Chapter 3 Quiet Spaces

My flat was small, tucked away on the third floor of a modest building in town. By the time I returned home after the PTA meeting, the evening air was thick with the smell of fried plantain and kerosene stoves from neighbors cooking dinner. Children's laughter floated through the corridor, mixing with the distant honk of keke drivers outside.

Inside, the silence was mine.

I kicked off my shoes, set my handbag on the wooden chair by the door, and let my body sink onto the couch. The cushions sagged beneath me, familiar and unglamorous. I should have been tired, but instead my mind replayed the night in sharp fragments-the brush of his fingers against mine, the weight of his gaze, the way my name had rolled from his lips like a secret.

Iyke Obiora.

It was absurd. He was a man far above my world, a billionaire oil magnate who belonged to glossy magazines, not to cramped flats like mine. A married man. And yet, I could still feel the tremor in my hands when I thought of him.

I stood and busied myself in the kitchen, peeling yam, setting the slices into hot oil, trying to focus on the sizzle of the pan. But even then, his voice cut through-I notice you now.

I hated how those words lingered, how they reached deeper than any compliment I'd heard in years.

The truth was, my life was small. At twenty-eight, I lived alone, my days predictable: work, church, the occasional outing with friends. Men noticed me, yes-but they noticed the surface: long legs, neat figure, a smile I wore like armor. Few cared to look closer, to see the woman who spent nights reading dog-eared novels, who sometimes lay awake wondering if passion like the kind in those stories could ever be real.

I had buried that longing, told myself contentment was enough.

But tonight, a man I had no business wanting had struck a match inside me.

The oil popped, snapping me back to the kitchen. I plated the yam, sat at the table, and ate absentmindedly. My phone buzzed occasionally-group chats, a missed call from my mother-but I ignored it, lost in thought.

By the time I slipped into bed, the night had grown quiet. I curled beneath my sheets, staring at the ceiling fan turning lazily above me. And in the hush of that room, a single thought pulsed, both terrifying and thrilling: