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Chapter 14: The Waiting Room
Last Updated:
2025-09-01 02:18:22
Latest chapter
THE LOVE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING Chapter 29 — Cracks in the Mask
Morning filtered into the villa, soft but merciless. The kind of light that didn’t flatter, exposed. The air smelled of stale pepper soup, cigarette smoke clinging to curtains, wine still sticky in glasses half-drained. The group shuffled into the living room in fragments. Kingsley stretched loud, yawning, his boxers hanging low on his hips. Bisi trailed behind him, her wig tilted, lips swollen from too much kissing. Chi curled into a cushion, nursing a mug of coffee like it was holy water. And Stan was already there, commanding the space. She sat sprawled across the main couch, phone in hand, laughter too bright for the morning. Her voice filled the room as though the night before hadn’t ended in cracks and whispers. Vanessa came in last. Her smile was careful, lips pressed but not wide, her eyes shadowed. She slid into a chair at the edge of the room, as far from Stan’s reach as she could get without drawing notice. Amina clocked it instantly. The distance. The way Vanessa wrapp
THE LOVE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING Chapter 28 — Unspoken Alliances
The villa did what people always did after tension: it tried to heal itself with noise. Kingsley turned the volume up on the TV, forcing everyone’s attention back to FIFA. Bisi cracked open a can of malt and made a show of sipping it like champagne. Chi threw her head back, laughing too loudly at nothing in particular. It worked on the surface. The villa swelled with chatter again, card shuffling, insults flung across the room. The storm pretended itself into silence. But underneath, the air stayed different. Vanessa sat on the edge of the couch, Stan’s arm draped across her shoulders like a banner. She smiled when she was supposed to, nodded at jokes, even tossed a card onto the table at the right moment. But her body was a sculpture — stiff, deliberate, carved into obedience. Every so often, she caught Amina’s eyes across the room. The gaze wasn’t pity, wasn’t accusation just quiet knowing. Amina didn’t press. She only watched, steady, like someone leaving a door cracked ope
THE LOVE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING Chapter 27 — The First Crack
The sun hung higher, and the villa moved in slow waves. Some sprawled on the beanbags, nursing half-empty bottles of water. Others lingered near the balcony, the lagoon glittering under the Lagos noon. It was one of those lazy in-between hours: too late for breakfast, too early for lunch, everyone still caught between the night’s haze and the day’s demands. Vanessa stood at the sink, rinsing plates that weren’t hers, just to keep her hands busy. The water was cool, the sound of it almost drowning out the laughter from the living room. Almost. “Leave that jare,” Amina called, padding in with her juice in hand. “We have a cleaner coming in later. You’re not staff now.” Vanessa smiled faintly, setting another plate down. “It helps me think.” “About what?” Vanessa shrugged. “Nothing important.” Amina leaned against the counter, sipping her juice. She tilted her head, her gaze sharper than her voice. “You don’t have to lie to me, you know.” The words pressed against Vanessa
THE LOVE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING Chapter 26 — The Morning After
Sunlight leaked through gauzy curtains, draping the living room in soft gold. Empty bottles lined the coffee table like fallen soldiers, card decks scattered in half-played games. The faint hum of the generator filled the silence, steady and low. Vanessa stirred on the couch before anyone else, her head resting against a throw pillow that smelled faintly of coconut oil and someone else’s perfume. The laughter of last night still lingered in the walls, but for her, it was a memory edged with sharpness. Her chest ached. Not from Stan’s grip. Not entirely. It was the balcony, the words she could not unhear: You deserve better than to be someone’s proof. She sat up, brushing her curls out of her face, and glanced around. The others were scattered like dropped coins: Amina curled in an armchair with a blanket pulled over her head, Chi stretched out on the rug, one leg still twitching in sleep. Bisi and Kingsley lay tangled on a loveseat, limbs thrown in careless directions. Nonye was
THE LOVE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING Chapter 25 – The Quiet Between Breaths
The villa never slept. Even when the music dipped low, even when the games paused, even when bodies sprawled across beanbags and cushions pretending to rest, the house still thrummed with a restless pulse Lagos itself seeping into its walls. Vanessa sat in the kitchen, long after she’d slipped away from the laughter. The bulb above her hummed faintly, shadows stretching across the tiles. Her palms pressed flat against the counter, as though it might steady her, though nothing really did. The sound of Stan’s laughter still carried down the hallway too loud, too easy. To everyone else, Stan was the life of the night. To Vanessa, she was something else entirely. A storm she had to survive. The door creaked behind her. Vanessa startled, her heart leaping half-expecting Stan but it was only Amina, a glass of water in hand, hijab slipping loose around her shoulders. She paused at the doorway, her eyes softening when they landed on Vanessa. “You’re hiding,” Amina said gently. Vanessa tr
THE LOVE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING Chapter 24
The villa smelled of pepper soup and cigarettes by nightfall. Kingsley had ordered steaming bowls from a spot in Ikoyi, goat meat sinking into rich broth thick with pepper and scent leaves, the air sharp with heat that clung to everyone’s tongues. Bottles of red wine sat open on the table, sweating beers half-drunk, and a bottle of Hennessy already tilting dangerously low. The living room was alive, beanbags sagging under bodies, cards scattered across the glass table, speakers murmuring Asake’s “Lonely at the Top” into the night. The lagoon outside lapped against the shore, and through the open balcony doors the Lagos night spilled in: faint horns drifting from Third Mainland, danfos rumbling in the distance, the city never truly sleeping. Vanessa leaned back on the couch, legs tucked beneath her, her glass of wine trembling slightly in her hand. Stan’s arm draped casually along the back of the couch behind her shoulders, her voice carrying with the ease of someone who never brok
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