Sadiya |REWRITING

Chapter Two

***

ABUJA, NIGERIA.

"How many times do I need to tell you this, Ramlah? I. Don't. Love you!" The young man yelled to his supposed wife. "And I never will!" She stared down at his feet with dilated eyes, efforts ruined as a deflated balloon.

"And don't you dare go through my phone ever again!" He slammed his palm on the wall -his suffocating aura chained her to- above her head, sending a chilling sensation through her body.

Ramlah shut her eyes tight, afraid of them clashing his that turned to acid. It was too much to take in...the hatred, fury at every little mistake she made. He was churlish, yes. Mean, yes, heartless, even. But she looked above the roughened wall.

Everyone deserved a second chance, didn't we?

"I-I, I am your wi--"

He smacked the word off her mouth. Her body ran cold as the blood running through her veins, Ramlah's hands shook as she lifted one onto her reddened cheek. If the raging beast before her shaken self didn't suffocate her, his actions did.

He slapped her.

He slapped her.

Yazid slapped her.

Maybe the slap affected her sight, but she could swear his eyes flashed with an emotion similar to...remorse, but it disappeared before she could blink.

It was just an imagination.

First, the jibs, then a hit. Next was what?

Arranged marriages were supposed to turn to love marriages, why was theirs any different? Oh yeah, because her love truly, decided to continue being that cruel man with a guarded heart as hard as stone, cold as ice.

"Y-Yazid..." Ramlah looked up, unable to form a coherent word. "Y-you-you--"

He growled and marched out of the room in anger and another emotion she thought wasn't there.

Regret.

Albeit one thing was for sure, she'd make him regret it more. She would make him suffer for all the pain he'd brought her. He was going to be beneath her nose, kneeling while begging for mercy and her forgiveness.

***

Regret.

An emotion Yazid did not want to feel at that particular moment, but he did. And if ever, it made him angrier than he was, at himself. It clawed his chest until all he felt was the pain each squeeze left off. It squeezed his heart so hard that he found it hard to breathe like a normal being.

He was not supposed to feel that. If ever, regret was a word that did not exist in his dictionary; it once did, but not anymore. Or so he'd thought. She's a woman, a weakness. He couldn't open his heart to her. That was a huge risk. Moreover, he's the husband, which meant she was beneath him.

Yazid wondered what his father--

"Damn you Ramlah! Damn you!" He slammed his fists on the wheel, subduing the pains travelling through his already reddened knuckles. All he felt he needed then and there was a voyage, one that sent him to a land of thousands of kilometers without even shooting a gaze behind him.