word.

“Why do you want to throw away your reality for your fantasy?”

She looked straight into my eyes.

For one fragile second… I thought she understood.

I thought something had finally broken through the fog.

Until she opened her mouth.

“The phone number, please.”

It felt like someone had driven a knife straight into my chest… slowly… deliberately… without rage, without drama, just precision.

I inhaled quietly, afraid that if I spoke too quickly, the grief inside me would spill out uncontrollably.

“He called me with an unknown number,” I said.

“Show me,” she demanded.

I handed her the phone.

She studied the screen intensely, scrolling, searching, as though sheer determination could force digits to appear where none existed.

Then she laughed.

Actually laughed.

“Daniel, this is no longer romantic,” she said lightly, as though speaking to someone standing right beside her. “Are you trying to play hide and seek with me?”

She wiped her tears, shook her head, and walked toward the door with a strange mixture of hope and frustration.

I didn’t stop her.

I couldn’t.

She opened the door and left the room.

Just like that.

I sat there, eyes fixed on the doorway long after she was gone, waiting for a sound… footsteps… something… anything that would suggest she might come back and say she was joking… or that she had finally realized what she was doing.

Nothing came.

The silence was heavy… unnatural… final.

This wasn’t normal heartbreak anymore.

This wasn’t pride.

This wasn’t stubbornness.

This was something else entirely.

Something deeper… darker… frightening.

I bowed my head again, my hands trembling slightly as I whispered into the emptiness.

“God… what is happening?”

To be continued…

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