LIGHT FROM THE DESERT✓

||CHAPTER 14||

||KIMULI||

I decided to take chances and check the places where I know Zawadi has been. She might be at any of them. Perhaps rethinking her decision. That's assuming she hadn't settled for it entirely. I hope to find her. I can't bear the thought of losing her to another man. That will crush me. I want her to myself. I have been with women before but none of them felt like her. She is different in unfamiliar ways to me. And I like that. No, I love it.

I went to the club. She wasn't there. Sheila saw to that. She checked the whole place and also told me that she hadn't seen her in a while. I left the place with a faint heart. But I still had a  little glimmer of hope for the next place, Central Park.

I'm now headed there. Trying to gather every positive energy I can. Logic beats me to it at times but I try harder. If she isn't there, then I will head to the terminus. If she isn't there either, I'll call on a search party to track her down. No way I am losing her. That too to an old man who has no respect for a woman I am assuming is young enough to be his daughter.

I enter the park. Good thing the guards at the gate aren't nagging. Every minute counts in this situation. I look around, no sign of her. It would have been better if I knew the seat she had sorted when she last came here. She could go back to the same one. Gosh! I think I'm insane. I trek along the wooden and metal fold public chairs, she's not there. I head to the stony ones and check out for her. So many figures have settled on them like in the previous ones.

I scan the place for a figure in her style of clothing. Just a few in black Buibuis. Then my heart jumps when I see a lone figure facing the playground, watching kids play. Her head is covered in a grey headscarf. Perhaps the hijab. I saunter. Slowly but not surely. Though my gut tells me that it's her.

"Zawadi?" I call hesitantly.

My light from the desert. Sitting all alone in a park. She stands, looks behind slowly until her gaze locks with mine. I saunter to the front. My gaze not leaving hers.

"Evans," she calls softly. She is shocked to see me. It's understandable. She never thought this would happen. It's like a scene right out of a movie. I'm even thinking that my life has become a movie.

My heart leaps with unexplainable joy as I watch her standing in flesh before me. Her long dress sweeps the ground. Her hijab is well worn around her head, leaving her beautiful face glowing on the outside. It's good she didn't go for a burka. I open my arms wide for her. I hope she won't resist. She eyes them for while. I nod with my lips tight and she throws herself in them. I hold her tight. So tight I'm not willing to let go.

I eye her duffel bag that is on the chair. It makes my skin shiver when I imagine she was walking away. Next to it is a white water bottle. She was really leaving. Damn! I hate that feeling I had there. I was scared of losing her if I am honest.

"What are you doing here?" she asks still holding on to me.

"I came for you," I tell her. She retreats and looks at me in shock.

"Did you bring anyone?" she asks looking behind me.

"No. It's just me."

Her gaze locks with mine. I let her see through me. She has to see that I mean it. I am here to take her home.

"You shouldn't be here. I was just about to leave," she says stepping back. She eyes her duffel bag and then back to me. She's thinking of starting to leave.

"Sorry, but you are not going anywhere," I tell her.

She looks at me with furrowed brows and scared eyes.