“I’m not.”
She stood. “This is not the time.”
“It’s exactly the time,” Kofi replied calmly. “They threaten you because you’re isolated. A married woman is harder to target.”
Tenna shook her head. “You think a ring fixes power?”
“No,” Kofi said. “I think it changes the rules long enough for you to breathe.”
Tenna’s laugh cracked into something close to a sob. “I don’t know your real life. Where you sleep. What you’re running from.”
Kofi faced her fully. “I won’t promise comfort. I won’t promise money. But I promise you this: if you agree, I will never use you. I will never own you. And I will never let anyone hurt you while I stand beside you.”
Tenna searched his face for manipulation. She found none—only resolve.
“No,” she said finally. “I won’t marry a stranger out of fear.”
Kofi nodded. “That’s fair.”
That night, Tenna slept in the church compound, curled on a bench. Hunger woke her at dawn. Fear followed.
Her phone buzzed—her brother again: They say I can’t return next term without the fees.
By midday, rumors had spread. At the market, women whispered. Someone called her a thief under their breath.
When she returned to the church, Kofi was waiting.
“I won’t ask again,” he said gently.
Tenna lifted her chin. “If we do this, I have a condition.”
Kofi raised an eyebrow. “Name it.”
“This is not about you pretending to be my savior,” Tenna said. “If we do this, it’s because we choose respect—not protection, not charity.”
Kofi nodded. “Agreed.”
“And no lies about your character,” she added. “Even if you lie about your past.”
A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “That’s the hardest promise you could ask for.”
Tenna held out her hand. “Then let’s do it.”
The wedding was small, quiet, almost invisible.
Pastor Samuel Koma stood with a borrowed Bible. Tenna wore a simple market dress. Kofi wore a clean shirt that didn’t quite fit his shoulders. A handful of church members watched—curious, detached.
When Tenna said, “I do,” there was no applause. Only silence.
That evening, she sat on a thin mattress in a single rented room she’d never seen before, a candle flickering between her and the man she’d just married.
“This doesn’t feel real,” she said.
“It will,” Kofi replied.
She looked at him then—not as a shield, but as a man, a stranger, a husband.
And beneath fear, beneath doubt, she felt something else stir.
Not security.
Possibility.
Marriage didn’t soften the world’s cruelty. If anything, it sharpened it.
Whispers followed Tenna at the market. Sirwa Badu mocked her loudly. “You married a man who sleeps on benches.”
Tenna kept her spine straight. “I married a man who respects me.”
“Respect doesn’t buy food,” Sirwa hissed.
See more on the next page
Leave a Comment