From the outside, Kimani’s life looked respectable, even enviable. He rose before dawn, dressed neatly, went to work on time, paid his bills without reminders.

He believed deeply in order. Standing on his balcony each morning, tea warming his palms, he watched the estate stretch awake and repeated the sentence that had become his creed: “Consistency beats drama.”

It was not something he had read in a book. It was something he had decided, the way one decides to believe in gravity.

He loved Wanjiku that way — steadily, without spectacle. He did not shout his affection. He practised it. He showed up. “If I show up every day, it has to count,” he believed, planning a future that moved in straight lines: engagement, marriage, children, a life that grew quietly solid.

Wanjiku began drifting long before she ever left. She loved nights more than mornings, movement more than stillness, unpredictability more than plans.

When she stayed over at Kimani’s place, she paced the living room, restless. “You live like an old man,” she laughed once, kicking off her heels.

When Kimani asked where she had been the night before, his voice careful not to accuse, she snapped, “Why do you need to know everything?”

He swallowed his discomfort and told himself, as he always did, “Patience is also love.”

Then Wanjiku got pregnant.

She told him on a rainy evening, standing by the window with her arms folded tightly, as though holding herself together. “I’m pregnant,” she said flatly, as if announcing a delayed flight.

Kimani froze. The word settled slowly in his chest before spreading warmth. “That’s… that’s okay,” he said after a moment. “We’ll figure it out. We’re already engaged. We can plan.”

Wanjiku did not turn around. “I’m not ready,” she said. “I don’t even know if this is what I want.”

Two weeks later, she sat across from her friend Nafula in a bar lit too dimly for clarity. “Kimani is good,” Wanjiku said, stirring her drink. “But good isn’t enough. Everything with him feels decided. I don’t know if I want that life.” Nafula watched her carefully but said little. The decision was made quietly. The abortion followed quietly. Kimani learned of it only after it was done.

When he confronted her, his voice shook despite his effort to remain composed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She crossed her arms, defensive. “Because you would have talked me out of it.”

“That was our child,” he said, grief tightening his throat. “I’m not sure I want your life,” she replied sharply. “Your routines. Your silence. I feel trapped.”

The argument that followed was the first time their relationship truly fractured. “I gave you everything,” Kimani said, anger finally breaking through restraint. “I showed up every day.”

“And that’s the problem,” Wanjiku shot back. “You think showing up is enough. I want to feel alive.”

Two weeks later, she left him for Owino.

Owino offered noise where Kimani offered quiet, recklessness where Kimani offered stability. With Owino, life felt loud and urgent. They moved into a come-we-stay arrangement almost immediately. At first, Wanjiku felt validated. Owino laughed loudly, touched boldly, promised excitement. “With me, you won’t be bored,” he said.

But months passed and no pregnancy came. Excitement faded into anxiety.

When worry became unbearable, they visited Dr Liz Ayana.

Sitting across the desk, hands clenched tightly, Wanjiku listened as the doctor spoke gently. “The repeated abortions have caused significant damage. Conceiving naturally will be extremely difficult.” The room seemed to tilt. Owino said nothing on the drive home.

After that, Owino changed. His affection curdled into contempt. “You wasted yourself,” he muttered during arguments. Soon, he stopped hiding his infidelity. Other women appeared in their home openly. “I need options,” he said coldly. “You can’t even give me a child.” The humiliation hollowed

Wanjiku out. Alone in the quiet, she remembered Kimani’s patience, the way his love had never humiliated her. Desperate, she tried calling him.
Texting him. Showing up in places she hoped he might be.

But Kimani had already begun rebuilding himself.

The day he joined Kip Fit, he was not chasing fitness. He was running from grief. The gym became a place where pain was translated into effort.

That was where he met Kanini. Calm. Observant. Steady. When he struggled with a barbell, she adjusted his grip gently. “You don’t fight strength,” she said. “You work with it.”

With Kanini, Kimani felt something unfamiliar: ease. She listened when he spoke about his past and said, simply, “You deserve rest, not struggle.”
Love with her unfolded quietly. It did not demand endurance. It did not punish vulnerability.

They planned a future together. Kimani arranged a trip to Nyeri to introduce Kanini to his parents. “I want them to meet the woman I’ll marry,” he said, pride softening his voice.

Kanini smiled, though something unreadable flickered in her eyes. Something he noticed but did not press.

Two days before the wedding, Kanini collapsed during a routine gym session.

At the hospital, tests were run. The diagnosis arrived softly and shattered everything: She was pregnant. Kimani stared at the doctor, confused. “But… we were careful,” he said. Kanini avoided his eyes.

That night, the truth emerged. “I’m married,” she confessed, voice breaking. “My husband works in Dubai. I was lonely. I didn’t think it would go this far.”

The child was not Kimani’s. The future he had imagined folded in on itself.

Kanini disappeared the next day, leaving behind silence and a devastation that felt eerily familiar.
Kimani unravelled.

In the aftermath, Wanjiku returned. Quieter now, stripped of certainty. “I’m sorry,” she said, tears tracing paths down her face. “I lost everything.”
Kimani hesitated. Loneliness, like grief, has a way of softening resolve.

They married quietly. They tried for children, knowing the odds. Each failure reopened wounds neither had healed. Some nights, Kimani lay awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering if love was something meant to be endured rather than enjoyed.

South B continued waking up, indifferent and constant.

And Kimani learned, too late, that choosing familiarity over healing does not end pain — it only gives it a different name.