26/08/2025
Paying for my father's sins 💔
Chapter 7 –
At first, I didn’t believe a single thing Chike did.
The smiles, the random gifts, the way he opened doors for me like we were in some Nollywood romance — it all felt fake.
So I faked it too.
I smiled when he smiled. I laughed at his jokes. I let him hold my hand when people were watching. But inside, I was still the girl who had seen him drag a man out of a car and beat him in front of everyone.
Then one Saturday morning, he did something I didn’t expect.
He told me to get dressed, but not fancy.
We drove for almost an hour before stopping in front of my mother’s small house.
The moment she opened the door, her face lit up like she hadn’t aged ten years from stress. My younger brother ran out, barefoot, grinning. And Chike… he hugged them. Not just a polite handshake — a real hug, like they mattered.
I stood there, stunned, as he helped my mother carry bags of rice and tins of milk into the kitchen. He even bent down to fix the hinge on the front door, something my brother had been begging me to help with for months.
“Mama, he’s… different now,” my brother whispered to me later.
And for the first time, I wondered if maybe I had judged him too quickly.
After that visit, something in me shifted. The fake smiles became real. The tension in my chest loosened.
That night, when he held my hand as we watched TV, I didn’t pull away.
When he tucked my hair behind my ear, my heart actually skipped.
And when he brushed his lips against my forehead before bed, I felt heat rise to my cheeks.
One evening, we were in the kitchen together, and I accidentally spilled water on the floor. Before I could grab a cloth, Chike stepped forward, cupped my chin with one hand, and murmured,
“You don’t always have to fix everything alone, you know?”
The way he said it… I swear my knees almost gave out.
I had spent weeks building walls against him, but with moments like this, I could feel them starting to crumble.
