Chapter Two: The Escape
1711 Words
The black SUV sliced through the city like a silent bullet, gliding past busy intersections, honking buses, and bewildered pedestrians. Inside, the air was thick with unshed questions.
Dante glanced at the woman in the back seat through the rearview mirror. She looked like something torn out of a dream—and dropped into a nightmare. A bride, still in her gown, mascara streaking down her cheeks, fingers trembling in her lap like fluttering moths.
He should have said no.
He should have told her to get out, to go back, to call someone. This was Lagos, not some romantic movie. Picking up a runaway bride could lead to headlines, lawsuits—or worse.
But something in her voice, in the desperate way she’d said, “Please, just drive,” had pierced something in him.
So now here they were.
“You haven’t told me where we’re going,” he said quietly, eyes on the road.
“I don’t care,” Amara murmured, her voice dry and brittle. “Just… not home. Not the hotel. Not anywhere they’d think to find me.”
Dante raised an eyebrow but said nothing. They passed Ikoyi Bridge, its silver arches gleaming in the sunlight. He flicked on the indicator and headed toward the expressway.
“Do you want to stop somewhere? Eat? Change?”
“No,” she said quickly, then paused. “I can’t go anywhere like this.”
She looked down at herself, at the once-glorious gown now wrinkled and stained by tears. It clung to her awkwardly in the seat, layers of tulle and lace bunching around her like a cage.
“I must look crazy.”
Dante didn't respond right away. Instead, he slowed down at a red light and turned slightly in his seat.
“You look like someone who just had her heart ripped out.”
She met his eyes in the mirror. For a moment, neither of them looked away.
Then the light turned green, and the car surged forward.
*****
The road unfurled ahead, wide and emptying as they left the city’s chaos behind. Traffic thinned. Noise faded. By the time they hit the outskirts of Ogun State, they were surrounded by wide fields, clusters of palm trees, and the occasional roadside suya stand.
Amara sat curled in the back, her bare feet tucked under her gown, arms wrapped around herself like armor. Her head throbbed. Her throat was sore. Her phone buzzed constantly—calls, texts, voicemails. She turned it off without checking.
The silence inside the car felt safer than anything else right now.
Still, it was loud in her head.
Tayo.
Bisi.
Together. Like it meant nothing.
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block the image—their skin, their tangled limbs, the look on Tayo’s face. Not guilt. Not even shame. Just… surprise. Like he’d been caught taking a bite of someone else’s food.
She’d trusted him. Chosen him, even after everything. All the signs. All the rumors. She’d ignored them for love.
And Bisi—her best friend. Her childhood partner in crime. The girl who held her hair when she cried, who danced with her at sleepovers, who whispered secrets under mosquito nets.
Betrayal from a man hurt.
Betrayal from a sister? That shattered something deeper.
She shifted, the stiff corset digging into her ribs.
“You okay?” Dante asked suddenly.
She didn’t respond. Just leaned her head against the window, the glass cool against her skin.
He took the silence as his answer and kept driving.
*****
After nearly two hours of nothing but the hum of the engine and the occasional roadside hawker, Dante pulled into a quiet filling station.
“I need to top off,” he said. “And get water. You should hydrate.”
Amara blinked at the sudden sunlight as he stepped out.
She watched him move—tall, lean, with broad shoulders and a gait that suggested confidence born from surviving something. His face was sharp, angular, but not unkind. Something about him felt… deliberate. Like a man who didn’t waste words, or movements, or trust.
Five minutes later, he slid back into the driver’s seat and handed her a cold bottle of water without a word.
“Thanks,” she murmured.
He didn’t answer. Just pulled back onto the road.
They drove on.
*****
By the third hour, the weight of silence started to press harder. Amara could feel it settling in her bones, heavy as the heat outside.
She shifted forward. “You don’t talk much.”
“I talk when there’s something worth saying.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You think I’m not worth talking to?”
“No. I think you’re drowning. And sometimes, talking pulls you deeper instead of saving you.”
That quieted her. She stared at the back of his head, processing his words.
“You always this philosophical?”
Dante gave the ghost of a smile. “Only when I pick up strangers in wedding dresses.”
She huffed out a laugh—brief, reluctant, real.
The first real sound of life from her all day.
*****
Eventually, she moved to the front passenger seat. The cramped space in the back felt too much like a cage now. She slid into the seat beside him with a quiet, “Hope you don’t mind.”
Dante simply adjusted the AC vents and nodded. “Better view here.”
They drove past hills, sleepy villages, and patches of rainforest. The sun dipped slowly toward the horizon, casting everything in molten gold.
“I’m supposed to be married right now,” she said suddenly.
He didn’t respond. Just waited.
Amara exhaled shakily.
“I walked in on him. My fiancé. This morning. With my best friend.” She let the words hang. “In bed. In our hotel suite.”
Dante didn’t flinch. Didn’t gasp or offer awkward condolences. He simply asked, “Did you suspect anything before today?”
Amara blinked. “What?”
“People don’t just fall into bed like that on a whim. Sometimes, the signs are there. We just don’t want to see them.”
She stared at the dashboard. “I saw the signs,” she whispered. “I just didn’t want to believe they were real.”
A pause.
“I wanted this wedding to fix everything. Our past arguments. My doubts. My loneliness. I thought if I got through today, everything else would line up.”
He nodded, eyes on the road. “A lot of people marry illusions. Some even die with them.”
His words weren’t cruel. Just honest. Stripped raw.
“You talk like you’ve lived through betrayal,” she said softly.
“I have.”
She looked at him now, really looked. His jaw was tight. His hands steady on the wheel. But his eyes—those dark, almost black eyes—held pain. Familiar pain. Pain that had worn a suit and smiled at guests before.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
Dante glanced at her for a moment. “Another time.”
*****
Night began to fall. The car’s headlights blinked on automatically. They were now deep into the countryside, far from Lagos’ chaos.
Amara shifted in her seat. “Where are we?”
“About twenty kilometers past Abeokuta. There’s a quiet town up ahead. No hotels, just a roadside inn. It’s not fancy, but you can rest there tonight. Think.”
“And you?”
“I’ll wait outside until you decide what’s next.”
Amara turned to him, surprised. “You’re just going to… wait?”
“I don’t leave people stranded,” he said simply. “Even if they’re strangers.”
She studied him. “You don’t talk much, but you act like someone who’s rescued a lot of broken things.”
Dante didn’t respond. But something flickered in his eyes. A memory, maybe. Or regret.
The town soon came into view—small, sleepy, dimly lit. A scattering of homes, a bakery, a pharmacy, and a rusted sign that read Divine Shelter Guest Inn in peeling paint.
He pulled in quietly.
The receptionist didn’t even blink at Amara’s dress. People around here had learned not to ask too many questions. Dante paid for two rooms without flinching.
“You want me to stay in the same place?” she asked.
He met her gaze calmly. “If it makes you uncomfortable, I’ll sleep in the car.”
“No,” she said quickly. “I feel safer with you close.”
It was true.
He nodded. “You’ll have the room at the far end. Less noise.”
*****
Later that night, after a warm bath and changing into a plain cotton wrapper borrowed from the innkeeper’s wife, Amara stepped outside her room and found Dante sitting on the hood of the SUV, sipping a bottle of water, eyes lost in the stars.
She hesitated before walking over.
“You hungry?” he asked without looking.
“Not really.”
A beat passed.
She sat beside him.
“I never got your full name,” she said.
“Dante Okonkwo.”
Something about the name tickled her memory. Familiar, like a name she’d heard in business circles. Or on the news.
“You sound like someone important,” she teased gently.
“I used to be,” he said, barely above a whisper.
Amara looked at him, but he didn’t elaborate.
They sat in silence, the night air cool around them, the stars blinking like tiny wounds in the sky.
“You ever think about just… starting over?” she asked.
“All the time.”
She looked down at her hands. “Maybe that’s what I need. A new beginning.”
Dante’s voice was soft, almost gentle now. “Then maybe this isn’t a breakdown. Maybe it’s your breakthrough.”
*****
And in that quiet moment, beneath a moonlit sky in a strange town, with nothing but exhaustion and raw honesty between them, Amara realized that sometimes, salvation doesn’t come in the form of vows or churches or diamond rings.
Sometimes, it comes in the form of a stranger who listens.
And drives.
And doesn’t ask you to be okay before you’re ready.
- Writer
