ARDENT

I wake up at 6:14 a.m.

Not early enough to be anxious. Early enough to be intentional.

I lie in my apartment and I look at the ceiling and I think about what today requires. Not what I am going to say — I have learned, through months of Dr. Yetunde and Pastor Dami and the education of loving Romeo consistently, that preparing speeches is not the same as preparing to be present.

Speeches protect you from the moment. Presence is the moment.

I am going to be present today.

I am going to say the true thing.

All of it.

I get up. I make tea. I go to the rooftop.

The March morning as the harmattan finally releasing its grip, the air beginning its slow shift toward something warmer. The quality of Abuja in the turn of a season. The city below finding its Saturday rhythm.

I pray.

“Lord. Today I am going to say things I have been afraid to say. I am going to name the doubt I had. The retreat. The running I almost did. I am going to apologise properly. I am going to take full responsibility.”

A pause.

“Help me stay in the room when it gets hard. Help me not perform honesty. Help me actually be honest.”

I sit with the morning.

The city below.

The ring on my finger catching the early light.

At 8:30 a.m. Romeo sends the verse.

Ruth 1:16. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay.

I read it.

I read it again.

Ruth to Naomi. It is not a romantic verse but a covenant verse. A verse about the decision to stay regardless of where the path goes. Regardless of what the destination looks like.

Where you go I will go.

I type back.

I will be there at eleven.

Three dots.

I will be here.

The Study, 11 a.m.

He is already in the reading chair when I arrive.

Augustine open on his lap. He was not reading. He was just holding it. The book as object rather than text, the way he holds things when he is thinking rather than consuming. He looks up when I come in.

The full look.

I come in.

I sit on the floor.

He closes Augustine.

He gets out of the reading chair.

He sits on the floor across from me.

The shelves around us. The lamp. The March morning outside the study window. The garden below, the young trees doing something specific with the light.

We look at each other.

“Reo”, I say.

“Yes, Evie.”

“I need to go first”, I say. “Before anything else. I need to say some things and I need you to let me finish before you respond.”

He nods.

I breathe.

“I am sorry”, I say.

“For keeping the diagnosis from you for three weeks. Not because I was ashamed to tell you. I was ashamed of myself. Of my body. Of the possibility that what my body might not do could cost me the person I want most.”

I look at the ring.

“I made a unilateral decision about what you could handle. Without asking you. Without giving you the chance to show me who you are in this.”

I look up.

“That was wrong. You have earned the right to carry this with me. And I took that from you for three weeks. I am sorry.”

He is very still.

“I am not finished”, I say.

“I know”, he says. “Keep going.”

“The fight”, I say.

“The curriculum. I received your input as an attack because I was already carrying something that had nowhere to go and the curriculum document was the closest available target.”

I pause.

“You were not wrong to raise the concern. You are the co-founder doing what a co-founder should do. And I weaponised the emotion of what I was already carrying and turned it into a fight about your delivery.”

A pause.

“I am sorry for that too.”

He holds my gaze.

“I am still not finished”, I say.

He waits.

I breathe.

This is the part.

The part that costs the most.

“When you went quiet”, I say.

“When the verses stopped. I did not just sit with the silence — I started building a case.”

I look at the floor between us.

“In my head. A case for leaving. For removing myself from this before—”

I stop.

Start again.

“Before the PMOS became your burden. Before the uncertainty became your regret. Before you could look at me one day and wish you had chosen differently.”

The room is very still.

“I thought about Paris”, I say. “The old Paris. Just me and Paris. Going for six months. Or a year. Letting the engagement quietly become nothing. Letting you find someone whose path to the future you want is less complicated.”

I look up.

“I had it almost entirely planned in my head. The conversation I would have with you. The way I would frame it so it sounded like my choice and not my fear.”

Romeo is looking at me.

The full look.

Not alarmed. Not hurt — or not only hurt. Something more layered than that.

“I did not go”, I say.

“I did not have the conversation. I chose differently.”

I hold his gaze.

“But I need you to know it was there. To retreat. To run. The old pattern was pulling at me like a tide.”

A pause.

“Because I do not want to start a marriage with something I did not say. And I almost did not say this.”

Romeo is quiet for a long moment.

Then he says:

“Thank you for telling me.”

“I am not asking you to be okay with it immediately”, I say.

“I know”, he says. “Give me a moment.”

He looks at the shelves.

His shelves and mine finding their places together on the same walls.

He looks at them for a long time.

Then he looks at me.

“The Paris plan”, he says.

“Yes.”

“You had it almost entirely planned.”

“Yes.”

“Down to the conversation you would have with me”, he says. “The way you would frame it so it sounded like your choice.”

“Yes.”

He is quiet.

“Romeo”, I say. “Talk to me. What's on your mind?.”

He looks at the floor between us.

“I am thinking”, he says slowly, “that the woman I am going to marry almost had a plan to leave me that I would never have known was a plan.”

He pauses.

“And I am thinking about the fact that she told me anyway. Which required more courage than leaving would have.”

I look at him.

“I am also thinking”, he says, “that the old pattern is real. That it did not disappear because you started doing the work. It is still there, underneath the work, waiting for the right pressure to activate.”

He holds my gaze.

“I need to know for a fact. Are you here? Not performing to be here. Are you actually here? Choosing this”, he gestures between us, “choosing us with both hands?”

The question lands.

I sit with it.

The full weight of it.

I take his hands into mine.

“Yes”, I say.

“I am here. Both hands. Ten toes. Fully here.”

I pause.

“The Paris plan died the night Ọrọ gave me back my own words. And Dr. Yetunde asked me if the doubt was about the relationship or about what I believe I deserve in it.”

I look at the ring.

“It was never about the relationship. It was always about the desert.”

“The desert?” he says.

“What I believe I deserve”, I say.

“In here.”

I put my hand on my chest.

“I have been doing the work. Therapy. Forgiveness. Counselling. And still — when the pressure came — the old voice arrived. The one that says: you are too complicated. You are too much. You will cost him something he did not sign up for.”

Romeo looks at me.

“Sewa”, he says.

“Yes.”

“I signed up for all of it”, he says.

“Completely. With full information. After sitting with the hard version.”

He pauses.

“You are not too complicated. You are not too much. And whatever the PMOS path requires — that is not a cost I resent. It is a life I am choosing.”

He holds my gaze.

“But I need you to do something for me.”

“What?” I say.

“The next time the Paris plan starts forming in your head”, he says, “I need you to call me before it becomes a plan. Not after. During.”

He pauses.

“Because I cannot protect something I do not know is at risk.”

I look at him.

“That is fair”, I say.

“I am not doing this for the sake of surveillance”, he says. “This is a partnership. If you are in the retreat I need to know. Not so I can fix it — so I can be in it with you.”

“Okay”, I say.

“Promise me”, he says.

“I promise”, I say.

He nods.

We sit with the settled air of two people who have just said the hardest things and are still in the room.

“Now I have some things to say”, he says.

“Okay”, I say. “Go.”

“I was wrong about my silence”, I say.

“You said that already”, she says.

“I know”, I say.

“I am saying it again because I want you to hear it in this context. Not in the aftermath of the fight — in the context of what you just told me.”

I pause.

“You were carrying a diagnosis, fear and a retreating pattern. I withdrew the verse for six days because my ego was bruised. And the silence — whatever I intended it to mean — what it communicated to a woman already afraid of being left was: he is pulling away.”

She is very still.

“I did not mean to pull away”, I say.

“I realise that the impact is not cancelled by my intention.”

I hold her gaze.

“And I am sorry for that. For what my silence communicated.”

She looks at me.

“Reo”, she says.

“Yes.”

“Your ego got bruised”, she says. “You are allowed to have felt that.”

“Yes”, I say. “And I am responsible for what I did with the feeling. Suspending the verse was not righteous solitude. It was — a man who was hurt, using the thing he knew mattered to her, as a way of communicating the hurt without naming it.”

I pause.

“That is not who I intend to be. I am naming it so it does not become a pattern.”

She looks at the floor.

Then at me.

“We are a mess”, she says.

“We are human”, I say. “There is a difference.”

She almost smiles.

“A small one”, she says.

“A significant one”, I say.

We sit.

The shelves.

The March morning.

Both of us having said the true thing. The full version. The unmanaged version that costs something to say and something to receive and leaves the room different from how it found it.

“Ro”, she says.

“Yes.”

“I want to marry you”, she says. “Not because you are perfect. Not because this has been easy. Because you are my person. Even in the rough. I want to marry the person who stays.”

I look at her.

Across the study floor.

Fourteen months from a Tuesday.

“Good”, I say. “Because I can't wait for us to get married.”

She shakes her head.

But she is smiling.

The real one.

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We go to Pastor Dami on Wednesday.

The session we scheduled six weeks ago — before the PMOS, before the fight, before the study floor — feels different now. Heavier with content. Fuller. Two people who have been through something significant arriving in his office carrying the evidence of it.

Pastor Dami’s office.

The two chairs.

His desk.

He looks at us when we sit.

He reads the room the way he always reads the room — not with questions but with presence. Twenty years of marriage counselling has given him the specific attunement of someone who can feel the texture of a relationship from across a desk.

“Tell me”, he says. “What has happened since we last sat here.”

We tell him.

Not separately — together. The curriculum fight. The silence. The PMOS diagnosis and the three weeks of carrying it alone. The study floor. Romeo’s processing, Juliet, Emeka, the 2 a.m. tussle, the confirmation. The Saturday conversation. The Paris plan named and released.

Pastor Dami listens.

He does not write as we relayed these to him — unusual for him. He is fully present in a way that means he is receiving this with more than his professional attention.

When we finish he is quiet for a long moment.

Then he says:

“Do you know what I heard in everything you just told me?”

We wait.

“I heard two people”, he says, “who encountered the first real storm of their relationship — not an external one, an internal one — and who, eventually, did every right thing.”

He pauses.

“Not immediately. Not perfectly. But eventually.”

He looks at Romeo.

“You went to God. You sat with the hard truth. You sought witnesses. You came back.”

He looks at me.

“You told the truth. All of it. Including the part that was hardest to say. The Paris plan.”

He pauses.

“Most people never divulge the Paris plan. They let it stay in the head where it does its damage quietly.”

He holds my gaze.

“You said it. To him. That is not failure. That is the work.”

I look at my hands.

“Pastor Dami”, Romeo says.

“Yes.”

“We want to talk about the wedding”, he says.

Pastor Dami looks at us.

“Tell me what you are thinking”, he says.

“December”, I say. “December 23rd.”

He is quiet.

“That is nine months away”, he says.

“Yes”, I say.

“Why December?” he says.

Romeo and I look at each other.

“Because we want to start the new year married”, I say. “Not planning to be married. Married. A new year — a new chapter — beginning with us already in it together.”

“And December 23rd?” he says.

“Right before Christmas”, Romeo says. “So the celebration rolls into the family gathering. So the people we love are already in the same city. So the year ends with the beginning of the rest of it.”

Pastor Dami looks at us.

He writes something.

Then he puts his pen down.

“I want to ask you each a question”, he says. “Separately. In writing. The way we did in the first session.”

He slides two pieces of paper across the desk.

“Take your time.”

I look at the paper.

He asks:

What do you know now, that you did not know when you got engaged, that makes you more certain — not less — that this is the right person?

I pick up the pen.

I write.

I know that he does not just love me when I am excellent. He loved me on the study floor. He loved me when I almost planned to leave. He loved me through the PMOS diagnosis and the silence and the curriculum fight. Through it all. He sat with the hard truth of choosing me and came back choosing. I did not know that was possible. I mean a love that survives its own testing and comes back stronger on the other side. I know it now. I have seen it. That is the person I want to marry.

I fold the paper.

I look at Romeo.

He is still writing.

His pen is moving slowly, deliberately, the way he does everything.

He finishes.

He folds his paper.

We hand them to Pastor Dami.

He reads them.

Both of them.

He puts them on the desk.

He looks at us.

“I am going to share what you each wrote”, he says. “Because I think you need to hear each other’s answers.”

He reads mine to Romeo.

Romeo is very still while he listens.

Then Pastor Dami reads Romeo’s to me.

I know that she tells the truth even when the truth costs her something. The Paris plan. The doubts about our engagement.Three weeks of carrying the diagnosis alone. She named all of it. She has my best interest at heart. She could have managed her way through and I would not have known. She chose honesty instead. That is the person I want to build a life with. Not someone who performs wholeness for me. Someone who brings me the real thing, even when the real deal is hard. I have never been more certain.

I look at Romeo.

He looks at me.

The office.

The desk.

Twenty-eight years of conversations held in these two chairs.

“December 23rd”, Pastor Dami says.

We look at him.

“I have one condition”, he says.

“What is it?” Romeo says.

“The remaining sessions”, he says. “We continue. All the way to the wedding. Not because you are not ready — you are. But because the work does not stop at the altar. It begins there.”

He looks at both of us.

“The PMOS conversation is not finished. Your communication styles are different and we are not finished addressing it. We will utilise the next six months.”

He pauses.

“December 23rd is yours. Use the nine months to arrive at it fully.”

Romeo looks at me.

I look at Romeo.

“Yes”, we say.

Together.

Without coordinating it.

Pastor Dami writes it in his calendar.

Romeo Olusiji and Adesewa Coker. December 23rd.

He looks up.

“One more thing”, he says.

“Yes?” I say.

“The PMOS”, he says. “It needs its own conversation in this room. Not today — you have done enough today. But before June. We bring it into the counselling properly. The medical realities. The emotional realities. The practical decisions about timelines and paths and what you will do together when the path requires more than you expected.”

He holds my gaze.

“This is not a footnote in your marriage. It is a chapter and we must treat it accordingly.”

“Yes”, I say.

“Yes”, Romeo says.

Pastor Dami closes his notebook.

“December 23rd”, he says again. Simply. The weight of it.

I look at Romeo.

He looks at me.

December 23rd.

The year ending with the beginning of everything.

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We sit in the car outside Pastor Dami’s building for a long time.

Not talking.

Just sitting.

“December 23rd uhn”, I say.

“December 23rd”, he confirms.

I look at the ring.

“Nine months”, I say.

“Nine months”, he says.

“That is enough time”, I say. “To finish the house. To do the sessions. To plan — not extravagantly—”

“Sewa”, he says.

“Yes.”

“I know you”, he says. “The wedding will be exactly as extravagant as you need it to be and exactly as intimate as we have decided it will be.”

A pause.

“Both things can be true.”

I look at him.

“How do you know me so well?” I say.

“Fourteen months”, he says. “And paying attention. And my secret ingredient.”

“Which is?”

“Jazz. Holy Spirit jazz”.

We both laugh.

I look at the city.

“Reo.”

“Evie.”

“What you wrote in the session”, I say. “She tells the truth even when the truth costs her something.”

I pause.

“That is what you want from me. That is what you are asking for.”

“Yes”, he says.

“I am going to keep trying to give it to you”, I say. “Even when the truth is the Paris plan. Even when the truth is hard. Even when the truth makes me look like I am not as healed as I thought I was.”

He looks at me.

“That is the deal”, he says. “Both of us. The real versions. Always.”

“Always”, I say.

He takes my hand.

The ring between his fingers and mine.

Nine months to December 23rd.

The year ending with the beginning of everything.

Inside: she is staying.

Present tense.

Continuous.

Both hands.

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Narrator's Nook

The apology that costs something is worth more than the apology that is easy. Sewa naming the Paris plan — the almost-plan, the retreat she nearly executed — is the bravest thing she has done in the series. Not because the retreat would have been wrong to name. Because naming it makes her vulnerable in a way that performance cannot protect her from. She tells him the thing that makes her look least healed. That is the real honesty. Not the pretty version. The full version.

Romeo naming the verse as withheld communication — not righteous solitude but a man using the thing that mattered to her to communicate hurt without naming the hurt — is the series’ most precise portrait of passive emotional withdrawal. It was not malicious. It was human. And he names it as his own and does not wait for her to name it first. That is the accountability the series has been arguing for since Chapter 1.

Pastor Dami’s response to the December date is the chapter’s most important structural moment. He does not say wait. He does not say rush. He says: use the nine months. The readiness is not about the calendar. It is about whether the conversation on the study floor has been integrated — not processed in the moment but carried together long enough to become a known thing. December 23rd is theirs. The nine months are the work.

And the written answers — read to each other across a desk in a room that has held twenty-eight years of these conversations — are the series completing its argument about what intimacy actually requires. Not grand declarations. Specific witnessing. She knows I tell the truth even when it costs me. He knows I love him through his own testing. That is not romance. That is covenant already being practised before the vows.

December 23rd.

The year ending with the beginning of everything.

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