Chapter Four – Cracks and Questions
1505 Words
The storm was gone by morning.
It left the earth soaked and softened, like a wound tender after healing. The town was quiet — that post-rain hush that made even the birds chirp more carefully. From the small window of her room at the inn, Amara watched farmers push carts through wet red mud. The air smelled of rain, firewood, and something else — memory.
She hadn’t spoken much since breakfast.
There was too much swirling in her head.
Not about Dante — though he remained a question mark in human form — but about her own past. About the seeds that had been there all along. Seeds she ignored. Watered. Nurtured. Until they bloomed into betrayal.
She didn’t notice when Dante stepped into the room.
“You okay?”
His voice brought her back. She turned and saw him leaning against the wall, a half-empty bottle of malt in one hand.
“Define okay,” she said.
“Breathing. Thinking. Not plotting to stab someone.”
A soft chuckle slipped from her lips. “Then I guess I’m okay.”
Dante nodded once, then looked away.
Amara hesitated, then pulled her knees to her chest and stared out the window again.
“Do you want to hear something stupid?”
He shrugged. “Try me.”
She exhaled slowly, then spoke.
*****
Flashback: Years Ago
The day she met Bisi, they had both been standing outside the bursary office at the university. The line was long, the sun unforgiving. Bisi had turned to her, a bottle of cold Fanta in hand, and asked:
“Abeg, can you help me hold my spot? I want to go and pee before I die here.”
Amara had laughed. “Go jare. I dey here.”
When Bisi returned, she gave Amara the rest of the Fanta as thanks. It was flat and warm, but Amara drank it anyway.
That was the beginning.
They were inseparable for the next eight years. Flatmates, party partners, late-night gossips and cheerleaders. They laughed over heartbreaks. Cried over lost jobs. Supported each other through every twist of life.
And then came Tayo.
The moment Bisi met him, something in the air changed.
Not visibly. Not violently. Just enough for Amara to feel it — like a knife pressed gently, not cutting, just reminding her it could.
At first, she thought she was being paranoid.
Bisi was warm. Friendly. Flirtatious — but always harmless.
But the signs piled up.
The way Bisi leaned too close when Tayo spoke. The long hugs that lingered. The private jokes they shared when they thought Amara wasn’t paying attention. The way she started teasing Amara: “Ah, babe, how did you catch that one? Na full package o.”
Harmless words. But there was always an edge beneath them.
Amara had confronted Tayo once.
“Do you like Bisi?”
He laughed. Too quickly. “She’s your best friend. You think I’d go there? You don’t trust me?”
And Amara, desperate to hold on to her perfect picture, swallowed the doubt.
She blamed herself instead. “Maybe I’m just insecure,” she’d thought. “Maybe love is just… messy sometimes.”
But the picture cracked little by little.
Until the day it shattered — in that hotel room, with her veil still on her head, her bouquet still in hand, and her best friend riding her fiancé like a stolen trophy.
*****
Back in the present, Amara rubbed her temples.
“I should have known,” she muttered.
Dante looked up from his bottle.
“Sometimes we don’t see what we don’t want to see.”
“I did see. That’s the problem. I saw everything. I just told myself it didn’t mean what it obviously meant.”
Dante nodded, expression unreadable.
Amara turned to him. “You ever trust the wrong person?”
He gave a faint smile. “You asking if I’ve been betrayed?”
“Yeah.”
“All the time,” he said.
Her brows rose. “That many?”
He didn’t elaborate. Just looked out the window like he was watching another life unfold.
Amara leaned forward. “You ever loved someone and they—”
“—ripped your heart out and danced on it?”
“Exactly.”
He laughed softly. Not bitter, not angry. Just tired.
“There was someone,” he admitted. “Her name was Chioma.”
Amara sat up straighter.
“She was my first everything,” he continued. “When I started making money, she was there. Before the suits. Before the cars. She saw it all. Helped me build.”
“And?”
“She sold me out.”
Amara’s stomach turned. “How?”
“She leaked confidential documents to a competitor. For cash. She claimed it was a mistake — but the money was traced to her account.”
“Oh my God.”
Dante shrugged. “It happens.”
“But… why aren’t you more angry about it?”
He took another sip. “Anger’s heavy. I already carry too much.”
Amara stared at him in silence. For the first time since they met, she saw it — not just the power, the control, the calm — but the pain. The deep loneliness that hid in his pauses.
She wondered how long he’d been walking around with a heart full of rusted knives.
*****
Later that afternoon, they sat in the open corridor of the lodge. The rain had turned into a mist, soft and cold.
Amara brought out her phone, stared at the cracked screen. Messages still unread. Missed calls from her mother. Her aunt. Even Tayo.
She turned the phone off and tucked it back into her bag.
“I should probably tell my family something,” she murmured.
Dante glanced at her. “You don’t owe anyone anything right now.”
“They paid for that wedding. My mother mortgaged her land for it.”
“You didn’t ruin the wedding. They did.”
Silence stretched.
Amara turned to him.
“Why are you being nice to me?”
He blinked. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“I’m a stranger. You picked me up on the side of the road like an abandoned cat. You don’t even know my last name.”
Dante stared at her. “Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
A pause. Then, quietly, she said, “My name is Amara Ibeh.”
Dante nodded once. “Nice to meet you properly, Amara Ibeh.”
She smiled faintly. “And you are Dante…?”
“Okonkwo,” he replied. “But that’s not the name you’ll find on business registries.”
“Oh?”
“I changed it. After everything collapsed.”
“So what was it before?”
He looked at her, then said nothing.
Amara rolled her eyes. “You are so annoying.”
“Thank you.”
*****
That night, Amara couldn’t sleep.
She lay on the narrow bed, staring at the ceiling fan spinning slowly. The silence of the town pressed in. No generators. No cars. Just the distant bark of a dog and the chirp of insects.
She thought about her life.
The one she left behind.
The one that crumbled in a single, ugly moment.
And she thought about Dante. The man who sat across from her at dinner with secrets in his eyes. Who didn’t try to fix her. Who didn’t ask her to smile. Who just… existed beside her like a silent anchor.
She got up, barefoot, and padded to the door.
Dante’s room was next door. She knocked softly.
No answer.
She knocked again.
This time, he opened — shirtless, hair messy, expression calm but alert.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked.
“No.”
A pause.
“I keep replaying it. The room. The way they looked at me when I walked in. Like I was the one interrupting something private.”
Dante stepped aside. She entered.
His room was nearly identical to hers — plain, neat, cold.
She sat on the edge of the bed.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“Sure.”
“If you had the chance to go back and change one thing — just one — what would it be?”
He didn’t answer for a long time.
Then: “I would’ve paid more attention to who I let close.”
Amara nodded. “Me too.”
They sat in silence again, two broken hearts learning to breathe in the same room.
*****
Outside, the night deepened.
Somewhere far away, the world moved on. Cars honked in cities. Weddings continued. Bisi probably slept soundly in some suite, Tayo beside her.
But here, in this little town carved out of forgotten roads, Amara and Dante sat in the stillness — strangers no longer, yet not quite friends.
Just two people with cracks in their stories.
And maybe, just maybe, the light was beginning to find its way through those cracks.
- Writer
