Inherited Scars.

Echoes of the Past Chapter 2

The silence in Ntalami’s bedroom stretched into the late afternoon, heavy and suffocating. She sat cross-legged on her bed, the finished crochet bag at her side, bright against the muted sheets. It should have brought her joy; the pink and yellow petals glowed like captured sunlight. But her chest felt hollow, her spirit bruised.

She had spent the morning crocheting to numb the ache of memory, but the stillness afterward left her exposed again. She clutched her pillow to her chest, rocking slightly, a child’s instinctive attempt to comfort herself.

It wasn’t just Duke’s betrayal that wounded her. Not just the cruel words, the raised hands, or the sharp sting of jealousy that poisoned their nights. It was something deeper_something that had been planted long before she met him.

She closed her eyes, and as if summoned by pain, her past unfurled.

She was six again, standing in the hallway of her childhood home. The night was thick with shouting. Her father’s voice roared like a storm, her mother’s sobs cut through the air like broken glass. She pressed her small hands over her ears, but the noise seeped through her palms. Plates shattered, doors slammed, words too heavy for a child to bear hurled back and forth.

Sometimes her father’s rage fell silent, but silence was worse. Silence meant her mother’s red-rimmed eyes at breakfast, the forced smile that never reached her face. Silence meant Ntalami’s heart pounding at every sound, never knowing when the storm would break again.

Eventually, her parents’ marriage collapsed. She had thought the fighting would end then, but the wounds followed her. Her father grew distant, offering only stern commands or critical remarks. Love was given like a ration_only if she achieved, behaved, performed. Her mother, though more affectionate, was inconsistent, her affection tangled with exhaustion and bitterness. Ntalami grew up caught between them, craving safety but never finding it.

Now, as an adult, lying in her bed after another fight with Duke, she realized the battlefield had never left her. It had taken root inside her.

Duke carried his own battlefield. He never spoke of it in detail, but Ntalami had glimpsed enough to know his childhood had not been kind.

His mother’s departure was the defining scar. He had been only nine when she packed her bags and left, marrying a wealthier man. He and his sister had stood by the window, watching her walk away without looking back.

From that day, Duke learned one lesson: women leave. Love is conditional. Affection is temporary. He buried the pain beneath layers of bravado. He became the boy who laughed the loudest, who built his body into a fortress of muscle, who collected admirers like medals. His art_the cartoons he drew for the press_was his one honest outlet, but even there, he hid behind satire and mockery. Vulnerability was dangerous; better to be cruel before someone could be cruel to him.

Where Ntalami’s wounds made her cling, Duke’s made him push away. Together, their brokenness created a perfect storm.

Ntalami rose from her bed and went to her desk. She pulled out her journal, its pages half-filled with scattered thoughts and unfinished poems. She clicked her pen and stared at the blank page, her hand trembling.

Why do I keep going back?

The question burned into her mind. She began to write, the words spilling like water from a cracked jar.

She wrote about her father’s coldness, about how she had spent her childhood trying to earn scraps of approval. She wrote about her mother’s tears, how she had learned early that love and pain could live side by side.

And then she wrote about Duke;his fury, his apologies, the way his arms felt safe even after they had hurt her. How every insult was followed by sweetness, every blow followed by a promise.

As the ink filled the page, she began to see the truth.

She wasn’t just in love with Duke. She was bound to him by threads she hadn’t chosen. Her body recognized him, not as safety, but as familiarity. His chaos echoed the chaos of her parents. His apologies mirrored the rare tenderness she had craved from her father. His unpredictability replayed her mother’s instability.

It wasn’t passion. It wasn’t fate. It was recognition.

Her tears fell onto the page, blurring the ink, but she didn’t stop. For the first time, she was facing the truth.

Across town, Duke laughed with Chloe as the martini loosened his tongue. But even as he laughed, part of him remembered. He remembered the nights after his mother left, when he cried into his pillow and promised himself he’d never need anyone again. He remembered the hollow look in his father’s eyes, the bitterness that spread like poison in their home.

He loved Ntalami, in his own way. She was the one person who had seen past his arrogance, who had listened when he confessed the pain of being abandoned. But love, to him, was twisted. It was possession, not partnership. Control, not connection.

Hurt people hurt people. And Duke, without realizing it, was reliving the betrayal of his mother by betraying the woman who had given him her heart.

Ntalami paused her writing, staring out the window at the sinking sun. A soft golden light spread across her balcony, touching the yarn she had left on the chair. She remembered her grandmother’s voice, warm and firm: “The past will always try to weave itself into your present, but you must choose which threads you want to keep.”

For so long, she hadn’t chosen. She had let the past dictate her love, pulling her back into pain because pain was what she knew. But now, with pen in hand and her heart raw, she began to see differently.

Her attachment to Duke was not destiny_it was a trauma bond. A magnetic pull forged by the wounds of her childhood, by the little girl inside her still trying to earn love from people who couldn’t give it.

And Duke_he was not just a man who loved her badly. He was a man carrying his own broken child inside him, lashing out to avoid being abandoned again. Their relationship was not just about two people in love. It was about two wounded souls reenacting the wars of their parents.

Ntalami closed her journal and pressed it to her chest. Her tears flowed freely now, but they felt cleansing, not suffocating.

“I keep running back to him,” she whispered into the quiet room, “because I am still running back to my parents’ love_the love I never really had.”

The words trembled in the air, heavy but freeing. She had named the truth. And naming it was the first step toward breaking it.

For the first time, she saw Duke not as a cruel man she couldn’t quit, but as a mirror of her unhealed past. And for the first time, she saw herself not as weak, but as a survivor, still standing despite the scars she had carried unseen.

The journey ahead would not be easy. The pull of the familiar was strong, and her heart would still ache for him. But now, she knew why. And knowing was the beginning of change.