Out of Reach

Chapter1 : The Genesis

The morning sun crept through the heavy curtains of the master bedroom like it was afraid to disturb the silence inside.

Tega lay on her side of the bed the left side, always the left side staring at the ceiling. Beside her, Efe slept with his back turned to her, his breathing deep and unbothered. Even in sleep he managed to make her feel invisible.

She had been awake since five.

Not because of nightmares. Not because of noise. But because this had become her normal lying awake in a bed that felt as cold and wide as the ocean, wondering how her life had arrived at this point.

She knew exactly how. She just didn’t like the answer.

Three years ago - Ughelli North, Delta State

The compound was full of life that evening. Lanterns hung between the trees, the smell of fresh pepper soup and palm wine floated through the warm Delta air, and the sound of Urhobo music drifted from the big speaker beside the gate.

To everyone gathered, it was a celebration.

To Tega, it was a verdict.

She sat between her mother and her aunt, wearing a lace blouse her mother had picked out, her hands folded neatly in her lap like a girl who had been rehearsed. Around her, relatives laughed and clinked glasses. Her father Chief Oghenero sat at the high table beside his oldest friend Chief Akpovire, both men glowing with satisfaction.

They looked like two men who had just closed the deal of their lives.

Because they had.

“Tega.” Her father’s voice cut through the noise. He was beckoning her over with one thick finger, his smile wide and proud.

She stood and walked to him.

“You know Akpovire’s son, Efe,” her father said, nodding toward the young man sitting beside Chief Akpovire. Efe was handsome, she would give him that. Dark skinned, sharp jawed, dressed in a crisp traditional attire. He looked at her the way someone looks at a new car appreciative but detached.

“Yes Daddy,” she said quietly.

“Good. You will be getting to know him better from now on.” Chief Oghenero laughed and slapped Chief Akpovire on the back. “Our families will become one. This is what we always planned.”

Chief Akpovire raised his glass. “To our children. To our legacy.”

Everyone at the table cheered.

Tega smiled because her father was watching.

Inside, something very quiet broke.

Present Day- Lekki, Lagos

The bedroom door opened and closed. Efe was up, moving through the room without a word, without a glance in her direction. She heard the shower run. She heard him on the phone business, always business his voice sharp and confident, a completely different man from the one who shared her bed in silence every night.

She sat up slowly and reached for her phone on the nightstand.

A message from her mother.

“Good morning my daughter. Hope you and your husband are well. Remember a good wife keeps her home. We are praying for you.”

Tega stared at the message for a long moment then set the phone face down on the bed.

She got up, wrapped her robe around herself and walked to the window. Below, the compound was already alive. The gateman was sweeping. The housekeeper was hanging laundry. And there, beside the black SUV, was Akin crouched down checking the tyres, his white shirt already slightly damp from the morning heat.

As if sensing her eyes on him, he looked up.

For just a second their eyes met. He gave a small respectful nod and looked back down at his work.

Tega let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding.

At least someone in this house notices I exist, she thought. Then she caught herself and stepped back from the window.

He was the driver.

She was a married woman.

She had no business thinking about him at all.

And yet as she stepped back from the window she found herself doing exactly that.

Akin Adeyemi was not the kind of man who demanded attention when he walked into a room.

He was not loud. He did not carry himself with the chest out confidence of the men who came to the house for Efe’s business meetings those men who shook hands too firmly and laughed too loudly and made sure everyone knew they had arrived.

Akin was different.

He was average in height but there was something solid about him, not bulky, just grounded, like a man who knew exactly where his feet were at all times. His skin was deep brown, smooth and even, the kind that caught the morning sun and held it. His face was quietly handsome strong jaw, wide set eyes that were darker than they first appeared, a mouth that rested in a natural calm expression that some people might mistake for seriousness but was really just stillness.

It was his eyes that Tega noticed most.

She had noticed them without meaning to, early in his first week working at the house. She had come downstairs earlier than usual and found him in the driveway polishing the car, and when he looked up and saw her he had said good morning in that steady unhurried way of his and his eyes had met hers fully and directly not in a disrespectful way, not in any way she could point to and name as inappropriate but with a quality of attention that she had not experienced in a very long time.

He actually looked at her.

Not through her. Not past her. Not at the space slightly to the left of her face the way Efe did when she was speaking and his mind was already somewhere else.

At her.

Like she was a real person standing in front of him and that fact mattered.

It had startled her so much that she had looked away first.

He had come to them through a recommendation from Efe’s office manager a young man from Lagos Island, reliable and trustworthy, with a clean record and five years of driving experience. Efe had barely glanced at his CV before approving the hire. He needed a driver for Tega and Akin was available. That was the beginning and end of Efe’s interest in the matter.

But Tega had noticed things about Akin that two years of quiet observation had added up into something like a picture.

He arrived every morning fifteen minutes before he was needed. Not because anyone told him to simply because that was who he was. She had come out early enough twice to catch him already there, checking the tyres, wiping down the windscreen, making sure everything was in order before the day began. He took pride in his work without making a show of it. That was a rare thing.

He was kind to Mama Bisi in a way that the other staff sometimes were not stopping to help her carry heavy things from the market, remembering small details she mentioned and asking about them later. Tega had watched this through windows and doorways more times than she would ever admit.

He read. This had surprised her the most. On the days she kept him waiting at functions that ran long, at her friend Sola’s house when the conversation stretched past its intended time she would return to the car to find him with a small paperback open on the steering wheel, reading with the focused quiet of a man who genuinely loved books. She had asked him once what he was reading and he had held up the cover without embarrassment a Chinua Achebe novel, worn at the spine from what looked like multiple readings.

“You have read that before,” she had said, more observation than question.

“Three times,” he had replied simply. “It is different every time.”

She had thought about that answer for days.