MIDNIGHT

PROLOGUE

My right palm still stung from the harsh and hard contact it just made with his rough face but even that couldn’t stop or reduce the intensity of the glare I was currently sending his way.

How could he have? Such guts! I guess my silence had been taken for stupidity and weakness, so much so that he felt he could get away with something as serious as this without so much as a nasty word, cause he got away with every other thing unscathed.

He had a mixture of surprise, fear, panic, hurt and confusion written all over his face, like he couldn’t wrap his head around what was happening. I guess he thought I’d never find out, well, he guessed wrong. I’d found out. In the most explicit, vulgar, humiliating and hurtful way possible.

Through a video.

“Dee, what was that for?” he asked, with his palm on his cheek, like it would fall off otherwise.

“Dee, what was that for?” I mimicked him as his brows furrowed in confusion and uncertainty.

“Dee—“ he started but I wasn’t ready to hear whatever lie he planned on spewing out of those same lips that had kissed me with so much passion, passion that suddenly felt fake and superficial.

“Just shut up!” I snapped. “You lying, cheating, son of a gun. How dare you? How could you have been so stupid, so heartless, so careless? How could you have?! What were you thinking? What was going on in that obviously empty thoughtless head of yours?” I asked as I paced the wooden floor of our matrimonial bedroom.

I was hurt and I felt betrayed. We’d been married just two years and already he was sleeping around? Not once in the two years we’d been married have I ever refused him sex, I knew I married a man who loved intimacy and was adventurous in the bedroom but I never knew I wouldn’t be enough for him because I went out of my way to keep our sexual life exciting, so what had gone through his mind when he decided to take his urges elsewhere? And to make the whole thing worse, he couldn’t have found a normal single lady, it had to be a married woman, a woman old enough to be his mother. Why? Thank God I wasn’t insecure, I didn’t want to imagine what the whole thing would have done to my self-esteem.

“Can you please just tell me what you’re going on about? What’s got you so riled up babe?” he asked, trying to stay calm and calm me at the same time.

I took a deep breath in an effort to calm myself.

“Why did you do it?” I asked as softly as I could. “I just need to know why” I said as a tear escaped my eye and rolled down my cheek, at the sight of it, Larshe scrunched up his face and there was a look of anguish on his face. He hated seeing me cry, I guess that much was true.

He took a step forward, with his hands stretched out to comfort me but I flinched and he stopped, looking crestfallen.

“Diara, whatever you feel I’ve done to hurt you is probably a misconception or a misunderstanding, I really don’t know but I do know I’d never do anything to hurt you, not intentionally. You are my world.” I scoffed.

Familiar lines.

“Please just tell me what the problem is and I'll fix it, I promise. “

I laughed. “You’ll fix it. Yeah right. The way you fix yourself with various women right and scratch the itch they have down there. Right Larshe? Is that how you plan on fixing it? Is it gonna be someone younger this time? Tell me, or someone your age?” I asked as a look of realisation, then horror settled on his face.