LUST and LOVE ***Episode VI (final treat)***

Rather than answer Shade's numerous questions, I just was looking like a caught kleptomania. Shade had caught me more than too many times but she still would not go. I wouldn't want to let go of her, even for a billion naira. I love her and did not want to hurt heart feelings towards me because I could vouch she loved me. It's just that I couldn't tame the flirt animal in me. What do I do now? I thought to myself.

 I couldn't lie again. No, not now. I held my head still, not for pain because I could even feel anything but pathetic. How could I have done this to the woman that cares so much for me. I helplessly reflected on her undeniable concern towards me even when I pretended to have had a broken limb. She forgot all her anger and care as my mother would do. What more do you want, Kunle?! I regrettably reprimanded myself in silence.

Meanwhile, Shade had retreated and sadly coiled in a corner of my room, crying. At that moment, I felt like somebody had finally caught me bed-wetting in a very cold morning. I was drenched in my own shame. Should I go beg or what? I was just confused of what to do to make her stop crying. I needed the most convincing word that would assure her that I wouldn't cheat on her again.

I went close and sat beside her. I didn't even bother to hold her because I was afraid she would snap away. I thought of what to say but it was not coming because I was determined not to lie again but beg. Just like the lizards, nothing was proceeding out of my often opened mouth. I finally forced it out and started,
"Honey, though it was a dream, nothing was a lie about me. I am an inglorious flirt and a cheat. I am never contented, even when my friends envy me for the best gift of love that you are to me. I foolishly chose to chase after emptiness: hearts void of love but lust. I remembered when I was seek and dying, you stood right by me and didn't feel I could get you infected with TB until I was completely cured. What more could a man desire than a sister, a mother and a lifetime friend like you."
At this junction, she had all of a sudden stopped crying and tentatively was listening to me. Notwithstanding, I was too stocked to my confession, with my face down, to look her face as I continued,     
"Maybe I never merit a heart of gold like yours. Or it may be that you fall on a wrong hand. But today, of all days, I felt pathetic to have made you shed tears, the last thing I would rather have had you done for me is cry. I am sincerely ashamed of my incompetence to put smiles on that your beautiful face always.
I confess that your heart is too pure for me but I don't want you to leave me now, please. I want you to affect me more with your true love to enjoy me as a changed person, the man you've always desired of me." Now I was already crying. If anybody had told me I would cry, not to talk of kneel and beg, before any woman, I wouldn't have believed it. Shade is different. I had failed her many times, which she knew, but would not let go of me. She had even be told, many a times, that I was a die-hard cheat and would not change, but would not compromise her love for me. There were even times I felt she was only stalking me. #men #sha! And felt the only way to escape was to flirt around with other girls who cared less.
I didn't know when I knelt before her. I suddenly felt her alms on my shoulders and it was then I could behold her face. She was not crying but her eyes could not hold back the profusely flowing tears as she said,
"I knew you would come back. I had always trusted God to restore the real you I fell in love with. The very day I confessed 'I love you too', I meant it. I am not leaving you, not now that you are the changed man I love." She held me so tightly against her already wet bosom and I, for the first time in my relationship, felt the sincere warmth of love I had been deprived of by my lustful acts for a long time. And I couldn't help but thought why, we men would ignore the heart that loves us to embrace emptiness, frivolity and dryness. Lust that runs one at loss.