But Daniel had already figured it out.
He had thought about it carefully, turned it over in his mind every night, and come to one clear conclusion. Tracy was one year away from finishing her degree. If she stopped now, everything she had worked for would be wasted. But if Daniel stepped back, got a job, and supported her through to graduation, then they could both start fresh on solid ground.
“You finish your degree,” he told her. “I’ll work. I’ll send you money. When you graduate and get a good job, we build together. That’s the plan.”
Tracy cried that night. She held him tight and told him she loved him. She told him she would never forget what he was doing for her. She told him that one day she would pay him back a thousand times over.
Daniel believed every word.
He moved back home to Surulere and found work at a roadside tire shop on a busy street near the motor park. The owner, Alhaji Musa, was a quiet man who paid fairly and asked no unnecessary questions. Daniel learned quickly. Within weeks, he could patch a tire, replace a rim, and pump and balance faster than anyone else at the shop.
It was not the life he had imagined for himself. He had dreamed of an office, a suit, a briefcase. Instead, he had overalls with grease stains, a plastic chair under a patched canopy, and the noise of Lagos traffic from morning till evening.
But he did not complain. Not once.
Every Friday, he sent Tracy money. Sometimes 5,000 naira, sometimes 8,000, depending on what the week had been like. He recharged her phone. He sent extra when she said she needed textbooks. When she told him the hostel generator was not working and she needed a reading lamp, he bought one and sent it through a friend traveling to her school.
Tracy always said thank you. She always told him she loved him.
And for a long time, that was enough.
Then came James Ademy.
James was the son of a Lagos businessman whose name appeared in newspapers. He drove a black SUV to campus, wore clothes that cost more than most students’ school fees, and moved through the university like someone who had never been told no in his entire life. He was not a student. He simply came around because he liked the environment, liked the girls, liked the attention.
He noticed Tracy at a faculty event in her third year. By the end of that week, he had her number. By the end of the month, he was taking her to restaurants Daniel had never even heard of.
Tracy did not tell Daniel any of this.
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