Hermixedmuse

At 18, Zina returns home divorced and unloved. Her father seizes her phone and calls her everything her ex-husband ever accused her of. Her few friends don’t understand her silence. Her family doesn’t either — and the villagers? They whisper her name on market days and cross the street when she walks by. 

Alone in her pain, the only person who stands by her is her mother. 
But when Zina gains admission into university, she sees it as more than freedom — it’s her chance to feel again. To live again. Even if love keeps breaking her open, and healing doesn’t come easy.

Scars Between Semesters

After the D&C, she told herself it was over — the worst part was behind her. But healing wasn't as easy as waking up the next day and pretending her heart didn't feel hollow.

Richard still smiled like nothing happened.

Still held her when he wanted her.

Still took her out when it suited him.

Still whispered "You know I love you, right?" like those words could sew shut the places she was bleeding from, she clung to the idea that things would get better. That maybe, just maybe, it had been a mistake they could both learn from.

But deep inside, something had shifted.

She laughed less. Trusted less. Started writing in her diary again, not because she wanted to keep memories, but because it was the only place she could cry without judgment.

Then came the symptoms she hadn't expected.

Her body, confused by everything it had gone through, began to lactate. She would wake up with her shirt damp, chest aching, heart heavier than her bones could carry. She didn't tell anyone, not even Lilian. How could she explain to anyone that her body was mourning a baby it had barely carried? She knew something was wrong. Not just inside her, but around her.

And then it all came crashing down.

It started on a quiet evening. Richard had stepped out briefly and left his laptop open. Zina wasn't snooping — not intentionally — but when she saw an audio file named "Rita call 1," her heart skipped.

She sat frozen as his voice played back over the speakers laughing, flirting, lying with the ease of someone who had done it a thousand times.

"Zina? Who is Zina? That girl I picked from the gutter?"

Her heart broke again, this time without sound.

That one sentence echoed louder than any betrayal she'd ever known.

The man she bled for. The one she trusted with her heart, her body, her dreams, had spoken about her like filth.

And he wasn't even done. The calls revealed he had never stopped seeing Rita, the same girl he claimed was an ex. She had been there all along, in the background, while Zina gave him everything.

She shut the laptop and walked out. Her hands trembled. Her mind was blank.

She didn't cry, not at first. Her body was too numb, her soul too bruised.

The days that followed weren't dramatic. That's what hurt the most.

Everything looked normal on the surface — dates, late-night calls, surprise snacks, kisses — but Zina could feel the distance growing, quiet like smoke before a fire.

Richard no longer called first. She always initiated.

He no longer asked about her dreams, only her body, her day, her schedule. She had become part of his routine. Predictable. Present. But no longer cherished.

Worse still, Ada kept defending him.

"Men are like that sometimes," she would say, brushing her braids to the side. "But if he still buys you things and takes you out, babe, you're good."

Zina nodded, but her chest felt tight.

Was that the measure of love now? Cakes, clubs, and silence?

One night, Richard dropped her off at the gate of her hostel.

He didn't wait for her to wave like he used to. Didn't say, "Text me when you're inside."

The headlights pulled away, and so did her hope.

Back in her room, she curled up on her bed, clutching the soft sweater he once gifted her. She pressed her face into it and wept, not because she missed him, but because she missed the girl she used to be before him.

Chapter 10: Treading softly Around Fire