Married At Nineteen

Chapter Forty-five

Far off into my thoughts I looked, the quiet street my eyes used as a medium.

My hands were gripping hard on the railing, my breathing weighty and dry against my throat. She had brought up the morass memory I was trying so hard to discard.

Each time I saw that imbecile I saw trouble. My trouble; Every bone in my body pushing me towards my fall. I didn't want to raise a hand against him.

Not that I had a choice. It was how I was brought up and it had become part of my integrity. We did fight a few times but it was over trivial things except once. Back then, no one was looking. No one would scandalize it.

Now is a different case. I couldn't risk it with the kind of person he turned out to be. He would personally see to it that I'm ruined.

But then again he was friends with my wife. I swore to protect her when I first set my eyes on him after all these years. He would do anything to hurt me.

I took a deep breath to expel the steam of tension that eroded my body, deepening my stress. She must be crazy upset with me.

What was I even thinking to behave so erratically towards her? I could have talked her out of it much calmly. It wasn't her fault.

God! How do my parents do it? Why do I always bugger this up?

Deeply inhaling, I tilted my head back towards the sky, expelling the long-held breath.

Walking back into the room, I couldn't find her. I pulled my brows up in fear of facing her. Somehow I was grateful I didn't see her. I was more than guilty.

Knocking on the bathroom door first to confirm her presence, I didn't hear a response.

"Baby are you in there?" Still no response.

I pulled the door open, carefully peaking with my peripheral vision to see if I'll find her anywhere inside but sighted nothing.

Closing the door, I moved out of the room to look for her elsewhere. And that's how I moved room by room asking about.

"Hey, Samantha, right?" I asked a young cleaner who was recruited during my absence.

"Yes Sir." She curtsied awkwardly. Couldn't blame her. Being called out of duty as an amateur caused a lot of nervous reactions.

"Have you seen my wife around?" I asked.

With her eyes fixed to the ground, she shook her head. "Not at all, Sir."

If my blood pressure wasn't climbing I would have told her to look at me while talking but I had not a single interest in that at the moment.

Running my hand down my face, I shook my head at the stress Eddy was putting me through. Was she even okay?

I asked almost every servant but they all replied negatively. Then my mind took me back to my room. The blind to the bathtub was rolled.

I raced up the stairs to my room, my heart thumping at the thought of meeting her eye to eye. Opening the door to the bathroom, I stood for a moment debating whether I should go in or not.

"I know you're in the bathtub… I-...Can-" I was interjected with the sloshing of water against the cold acrylic porcelain.

I heaved heavily, stepping into the bathroom fully. I knew she deliberately did this.

"I'm taking a bath, don't come in." For a second I thought she was actually bathing but my intuition snapped me out of it.

If really she was bathing then her towel would have been hanging on the rake but it wasn't. Walking closer, I grabbed the plastic blind in my hand.