Shadow of Doubt

Chapter 25

Chapter 25

By the time I saw Sa'ad's text, it was 5pm when I was closing from some final touch ups in my catering classes. I had been swamped with work, final clearance and whatnots. The whole week has been hot and dry too, I had to work hard to fight dehydration throughout the week both in office and at home.

Seeing Sa'ad's text on a Saturday evening was weird. What's weirder was that he sent it before 1pm and I wondered what got him so desperate that he felt the need to talk to me.

"I don't think that's a good idea." I typed out a reply to him and sighed as I dropped my phone in the centre console and started driving home with many thoughts in my head. Ever since his little visit here, he didn't miss a single Friday without sending me a text message and I read them all and ignored. I wasn't about to go against my father to please him and my treacherous heart. Just because I didn't understand why daddy made that decision, doesn't mean I will question it.

As usual, Lagos traffic was mad around this time but the calm recitation of Sa'ad AlGhamdi kept me in check otherwise I'd have been biting off my fingernails at this point. I looked at the surroundings with surprise and contempt, how could anyone possibly choose to live in Lagos willingly? These past few months were simply the most mind boggling months of my life. Apart from the crisis I had going on in my mind, I had to deal with the loudness in the city. Whenever I complain about it to aunty Ramatu, she just laughed and said she begged to differ! She couldn't bear living anywhere else in Nigeria if not Lagos. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why.

The traffic was barely moving so I reached for my phone and saw that Sa'ad had replied almost immediately after I sent him that message.

"Please Hafsah, I just need you to be my friend for a while." His message carried and I couldn't help but let out a little hiss. I really wanted to talk to him too, I wanted to tell him about how crazy these past few months have been. I wanted to tell him how I survived my first trip to the busiest market in the country, the crazy new year party in the office, when we chose the wrong day to visit the beach and the tide almost went off with me.

But I couldn't! Because daddy had forbidden me to. For the right reasons too.

Sa'ad had made me miserable. I also wanted to tell him that. I wanted to let him know that he had hurt me to the extent that I was now a cynical person, I wanted him to know that his actions caused me sleepless nights and had made my heart hurt in a literal manner. I wanted him to know the level of pain he had inflicted on me with his actions.

But then again, did he really have a choice in all that he did? I couldn't blame him for how fast I fell for him, that was all on me. He had tried to fight it off at some point but I could vividly  remember throwing a temper tantrum then. I was just a complication that got in the way of his mission and I almost made him lose sight of it all.

I also realised that up to this point, I hadn't let him explain his side of the story. When he travelled down to Lagos a few weeks back, he just apologised and moved on. While daddy had told me what happened from how close he was to Sa'ad's father to how he was present at the murder scene, how all of that caused the complications in mammy's pregnancy, how he put an eye on Sa'ad and played the role of a guardian angel behind the scenes, I still was yet to hear all this from Sa'ad's mouth and I really wanted to. I wanted to know his side of the story.

Because even in daddy's side of the story, Sa'ad was still a saint. So I didn't understand why daddy was adamant on keeping us away from each other— not that I would've run back to Sa'ad after all that! No.