Finding the love of her life

She was not betrothed to Kennedy but their lives were tied together long before she understood what it meant. Their fathers were childhood friends and their mothers were inseparable. When they started their own families, they made a quiet promise to continue that bond by joining their children in marriage.
That was how Sarah and Kennedy became an expectation.

As a child, Sarah had a soft spot for Kennedy. She admired him from a distance, too shy to get close. He, on the other hand, made his feelings clear. He did not like her. Not even a little. She was also almost three years older than him which did nothing to help her case.

Kennedy grew into a man who carried himself with pride and distance. He was always aloof, always aware of his looks, and deeply convinced of his own charm. He called himself a fine boy and lived like one. Parties, attention and the soft life were the things that mattered to him. He enjoyed being seen, admired and talked about. He enjoyed being in the news. He could even pay bloggers to write about him.

Sarah was the complete opposite.
Every time they met at family gatherings, he spoke down to her. His words were sharp, his tone dismissive. He treated her like she was beneath him, someone unworthy of his time. Sometimes, he ignored her completely. Other times, he made sure she felt small.
He did not like her because she was everything he avoided. She was naive. She dressed simply, sometimes even poorly. She lacked confidence and carried herself in a way that made her easy to overlook. She was nothing like the women he surrounded himself with.
Still, she stayed.
Partly because of their parents and the expectations they had built over the years but mostly because of how she felt about him. She believed, quietly and stubbornly, that something could change.

Everything changed when his father fell ill. On his deathbed, his father made him promise to marry Sarah and learn to love her. Kennedy could not refuse a dying man. He agreed, not out of love, but out of obligation.
When Sarah heard about the decision, she was overwhelmed with joy. At her traditional wedding ceremony, she carried the wine with a heart full of hope. She believed she was stepping into the life she had always imagined. She made a promise to herself to be a good wife and to do everything she could to make him love her.
She was wrong.

Kennedy had agreed to the marriage for reasons she did not understand at the time. The union came with benefits… houses, cars, gold and shares in thriving companies. Once the marriage was done, he considered his duty fulfilled.

From the very beginning, he treated her without respect. He brought other women into their home without shame. He spent money carelessly and refused to work. He decorated the house with pictures of himself and refused to hang a single photo of her. To his friends, she was not his wife. She was introduced as his housekeeper and they treated her exactly how he described her.
She cooked for them, served them and cleaned up after them. They gave her instructions and she obeyed. Kennedy reduced her to someone who addressed him as “Sir.” She became invisible in her own home.

She stayed because she was afraid.
Afraid of what people would say. Afraid of admitting that everyone who warned her had been right. Her friends and siblings had begged her not to agree to the arrangement but she believed love would make things better.

Kennedy would disappear for weeks without explanation. In three years, he sold everything his father had left to him. When that was gone, he began to pressure her to sell hers, including the properties in her name and the ones they jointly owned.
For the first time, she refused.
That was when she started asking herself hard questions. She could no longer recognize the man she once admired. He was rude, careless and unkind. She felt trapped in a marriage that had no love and no future.

She escaped into small comforts. Television filled her days and food became her distraction. But even that could not hide the truth forever.
Her wake-up call came unexpectedly when one of Kennedy’s friends described her as overweight. That word stayed with her.
One day, she stood in front of a mirror and truly looked at herself. For the first time, she saw what she had become. She was not unattractive. She was not empty. She was simply a woman who had lost herself.
And she decided to find her again.

While Kennedy continued his reckless life, she began to rebuild hers. She replaced idle hours with online international certifications. She changed her eating habits and committed to a healthier lifestyle. She exercised, learned and grew.

During one of her classes, she met Debola.
Debola became more than a friend. She became the voice she needed. For the first time, Sarah spoke openly about her marriage. Debola listened without judgment and pushed her to see her worth. She reminded her that her father-in-law’s name still carried weight and she could use it to create opportunities for herself.
She did.

Her confidence grew steadily. She hired a housekeeper to manage the home and Kennedy’s constant visitors while she focused on building a new life. She became less present and eventually, completely absent. He did not notice. As long as his needs were met, he did not care.

Months turned into over a year.
Then one day, Sarah returned home briefly to pick up a bag before leaving for a weekend getaway with Debola to celebrate a major achievement.
Kennedy was sitting outside when she drove in.
He did not recognize her.
He had to ask twice who she was. It was only her voice and her gap teeth that made him realize the truth. The shock on his face was unmistakable. For the first time, he was truly looking at her.
She had changed.
He watched her walk into the house and come out again with her suitcase. His confusion was clear. He was seeing a version of her he had never cared to imagine.
Only then did it occur to him that he had not seen her in over a year.
Only then did he realize he did not even have her phone number.

That weekend, he stayed home, unable to shake the thoughts in his mind. He asked the housekeeper for her number and kept thinking about how different she looked. He noticed, perhaps for the first time, that she no longer looked at him with admiration.
When he finally called, she ended the call the moment she realized it was him.

He spent the entire weekend restless. His curiosity pushed him to make inquiries and what he discovered unsettled him even more. The woman he used to ignore had built a life of her own. She had created multiple streams of income and was doing well for herself without touching what his father left for her.

Meanwhile, he had nothing left.
By the time she returned home two weeks later, he was still there.
He called her name.
It was the first time she had ever heard him say it. She barely recognized the sound. He insisted that they needed to talk, but she warned him to stay away from her. He did not stop.

When she had had enough of his pestering, she arranged for a moving van to pack her things and leave. He was not prepared for that.
From that moment, the calls began. Apologies followed. Requests for another chance came one after the other. He spoke of change, of regret and of wanting to fix what he had broken.
But she was no longer the woman who waited.

Walking away from that marriage was not the end of her story. It was the beginning of it. Because somewhere between the pain, the silence.and the rebuilding, she found something she had been searching for all along.
She found herself.
And she became the love of her life. She was the love of her life.